Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How do we know that other H sapiens have the same kind of experiences of existing as you have? Best I can do is that "I know, right?" is a fairly universal reaction, so we know that even if others' qualia are not identical to ours, they are at least isomorphic. Seeing my own phrasing echoed back, I notice an ambiguity: "the same kind" can be either "all the same things" or "it is kinda close". The former is provabl…
> for all you know I might be a P-zombie that's just parroting phrases it once read Right, but as long as the phrases you parrot appear to continue a conversation that I usefully model as produced by (another?) consciousness, I pragmatically (see Peirce) don't care what the actual mechanism that produced them may be. (an analogy: when using computers we almost always care that a protocol is followed, often care that…
But when that's all I care about, I don't ask that question. To me, the question of "consciousness" matters in, and only in, scenarios where the inner world matters, which is why I use that for my definition of "consciousness":
1. If I uploaded my brain, would that be a fork of my consciousness that would survive the death of my physical body? Tautologically only if it's "conscious".
2. Are the AI we make and use suffering a fate worse than the actual slaves in the Caribbean who invented the term "zombie" out of a fear that their masters would force them to keep working after death? Only if they're "conscious", and even then possibly not (suffering is an extra question to be asked once consciousness is determined).
I'd kinda like to get my brain uploaded, but there's no point if it's not a continuation of my consciousness.
I'd like to use a super-smart AI to solve my problems, but not if doing so involves creating minds that exist only for a few seconds before being destroyed.