# But, again, what reason do we have to believe that other humans have
interiority if we ignore the…

This is not to say that I don’t believe humans feel pain, but instead, to say
that if *you* believe that humans other than yourself feel…

* * *

But, again, what reason do we have to believe that other humans have
interiority if we ignore the indications of interior life that dogs share with
humans? Humans produce more complex communications, but those communications
are not necessarily better explained by interiority than by mere generative
complexity.

This is not to say that I don’t believe humans feel pain, but instead, to say
that if *you* believe that humans other than yourself feel pain then you
should probably also believe that dogs feel pain, since there is roughly equal
evidence; likewise, with intentionality, we can estimate it by looking at
planning effectiveness. The closer a set of behaviors is to being the ideal
path toward some goal, the more likely it is that those behaviors were planned
by a goal-persuing system. Proving intentionality with a 100% success rate is
not possible, just as proving interiority with a 100% success rate isn’t
possible: a system with strong intentionality that is working off flawed
axioms or flawed data or that is very limited in how many steps it can plan
ahead will be almost indistiguishable from a system that performs behaviors
semi-randomly based on simple rules without memory. But, communication is
neither necessary nor sufficient to prove either interiority or
intentionality: after all, limping and yelping are, effectively, communication
insomuch as they are behaviors that provide information to humans and other
animals about how likely the dog is to be in pain, and yet we can ignore those
signals based on the assumption that all attribution of inner state to non-
human animals is pure anthropomorphism.

By [John Ohno](https://medium.com/@enkiv2) on [November 9,
2015](https://medium.com/p/14858c27d7b5).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@enkiv2/but-again-what-reason-do-we-have-
to-believe-that-other-humans-have-interiority-if-we-ignore-the-14858c27d7b5)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com) on September 18, 2020.