On Aug 12, 2018, at 2:04 PM, Mathew Jamie Dunbaugh <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Gregg,

I understand that Skinner discovered the natural selection of behavior, that basically reward selects for and reproduces behaviors, and punishment eliminates behaviors. 

The psychological term for well-being and suffering is valence. The pressing question is what are the physical determinants of valence?

Even the smallest single-celled organisms respond to reward and punishment, so how can we say that nervous systems are required for behavioral selection? I suppose the behavior of single-celled organisms can't diversity or vary that much, but they do have aversive and attractive responses to stimuli. 

I can't imagine a more pressing concern for ethics than to solve the mystery of valence. 

The theory that I most agree with is that suffering is a form of attentional capture. One might ask, does the feeling of nausea cause more attentional capture than a warm shower? I don't think so.

Behavioral investment theory talks about how suffering inhibits behavior and pleasure leads to behavioral investment. 

The problem of valence also boils down to the mystery of consciousness. I'm inclined to believe that Jesse Prinz's AIR theory is very close to a theory of consciousness, but I'm not sure if it encompasses all of subjective experience. Prinz argues that qualia is based on attention, and his book The Conscious Brain provides a theory of consciousness based on a theory of attention:

‘AIR’ (‘Attended Intermediate-level Representation’) theory of consciousness. According to this theory, consciousness arises when intermediate-level perceptual representations (representations of the world at a certain stage in the brain’s processing) undergo changes that allow them to become available to working memory. 

Here is a summary of his book The Conscious Brain

https://philosophynow.org/issues/104/The_Conscious_Brain_by_Jesse_J_Prinz

So, I believe that suffering is attentional capture, and this at least relates to the idea of a sort of "behavioral capture" as punishment. The question is, what is the relationship between attention and behavior? Clearly we have unconscious behavior, but I don't agree that we have unconscious suffering. Suffering, in my understanding, doesn't occur unless it occurs in awareness (which is a broad form of attention; and attention is concentrated awareness) 

Suffering is used by evolution to inhibit behavior and it does this by capuring attention. 

A problem here is what do I mean by "capture" of attention? I do mean something like a mosquito buzzing in your ear, and I think a screaming broken leg is just an increased version of that. 

I'm confident that attentional capture at least has a strong relationship to suffering. There's a reason Buddhist call the cessation of suffering "liberation". But I can't explain why it should feel the way it does, and this is perhaps the most important question to solve for ethics. 

Jamie

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