Doing so does not buy you maximum precision in absolute terms
What sort of precision are you talking about? More generally, you're repeatedly said that the concept of consciousness is very useful. I don't think I've seen that usefulness. I suspect that elaborating here is your best bet to convince me of anything. Although even if you did convince me of the usefulness of the term, that wouldn't help the "robot pain" problem much.
You may believe that, but do you know it?
That's a slightly weird question. Is it somehow different from "why do you believe that" ? I believe it thanks to some rudimentary understanding of how brains and sensory organs work, and a lack of arguments to the contrary. It's very likely that "zapping" isn't quite sufficient, depending on how generously you interpret that word. But the idea that something cannot be learned through physical experiment, demands a lot of serious evidence, to say the least.
I'm not taking 1st person to mean 3rd person reports of 1st person experience.
If I can parse you correctly, you seem to be saying that a thought or memory is more true, in some sense, while stored in the brain, then if written down on paper. Obviously, paper is slower and less accurate. But you seem to be implying a more fundamental difference between those two methods of data storage. Why is that?
A realisation of type X has type X, a representation of type X has type "representation".
I like type theory. Let X be what I'm sitting on. Type of X is "chair", type of "chair" is "category", a painting of X is a representation of X, it is not a representation of "chair". Representations of "chair", in the same sense that painting represents X might not exist. Somehow I'm quite comfortable saying that an object of type Y is what represents Y. "Instantiates" might be the best word (curiously though, google uses "represent" to define it). Of course, the choice is quite arbitrary here. I don't see any confusion coming from it.
More generally, you're repeatedly said that the concept of consciousness is very useful
I have said that actual experience is useful to pin down the meaning s of words referring to exerpeince.
You may believe that, but do you know it?
That's a slightly weird question#
Not at all. That there is a difference betewen belief and knowledge is very standard.
I believe it thanks to some rudimentary understanding of how brains and sensory organs work, and a lack of arguments to the contrary.
There's an extensive literature of arguments to the contrary,
...
(This post grew out of an old conversation with Wei Dai.)
Imagine a person sitting in a room, communicating with the outside world through a terminal. Further imagine that the person knows some secret fact (e.g. that the Moon landings were a hoax), but is absolutely committed to never revealing their knowledge of it in any way.
Can you, by observing the input-output behavior of the system, distinguish it from a person who doesn't know the secret, or knows some other secret instead?
Clearly the only reasonable answer is "no, not in general".
Now imagine a person in the same situation, claiming to possess some mental skill that's hard for you to verify (e.g. visualizing four-dimensional objects in their mind's eye). Can you, by observing the input-output behavior, distinguish it from someone who is lying about having the skill, but has a good grasp of four-dimensional math otherwise?
Again, clearly, the only reasonable answer is "not in general".
Now imagine a sealed box that behaves exactly like a human, dutifully saying things like "I'm conscious", "I experience red" and so on. Moreover, you know from trustworthy sources that the box was built by scanning a human brain, and then optimizing the resulting program to use less CPU and memory (preserving the same input-output behavior). Would you be willing to trust that the box is in fact conscious, and has the same internal experiences as the human brain it was created from?
A philosopher believing in computationalism would emphatically say yes. But considering the examples above, I would say I'm not sure! Not at all!