Why do you not think that?
I could say that a roomba is a mere machine, but you would probably object that this is just saying it is not conscious. Another way to describe this, in this particular context, is that the the roomba's actions do not constitute a coherent whole, and "perception" is a single coherent activity, and therefore conscious.
As I said, I'm not playing your game anyway, and I feel no obligation to describe what I think in your words rather than mine, especially since you know quite well what I am talking about here, even if you pretend to fail to understand.
More specifically I want to know, of all the feelings that you are capable of, how do you recognize that the feeling that follows stubbing your toe is the one that is pain?
By recognizing that it is similar to the other feelings that I have called pain. It absolutely is not by verbally describing how it feels or anything else, even if I can do so if I wish. That is true of all words: when we recognize that something is a chair or a lamp, we simply immediately note that the thing is similar to other things that we have called chairs or lamps. We do not need to come up with some verbal description, and especially some third person description, as you were fishing for there, in order to see that the thing falls into its category.
I'm sweating right now, and I don't think that's very similar to pain. Of course, getting burned causes pain.
It is not just that getting burned causes pain, but intense pain also feels similar to intense heat. Sweating is not an intense case of anything, so there wouldn't be much similarity.
Also, hurting yourself can produce swelling, which does feel warm, so that's another way to explain your association.
I am talking about how it feels at the time, not afterwards. And the "association" does not need to be explained by anything except how it feels at the time, not by any third person description like "this swelled up afterwards."
but you would probably object that this is just saying it is not conscious
I would also object by saying that a human is also a "mere machine".
the the roomba's actions do not constitute a coherent whole
I have no idea what "coherent whole" means. Is roomba incoherent is some way?
you know quite well what I am talking about here
At times I honestly don't.
By recognizing that it is similar to the other feelings that I have called pain.
Ok, but that just pushes the problem one step back. There are various feelings similar to stubb...
(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!