[ExI] Losing out on human suffering (was Wrestling with Embodiment)

[Henry Rivera]

On Feb 1, 2012, Kelly wrote:

> Think of leprosy. No pain and you lose your fingers

Here pain just serves as feedback. Other feedback mechanisms can be utilized to serve the same function in our hypothetical android, and I'd suggest they don't need to be aversive stimuli. Informational feedback (necessarily without feelings) should prove sufficient to prevent damage (such as to one's fingers). I'm thinking along the lines of those experimental self-directed cars that can avoid collisions. No pain required to prevent damage.  

Also, I'd submit that pleasure could be recognized as pleasure even in the absence of pain by comparing one pleasurable state relative to lesser pleasurable states one has experienced. That would be degrees of relative pleasure with an anchor being the absence of pleasure, which is not the same as the presence of pain.  

Thanks everyone for the stimulating conversation. 

-Henry