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Vladimir_Nesov comments on Nature: Red, in Truth and Qualia - Less Wrong
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I had read that, but it didn't "click" with me, probably because I had never programed in Lisp before. I'm guessing the OS handle analogy would make more intuitive sense to the typical programmer.
BTW, in this line of thinking, there's nothing really special or mysterious about consciousness. It's just a mind or a part of a mind with verbal abilities. But that seems to rule out the approach of defining pain (as a moral disvalue) as negative reinforcement experienced by a conscious mind. If consciousness is just possession of verbal abilities, there seems no reason to assign special moral status to it. But then what is pain, and what is morally bad about it?
I don't understand the transition of this conversation to consciousness, or what motivates the particular "verbal abilities" reference you've made. What do you mean by "in this line of thinking"? (I didn't really follow the posts.)
(With consciousness, I too prefer Drescher's unpacking, where the word refers to observation of the process of thinking (which is part of the thinking and can in turn be observed).)
I was referring to orthonormal's unpacking of consciousness. (If people comment under posts that they have not read, could they please say so right away, instead of waiting until confusion arises? Sorry, but I'm a bit frustrated that both you and my other correspondent in this thread didn't read the posts and failed to say so earlier.)
Unfortunately, that also does not seem to help with understanding pain as a moral disvalue, since it's unclear why we should assign special moral status to minds that can observe their own thinking.
My previous comment didn't depend on knowledge of the post, while this one probably did, and that is where I noted that I didn't follow the post.