SforSingularity comments on Why the beliefs/values dichotomy? - Less Wrong
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Comments (153)
Actually, I think I would. I think that pretty much all nonhuman animals would also don't really have the belief/value distinction.
I think that having a belief/values distinction requires being at least as sophisticated as a human. There are cases where a human sets a particular goal and then does things that are unpleasant in the short term (like working hard and not wasting all day commenting on blogs) in order to obtain a long-term valuable thing.
Dogs value food, warmth and sex. They believe it is night outside. Much the same as humans, IOW.
In that case, why exactly do you think humans do have such a distinction?
It's not enough to feel introspectively that the two are separate - we have lots of intuitive, introspective, objectively wrong feelings and perceptions.
(Isn't there another bunch of comments dealing with this? I'll go look...)
How do you define the relevant 'sophistication'? The ways in which one mind is "better" or smarter than another don't have a common ordering. There are ways in which human minds are less "sophisticated" than other minds - for instance, software programs are much better than me at memory, data organization and calculations.