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>Animals avoid dangerous behaviours because they cause them pain. Robots, including self-driving cars avoid dangerous behaviours, because they are programmed to
by hackinthebochs 7y ago
>Animals avoid dangerous behaviours because they cause them pain. Robots, including self-driving cars avoid dangerous behaviours, because they are programmed to do so.
We don't know a priori whether these are in fact two distinct sets or just two descriptions of the same set. That is, nature may have "programmed" the insect to avoid dangerous stimuli without any conscious awareness of it, similar to how my hand starts to move from a hot stove before I consciously feel the pain. Or, our programming of accident avoidance might in fact endow a conscious experience of pain for all we know.
- YeGoblynQueenne 7y agoIf I understand correctly, you're suggesting that animals could react to stimuli that we would consider painful by following the same behaviours that they would if they felt pain, not because they feel pain but because they have been programmed to follow those behaviours in response to those stimuli? I find this unlikely. The set of stimulus-response behaviours necessary to avoid every possible danger that might arise in an animal's environment would be immense. It seems much more economical to "program" behavious that avoid any painful stimulus (e.g. by setting some "pain threshold" and programming the animal to avoid anything that causes a sensation of pain above that threshold). This is particularly so for insects that have a limited number of neurons in which to store their stimulus-specific programs.
- hackinthebochs 7y ago>by following the same behaviours that they would if they felt pain This is taking the claim I made too far. My point was that reacting to noxious stimuli does not a priori require the conscious experience of pain (which includes a suffering component). When it comes to analyzing sets of possible behaviors, that provides more evidence with which to decide between nociception and pain. I do think that most "animals" (excluding insects) probably experience pain due to, as you said, the varieties of possible behaviors being too large to be merely reflex based. But it's not obvious to me that this holds for insects.
- Retric 7y agoThey would have to experience some negative stimulus to avoid it. Disagreement with the term pain does not remove the resume that learned avoidance requires detection of a negative stimulus. Further, while we separate negative stimulus into say thirst and pain, the fact you can torture people with either means the difference is ethically more semantic than meaningful.
- hackinthebochs 7y agoThere is a distinction in biology between sensory perception of noxious stimuli (nociception) and the experience of suffering in response to noxious stimuli. The distinction is in higher order brain processing. An organism does not need to experience suffering to react to noxious stimuli: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_reflex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_reflex
- Retric 7y agoWithdraw reflex does not mean learning. You can see this in cases where the withdrawal reflex is repeatedly triggered without learning.
- hackinthebochs 7y agoWithdraw reflex also doesn't preclude learning. We see learning in all sorts of reflex arcs that get over-triggered and thus become downregulated. So the fact that the fly "learned" to be more sensitive to noxious stimuli does not rule out a reflex mechanism at play in its behavior.
- Retric 7y agoDown regulated withdrawal reflex is the opposite of avoidance behavior. It’s effectively increasing an organism’s tolerance for putting it’s limb in fire. So, no what you’re describing does not mean learning to avoid stimulus. Learned avoidance behavior really requires a negative perception not just a neutral reflexive one.