If it is justifiable to compare a human and an animal because they both exhibit similar responses to pain then it must also be justifiable to compare an animal to a computer programme if they both exhibit the same response to pain.
This is really a very simple extension of modus ponens. If A implies B then where we have A we should have B. If “humanlike response” implies “humanlike pain” then where we have a humanlike response we should also have humanlike pain. A computer shows a humanlike response, therefore implying that a computer has humanlike pain.
Clearly nonsensical and thus using basic Socratic reasoning your original assertion is falsified. The exhibition of humanlike response in a bull stuck with a pin can not be used to imply the bull experiencing pain in a humanlike way. Yet that is exactly what you did.
It’s logically invalid to do what you did.
The best neuroscience tells us that fish, for example, don’t feel pain and can’t feel pain (op cit). Clearly there has never been any evolutionary advantage in fish feeling pain. In reality you have the question arse about. The real question is “What would be the evolutionary advantage in them feeling pain?”
A human has opposable thumbs, a close supportive social network, an ability to engage in healing behaviour, an ability to forego food gathering in order to allow for healing and so forth. All those things make pain and the subsequent immobilisation practical and evolutionarily beneficial. Animals lack some or all of those things.
Under circumstances where an animal has no capacity whatsoever to do anything about an injury no matter how painful, what is the evolutionary advantage in them feeling any pain whatsoever? Now if an animal has only a limited ability to do anything about pain then what is the point of having anything but a limited ability to feel pain?
No, it is not even remotely similar. Is your TV screaming in response to a stimulus that would make a human scream? Does it scream when you physically damage it, and only when you physically damage it?
If not then the example is absolute bollocks. Far from being “exactly the same” it is not even remotely similar.
No. Are you suggesting that the percentages of people who have killed themselves to avoid torture equal the percentages that have killed themselves to avoid depression? If not then what is your point?
Would you care to actually answer my question? Has anyone ever killed themselves to avoid torture (as opposed to being forced to reveal under torture?
If not then your whole point is clearly false.
The problem with this it makes the rest of your argument logically incoherent. You are saying that an emotional state and emotional pain can induce behaviour that is objectively indistinguishable from behaviour that can be associated with extreme physical pain. Conversely extreme physical pain can induce behaviour that is at odds with any expected reaction to physical pain.
If an animal responds to stimulus with an attempt to flee or suicide then that is seen as evidence that it feels pain and seeks to avoid it. When a human responds to the exact same stimulus with an attempt to survive and follow the perpetrator that is seen as evidence that it feels pain and wants revenge.
So what you are saying is that your position predicts everything. As a result it is logically worthless. There is no possible response, beyond perhaps tapdancing, that can’t be predicted by this viewpoint. As such what possible insights can you hope to gain by introducing animal examples?
Good. I never asked for one.
I did ask for a cite for that ridiculous claim that our pain felt at death is somehow 'primitive. And you are totally unable to provide one. So we can discount that statement and consider the argument you derive form it to be totally worthless since it lascks any basis whatsoever aside form your assertions.
No society has ever believed that men and women should have the same rights. Even in western societies women didn’t have the most basic right to vote and own property until very, very recently. Even today women do not have the right t serve in frontline combat, nor do they have that responsibility. Women don’t have the right to walk down the street with bare chests. Men can not enter female restrooms and vice versa. And of course there are a range of other sex differentiated rights.
So any argument based on a claim that men an women have the same rights is nonsense. To the extent that men and women can be distinguished they do have different rights and that is how the vast majority of people believe that it should be. If you believe that men and women should have exactly the same rights then you are in a very distinct minority even in the US. IN terms of world population I suspect you constitute less than one in a million.
Strawman. I have never made any such claim.
And how did you settle on that particular moral system? What necessity, or principle forced you to settle on that system and not another?
The problem is that saying that you selected a moral school with certain principles is just post hoc reasoning. You found a school that you liked and settled on it, but it was never necessary for you to do so. You did so out of personal preference.
And if you walked into a Klan meeting and said that claimed that it was moral intuition that all Blacks shouldn’t be locked up you would be beaten black and blue.
So what? What does mob justice have to do with reasoned debate precisely?
And how did you decide on that position? What necessity or supreme guiding principle forced you to adopt that mortal position and not the far more popular moral position that it should be based on the words of a holy man?
Of course there was no necessity or guiding principle. It was simple a personal choice, a whim. It was arbitrary. An arbitrary moral choice.
