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Probably because most people don't care about consciousness and treat people like people if they can relate to them? You said it yourself -- "we create social
by theamk 5y ago
Probably because most people don't care about consciousness and treat people like people if they can relate to them?
You said it yourself -- "we create social contracts based, in part, on empathy". As long as empathy works, we should be treating others nice.
Trying to replace simple and understandable things like "empathy" with vague "consciousness" leads to dangerous roads. One moment you are talking philosophy and next moment you are declaring beings you don't like as "unconscious zombie" and you are enslaving and subjugating them.
- bumby 5y agoWe're saying the same thing, I think. I'm just asserting that ideas like empathy are rooted in an understanding of subjective experience. I.e., they are based on the idea of consciousness, even if we struggle to define it. I would hope better definitions lead to more clarity, not less. To build on your example, a robust definition of consciousness could prevent declaring someone an "unconscious zombie". The opposite may be true, however. It would potentially cause problems for lots of people if we could prove certain subjects (plants, for example) have subjective experience.