Sue: What about pain? You’ve made a case here that qualia come about only with this big leap to self-concept and language. Now, when my cat comes limping in through the cat flap looking pathetic with a thorn in his paw and I have to take it out, and then he seems happier, I think he is experiencing pain, in the sense that he’s got the painfulness of pain— he really doesn’t like it; it feels like something to that cat. Of course I can’t know, and I can be as sceptical as anything about it; but that looks to me from the outside as being as much a claim for qualia as it would be if I poked you now and hurt your arm.
Rama: I know what you mean, but I think that’s not the case. I think that, for example, your withdrawal from a hot kettle is a different pain from the pain that you then contemplate. In the first case, the pain of withdrawal from a kettle, there is no qualia, and no meta-representation. In the second case, when you contemplate the pain, you have a metarepresentation, which you can communicate with others; it has all kinds of links with memories where you say, ‘Oh, pain, that’s a bad thing; let me not do this again; let me tell this other chap about my pain; let me take some medicine for this pain.’ It’s got all these vast semantic implications; and you need those and the link to the sense of self, in order for fully-fledged qualia to emerge. I think the cat is responding to the pain with a reflex withdrawal. So however much you might be tempted to infer that it’s contemplating its agony, it isn’t. Similarly, you could say that if somebody’s under anaesthesia, you’ve uncoupled the person, the self, and therefore qualia as experienced by the self, from the pain. Someone could argue ‘How do you know the spinal cord isn’t independently conscious on its own?’; so if you do a spinal block, is that unethical? That’s no more a problem than the cat problem.
Sue: But morally the cat problem is serious because of factory farming, because of all kinds of cruel practices to wildlife…
Rama: But these are cruel practices to the spinal column…
Sue: Yes, but what is your answer about the factory farm? Does it matter? Do you want people to treat the animals better, or does it not matter because they’re not having qualia?
Rama: To me that problem is like abortion; in other words, you’re confounding ethics with science. Somebody will always make the case that you’re preventing a human being from existing. It’s also a bit like asking ‘Is a virus really alive?’ In the post DNA era—now that we know what a virus is—it’s no longer useful to ask ‘But is it really alive?’
Sue: That’s a different argument; let’s stick with the consciousness argument—I’m really not going to let you get out of this; you’re going to stick with consciousness! So let’s follow your theory through logically, let’s say a cow is going to the slaughter; you can kill it instantly, or you can kill it in a slow way which to us would be very painful. Now, do you think it matters?
Rama: I wouldn’t say that. It doesn’t experience pain like we do; it certainly can’t introspect on its pain. It’s a bit like that ‘Is the virus really alive?’ problem again; we don’t want to get distracted by semantics. I think that as mammals we empathize with certain behaviour patterns, and this makes you think that the cow has qualia, and therefore you shouldn’t hurt it. But then you can say, ‘Well, why am I vegetarian?’, you know; once you start getting into ethics and start asking at what point does an embryo become conscious and therefore you can talk about murder versus just abortion…
Sue: So you’re saying something like this: ‘I’m a vegetarian, I don’t want to eat animals, I would rather they were killed in a nice way, but actually I don’t think they feel pain.’
Rama: That’s correct, I would say that, if pushed.
Sue: Fair enough; you are being pushed; you have been pushed!
no subject
Rama: I know what you mean, but I think that’s not the case. I think that, for example, your withdrawal from a hot kettle is a different pain from the pain that you then contemplate. In the first case, the pain of withdrawal from a kettle, there is no qualia, and no meta-representation. In the second case, when you contemplate the pain, you have a metarepresentation, which you can communicate with others; it has all kinds of links with memories where you say, ‘Oh, pain, that’s a bad thing; let me not do this again; let me tell this other chap about my pain; let me take some medicine for this pain.’ It’s got all these vast semantic implications; and you need those and the link to the sense of self, in order for fully-fledged qualia to emerge.
I think the cat is responding to the pain with a reflex withdrawal. So however much you might be tempted to infer that it’s contemplating its agony, it isn’t. Similarly, you could say that if somebody’s under anaesthesia, you’ve uncoupled the person, the self, and therefore qualia as experienced by the self, from the pain. Someone could argue ‘How do you know the spinal cord isn’t independently conscious on its own?’; so if you do a spinal block, is that unethical? That’s no more a problem than the cat problem.
Sue: But morally the cat problem is serious because of factory farming, because of all kinds of cruel practices to wildlife…
Rama: But these are cruel practices to the spinal column…
Sue: Yes, but what is your answer about the factory farm? Does it matter? Do you want people to treat the animals better, or does it not matter because they’re not having qualia?
Rama: To me that problem is like abortion; in other words, you’re confounding ethics with science. Somebody will always make the case that you’re preventing a human being from existing. It’s also a bit like asking ‘Is a virus really alive?’ In the post DNA era—now that we know what a virus is—it’s no longer useful to ask ‘But is it really alive?’
Sue: That’s a different argument; let’s stick with the consciousness argument—I’m really not going to let you get out of this; you’re going to stick with consciousness! So let’s follow your theory through logically, let’s say a cow is going to the slaughter; you can kill it instantly, or you can kill it in a slow way which to us would be very painful. Now, do you think it matters?
Rama: I wouldn’t say that. It doesn’t experience pain like we do; it certainly can’t introspect on its pain. It’s a bit like that ‘Is the virus really alive?’ problem again; we don’t want to get distracted by semantics. I think that as mammals we empathize with certain behaviour patterns, and this makes you think that the cow has qualia, and therefore you shouldn’t hurt it. But then you can say, ‘Well, why am I vegetarian?’, you know; once you start getting into ethics and start asking at what point does an embryo become conscious and therefore you can talk about murder versus just abortion…
Sue: So you’re saying something like this: ‘I’m a vegetarian, I don’t want to eat animals, I would rather they were killed in a nice way, but actually I don’t think they feel pain.’
Rama: That’s correct, I would say that, if pushed.
Sue: Fair enough; you are being pushed; you have been pushed!