According to Daniel Dennet, consciousness is "software". This would imply that animals, like cats and dogs, are not conscious, that month-old babies are not conscious (up to the point I've read in the book, Dennet has not speculated as to what age the installation completes), and that in some cultures, fully functional adult humans might not be conscious.
In my arrogant opinion, pain (and pleasure) are conscious states, states of mind. Therefore, only a conscious being can feel pain. Therefore, to claim that cats are not conscious implies that cats cannot feel pain. This is possible, of course, but it sounds wrong.
The Jewish tradition would seem to assume that animals can feel pain, as evidenced by the commandment not to cause (needless) pain to animals. But to what animals? Is one allowed, in theory, to hunt non-kosher fish for sport? Is one allowed to step on a roach on the sidewalk to vent one’s frustration about the roaches in one’s house?
Destroying plant life is (sometimes) forbidden because of a different commandment, “bal tashchit”, not being wasteful, but uprooting weeds in a public area is certainly not seen as causing pain to anything.
And while we're on the subject, does the halachic distinction between plants and animals agree with the biological distinction? Are sponges kosher?
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If one even willingly goes along with the metaphor (I'm not a fan), consciousness is more like the operating system. And it's not a binary installed/uninstalled, but a variety of cultural norms (to which you allude when speaking about fully functional adults).
ReplyDeleteAs people learn other facts and procedures, they are adding more software.
Operating systems are software, right?
ReplyDeleteDennet uses the term "virtual machine". Can a variety of cultural norms combine to form a virtual machine, or an operating system, for that matter? If so, these norms are absorbed over time; when only the first few norms are absorbed, the "binary" is in the initial stages of installation, and when most of the norms have been absorbed, the binary is in the later stages of installation...at what point in time would Dennet award consciousness to this baby?
For a materialist, like Dennet it’s not just a metaphor. (Dennet claims that most contemporary philosophers are materialists. I’m not, but I’m not a militant dualist either. My thoughts on the mind-body problem are not fully baked.) The brain *is* a computer. It *is* hardware. However, the question of whether the brain is running software is nontrivial, in my arrogant opinion.