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But that's where we end up at Dennett's zimboes (or even the Systems reply to the Chinese room, if you wanna go there :) ) - if they are completely indistinguis

But that's where we end up at Dennett's zimboes (or even the Systems reply to the Chinese room, if you wanna go there :) ) - if they are completely indistinguishable, isn't our postulate "they don't have consciousness" completely meaningless and the conclusion simply begging the question?

mcguire 8y ago
The fundamental problem is that I know I'm conscious because I feel conscious, but I have, by definition, no way of being sure you are conscious.
- mannykannot 8y ago
  That line of thinking is essentially just solipsism. The only way to move on in knowing anything about the world is to make the methodological assumption that solipsism is false, without demanding proof. Faced with a computer program giving every appearance of self-aware consciousness, a neuroscientist can reasonably make the methodological assumption known as Occam's Razor to assume it is not somehow faking it until there is some evidence that it is. Note that the claim that it might somehow be faking it is not even a well-formed scientific hypothesis, and Chalmers offers no insight into how such a hypothesis might be formed.