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,
But the idea that something cannot be learned through physical experiment, demands a lot of serious evidence, to say the least.
It is the idea that you can learn aout the inward or 1st person by purely outward or 3rd person means that is contentious.
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.
No, I am saying that my first person is me, and your first person is you. SO my first person information is my experience, not someone else's report of their experience.
Of course, the choice is quite arbitrary here. I don't see any confusion coming from it.
Well, you said that the two R words mean the same hting , when by established usage, they don't That looks like a source of confusion to me.
Not at all. That there is a difference betewen belief and knowledge is very standard.
I assure you that none of the beliefs I state here were generated by flipping a coin. They are all to some extent justified. That's why the question is weird - did you expect me to answer "no"?
There's an extensive literature of arguments to the contrary
There is extensive literature of arguments in favor of god or homeopathy. Doesn't make those things real. Obviously, I was referring to a lack of arguments I'd find compelling. It should also be obvious that...
(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!