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I mean, who's to say the humans you communicate with daily are actually conscious? They just appear that way because they look and talk like you, and you believ

I mean, who's to say the humans you communicate with daily are actually conscious? They just appear that way because they look and talk like you, and you believe yourself to be conscious. If a neutral third party observer saw Helen Keller communicating to one of her "handlers" -- Someone with the specialized training to do such communication at all -- They might very well think the handlers are inferring special meaning, because Helen Keller looks like a retarded person that can't originate meaningful thoughts. This obviously has implications upon our treatment of people with disabilities, people of different races/cultures etc.

lambda 8y ago
Helen Keller was able to communicate directly with people without a specific facilitator, eventually by learning to speak, to write, to read braille, to understand sign language by touch, and to lip read by touch. She was best with her first teacher, Anne Sullivan, but she could communicate directly with other people in many ways without facilitation. This definitely does have implication on treatment of people with disabilities; the same kind of pseudoscience was once popular with non-verbal autistic children, called "facilitated communication." However, some fairly basic blinded testing, showing the facilitator one picture and the subject another (possibly the same, possibly different), demonstrated that it was entirely the thoughts of the facilitator being communicated. Many of the facilitators didn't even realize this; they didn't realize they were subconsciously prompting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitated_communication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitated_communication I recommend the PBS documentary "Prisoners of Silence" on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sO9LyXuOQY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sO9LyXuOQY So yes, there are implications, and those implications are that it is important to be thorough in demonstrating that some kind of facilitator in any communication is actually accurately representing communication from the subject, as opposed to themselves.

lambda 8y ago

Helen Keller was able to communicate directly with people without a specific facilitator, eventually by learning to speak, to write, to read braille, to understand sign language by touch, and to lip read by touch. She was best with her first teacher, Anne Sullivan, but she could communicate directly with other people in many ways without facilitation. This definitely does have implication on treatment of people with disabilities; the same kind of pseudoscience was once popular with non-verbal autistic children, called "facilitated communication." However, some fairly basic blinded testing, showing the facilitator one picture and the subject another (possibly the same, possibly different), demonstrated that it was entirely the thoughts of the facilitator being communicated. Many of the facilitators didn't even realize this; they didn't realize they were subconsciously prompting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitated_communication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitated_communication I recommend the PBS documentary "Prisoners of Silence" on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sO9LyXuOQY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sO9LyXuOQY So yes, there are implications, and those implications are that it is important to be thorough in demonstrating that some kind of facilitator in any communication is actually accurately representing communication from the subject, as opposed to themselves.