at this stage, you've just assumed the conclusion. you've just assumed what you want to prove.

No - what I'm pointing out is that the question "what are the ethical implications for turing machines" is the same question as "what are the ethical implications for human beings" in that case.

It's not my job to refute the proposition. Currently, as far as I can tell, the question is open.

Not on Less Wrong, it isn't. But I think I may have misunderstood your situation as being one of somebody coming to Less Wrong to learn about rationality of the "Extreme Bayesian" variety; if you just dropped in here to debate the consciousness question, you probably won't find the experience much fun. ;-)

I did refute it, then my (and several other people's) conjecture would be proven. But if I don't refute it, that doesn't mean your proposition is true, it just means that it hasn't yet been proven false. Those are quite different things, you know.

Less Wrong has different -- and far stricter -- rules of evidence than just about any other venue for such a discussion.

In particular, to meaningfully partake in this discussion, the minimum requirement is to understand the Mind Projection Fallacy at an intuitive level, or else you'll just be arguing about your own intuitions... and everybody will just tune you out.

Without that understanding, you're in exactly the same place as a creationist wandering into an evolutionary biology forum, without understanding what "theory" and "evidence" mean, and expecting everyone to disprove creationism without making you read any introductory material on the subject.

In this case, the introductory material is the Sequences -- especially the ones that debunk supernaturalism, zombies, definitional arguments, and the mind projection fallacy.

When you've absorbed those concepts, you'll understand why the things you're saying are open questions are not even real questions to begin with, let alone propositions to be proved or disproved! (They're actually on a par with creationists' notions of "missing links" -- a confusion about language and categories, rather than an argument about reality.)

I only replied to you because I though perhaps you had read the Sequences (or some portion thereof) and had overlooked their application in this context (something many people do for a while until it clicks that, oh yeah, rationality applies to everything).

So, at this point I'll bow out, as there is little to be gained by discussing something when we can't even be sure we agree on the proper usage of words.