🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Sep29.155432.17618@guinness.idbsu.edu> holmes@opal.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes) writes:
>In article <1992Sep28.203519.133337@Cookie.secapl.com> frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams) writes:
>>Do you think how it feels has no behavioral consequences?  Would you behave
>>as you do if your blue experiences and your pain experiences were
>>systematically inverted?
>
>My answer to this is "Yes" if you replace "pain" with "red" above; I
>think the answer is still "Yes" to the question as you have posed it,
>but the exchange you propose, unlike the "blue" for "red" exchange, is
>impossible to imagine.  Don't confuse the bare experience of "pain"
>(of various kinds) with the automatic reactions to pain.

Why not?  Convince me that there is a difference.  I can't imagine feeling
pain without the accompanying desire/need to do something about it.  It
seems to me to be the essence of what feeling pain means.

It is easier to imagine the red/blue interchange, because red and blue are
rather similar feelings, and ones don't have nearly as strong behavioral
implications. But I think there are differences in behavior caused by the
differences in the feelings in this case, too.  They're subtle; but pretty
much everyone agrees that red is a "hot" or "active" color, while blue is a
"cool" or "passive" color.  I don't think this is a purely conditioned
response -- babies seem to react the same way.

(BTW, I am *not* assuming that all people have the same feelings in response
to the same stimuli.  Brain structures are similar, but not identical; one
would expect similar but non-identical feelings.  And that is exactly what
happens, as far as we can tell.)