Queen bans fox hunting!

[Dauphin]

Kuciwalker is a bot. I say we torture it.

[Kuciwalker]

OK, my definition of self-awareness/sentience (yes, I AM using those interchangeably). If you don't understand this, you are truly hopeless and you might as well shoot yourself for the betterment of the human race:

I'm using them both to mean the quality of actually feeling sensations. It's impossible to describe more clearly, really; it's that you actually see the image projected onto your retina, that you actually hear the vibrations in your eardrum.

Basically, there is this thing that is aware of your sensations, not in the sense of a computer having it in memory, but actually perceiving it. A robot is not aware in this way of its sensory inputs.

About my personal thoughts on the origin of consciousness (not evolutionary origin, but causal):

We are machines. We, however, for reasons completely unknown, happen to be sentient machines. IMO sentience is an emergent property of matter - actually, an emergent property of simple calculation - but we can't really know right now. I think that if we simulated the motions of every particle in the human body in a computer, it would act exactly the same as an actual human body (i.e. there is no dualism or "external" soul that attaches itself to the body) and that the simulation would necessarily be sentient itself.

Why I conceive of babies and fetuses in the third trimester as sentient:

Brain activity, and the fact that they are human brains. I am sentient, and my brain is practically similar to other humans' brains, therefore they ought to be sentient as well. In addition, sentience does not seem to depend on pure computational power, but actual constitution, so it makes sense that the brains of fetuses, once active, would also be sentient, because they have the same pattern as my brain.

Why the nervous system is a ****ing IDIOTIC argument:

Foxes aren't aware of pain. Their brains sense it as an input, but is your basis or morality now defined based solely on the chemical mechanism by which the organism processes information? If I created a brain with five neurons, would it be equally protected? And by the way, fetuses have a brain. Are you absolutely against abortion as soon as any nervous tissue develops?

Basically, using possession of nervous tissue as a metric is even more absurd that defining it based on the sequence of nucleotides in an organism's genome. What if we met some alien race that didn't have a biology like ours, and whose thoughts were in a biological system completely unlike ours? Why is your basis of morality chemical of all things?

Why simply avoiding pain or responding to it or whatever does not mean they are aware of pain in the sense of self-aware:

Because they are a fantastically complex machine designed to react in a certain way to certain stimuli. It is not aware of the pain, in the sense of self-awareness. A robot that backs up and turns around when it hits something does not feel pain when it hits an object. It is not aware of pain. It simply senses an input.

And yes, people are also fantastically complex machines designed to react in certain ways to stimuli, but they are (obviously) self-aware, as I explained in the first and second quotes of this post.

And finally, I will not respond to ANYONE who doesn't tell me why abortion is OK but killing foxes isn't, and who doesn't tell me how we should punish animals that harm other animals. I'm sick of my conclusive points being ignored.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by GePap
People can be trained. So what?

Last response, just to show how STUPID GePap was being: that was my point.

Ludd claimed that foxes are like people because you can train them to respond in different ways to stimuli. I said robots could too, therefore any argument applying to foxes because of that applies to robots. He said robots could not be trained, which is completely false. Therefore, my point stands.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


Why the nervous system is a ****ing IDIOTIC argument:

Foxes aren't aware of pain. Their brains sense it as an input, but is your basis or morality now defined based solely on the chemical mechanism by which the organism processes information? If I created a brain with five neurons, would it be equally protected? And by the way, fetuses have a brain. Are you absolutely against abortion as soon as any nervous tissue develops?

We use the nervous system as a qualification because it's perfectly reasonable and legitimate to do so.

Why is it such a reasonable qualification? Because plants are significantly different from animals in that plants do not have a nervous system to begin with.

[Kuciwalker]

Did you see the thing about five neurons? You lose.

[Dauphin]

No comment on when the first humans would have become sentient then?

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=3445988#post3445988

[MrFun]

So what about the five neurons?

It does not matter how basic an animal's nervous system is. It will STILL be able to FEEL pain.





EDIT: x-posting due to dolphins jupming out of the water

[Gibsie]

Five neurons do not make a nervous system on the same level as a mammal. Obviously.

[MrFun]

So? Are we saying then that non-mammals are not animals but plants because they do not have as advanced of a nervous system as mammals??

[Az]

Who gives a **** about pain? How's pain any different than snow melting or blood coagulating on a wound?

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Gibsie
Five neurons do not make a nervous system on the same level as a mammal. Obviously.

That isn't what you said. Obviously.

You said that the ability to feel pain is based in a nervous system. Something with five neurons could "feel" pain, by your definition. You lose.

[reds4ever]

Originally posted by Azazel
Who gives a **** about pain? How's pain any different than snow melting or blood coagulating on a wound?

Ever been kicked in the balls?

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Azazel
Who gives a **** about pain? How's pain any different than snow melting or blood coagulating on a wound?

THIS is the most pathetic post I have seen in a long time.

[Kuciwalker]

You mean besides your own?

[Az]

Ever been kicked in the balls?

Yes, and I hated it. Your point? The fact that it hurt ( the impulse was sent, and recieved by my neural network in the brain) doesn't make it a bad thing. Since a bad thing is only a thing that makes us, humans, less able to cope with the future.