Is my spinal cord conscious?

[laklak]

Hey, if there's no self then I can't commit self abuse. I wank all the fucking time, ergo there is a "self". QEmuthafuckingD.

[JimC]

You are indulging in "delusion of personal ego" abuse...

Rather high class and philosophical, actually...

[pErvinalia]

If people don't accept that there is such a concept as the "self", then torture should be legal and amoral.

edit: Unless someone wanted to try and separate out the concepts of "subjective feeling" and "the self". But as I said, I don't think that makes semantic sense, so I'm not sure how one would go about doing that.

[mistermack]

I think you're talking about the soul. It suffers if you commit a sin. Even if you don't give a toss.

Anyway, it's chord, not cord.

We are chordates. Except for Americans, who are obviously spineless, and can't spel.

Damnit! That's what I had originally, but Hermit made me second guess myself.

The second-guess is the right one. Google for "spinal chord" and see what you get.

Just because Americans can't spell, should we indulge the dumb cutns every time?

It was always chordates, that is animals having a notochord, with a spinal chord.
Then the dumb fuckers over the water decided that it's a bit like a cord, so we'll spell it like that.

The land of dumbing down has spoken, who are we to argue?

[Hermit]

I think you're talking about the soul. It suffers if you commit a sin. Even if you don't give a toss.

Anyway, it's chord, not cord.

We are chordates. Except for Americans, who are obviously spineless, and can't spel.

Damnit! That's what I had originally, but Hermit made me second guess myself.

The second-guess is the right one. Google for "spinal chord" and see what you get.

Just because Americans can't spell, should we indulge the dumb cutns every time?

It was always chordates, that is animals having a notochord, with a spinal chord.
Then the dumb fuckers over the water decided that it's a bit like a cord, so we'll spell it like that.

The land of dumbing down has spoken, who are we to argue?

Feel free to argue with the Oxford English Dictionary:

There are two definitions of chord

1. a group of (typically three or more) notes sounded together, as a basis of harmony

2. a straight line joining the ends of an arc

...

The anatomical term generally uses the spelling cord (as in spinal cord and vocal cord), although chord is an acceptable variant.

Also from the Oxford English Dictionary:

Definition of spinal cord in English:

the cylindrical bundle of nerve fibres and associated tissue which is enclosed in the spine and connects nearly all parts of the body to the brain, with which it forms the central nervous system.

[mistermack]

Feel free to argue with the Oxford English Dictionary

Thanks, I will.

Stop Americanising our language, you spineless cunts.

[JimC]

Feel free to argue with the Oxford English Dictionary

Thanks, I will.

Stop Americanising our language, you spineless cunts.

Which are they lacking, cord or chord?

[MiM]

Yeah I know. The thing is, everyone (well mostly everyone, I suppose) reports that they have subjective experiences. So there is a phenomenon going on there. The fact that no one can explain it, doesn't necessarily discount it. And the fact that it is all self-reporting also doesn't necessarily discount it. So in this thought experiment, you are asked to accept that it could be a reality. And if it was, are we engaging in unethical behaviour when we anethesitise what I'll call our "brain self", but not our "spinal cord self"?

Nope, no way. We have no way to know what that spinal chord would like us to do. It is as likely that it just gets off from sending extreme amounts of pain signals to the brain, as it is that it would experience any pain from that itself. Do you want to risk depriving a spinal chord from its only moment of true bliss .

We cannot take moral responsibility for the possible feelings of entities we cannot read at all and don't even believe have any feelings. That would be utter folly, and would severely hamper our ability to take moral responsibility for what we do to beings we can reasonably understand and expect to give a fuck about what we do to them.

[mistermack]

Which are they lacking, cord or chord?

They're a bunch of chunts.
I'll bet in ten years time, they will be listing perdiction, instead of prediction.

[pErvinalia]

Yeah I know. The thing is, everyone (well mostly everyone, I suppose) reports that they have subjective experiences. So there is a phenomenon going on there. The fact that no one can explain it, doesn't necessarily discount it. And the fact that it is all self-reporting also doesn't necessarily discount it. So in this thought experiment, you are asked to accept that it could be a reality. And if it was, are we engaging in unethical behaviour when we anethesitise what I'll call our "brain self", but not our "spinal cord self"?

Nope, no way. We have no way to know what that spinal chord would like us to do. It is as likely that it just gets off from sending extreme amounts of pain signals to the brain, as it is that it would experience any pain from that itself. Do you want to risk depriving a spinal chord from its only moment of true bliss .

We cannot take moral responsibility for the possible feelings of entities we cannot read at all and don't even believe have any feelings. That would be utter folly, and would severely hamper our ability to take moral responsibility for what we do to beings we can reasonably understand and expect to give a fuck about what we do to them.

But isn't that just the same with other animals? How do we know what sort of pain experiences they have?

[MiM]

Yeah I know. The thing is, everyone (well mostly everyone, I suppose) reports that they have subjective experiences. So there is a phenomenon going on there. The fact that no one can explain it, doesn't necessarily discount it. And the fact that it is all self-reporting also doesn't necessarily discount it. So in this thought experiment, you are asked to accept that it could be a reality. And if it was, are we engaging in unethical behaviour when we anethesitise what I'll call our "brain self", but not our "spinal cord self"?

Nope, no way. We have no way to know what that spinal chord would like us to do. It is as likely that it just gets off from sending extreme amounts of pain signals to the brain, as it is that it would experience any pain from that itself. Do you want to risk depriving a spinal chord from its only moment of true bliss .

We cannot take moral responsibility for the possible feelings of entities we cannot read at all and don't even believe have any feelings. That would be utter folly, and would severely hamper our ability to take moral responsibility for what we do to beings we can reasonably understand and expect to give a fuck about what we do to them.

But isn't that just the same with other animals? How do we know what sort of pain experiences they have?

We can at least make very strong qualified guesses, based on their behaviour.

[pErvinalia]

Basically, anthropomorphising. I guess that could work to an extent with many land mammals (although, it's still only guess work). But what about other animals and insects? How do we find and accept human-like behaviours in a bee?

[pErvinalia]

We are sort of entering the territory of zombies. You'd presumably find the notion that there's existing in the world such a thing as a human philosophical zombie to be absurd. Are you willing to potentially ascribe zombie-hood so easily to something like the spinal cord, particularly given it is composed of the same type of stuff (to a degree) as brains are - i.e. neurons? Although, I admit, it's kind of hard to imagine what a spinal cord is supposed to do to even be considered a zombie (or a "self).

Keep in mind, I'm only really running a bit of a frivolous thought-experiment here. I don't really expect we'll find that the spinal cord is conscious. But it's interesting how we anthropomorphise consciousness. It's not at all surprising, as we seemingly instinctually do it for a lot of things. It's basically the hard problem: what does it take for a "self" and internal phenomena to emerge/occur? And there's simply no answer to that question at the moment.

[Hermit]

what does it take for a "self" ... emerge/occur? And there's simply no answer to that question at the moment.

It's not that hard. A newborn human has no self-awareness, but through sensory experience it soon learns to differentiate between itself and the world out there.

[pErvinalia]

I mean the phenomenology. The feeling of self.