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Do you believe it makes sense to even claim that other humans are conscious? If conscious is defined as “to have subjective experiences”, then I don’t believe

Do you believe it makes sense to even claim that other humans are conscious? If conscious is defined as “to have subjective experiences”, then I don’t believe “other people are conscious” is coherent. The argument I hear usually is that other bodies are constructed like my body and I’m conscious therefore they are probably conscious too. But I think this completely misses the point. The issue is the proposition itself. How can that proposition be translated into empirical claims? If the answer is just that other bodies are like my body, then conscious is just a fancy synonym of “is a human being”.

Tenoke 5y ago
>If conscious is defined as “to have subjective experiences”, then I don’t believe “other people are conscious” is coherent. Coherent but about as likely as Last Thusdayism. You have to factor the probability and potential mechanisms of what might give rise to consciousness and if you do you should have a very low probability on other humans not having it, just as you have a low probability on a random human you meet physically not having a brain without having to confirm by looking inside their head.
- burrows 5y ago
  Right, I have a low probability belief that a random human won’t have a brain in their head. But in principle, I could open someone’s skull and look for a brain. How would I examine another human body for consciousness?
  - Tenoke 5y ago
    You can't but that doesn't change the mechanism of arriving at beliefs. You yourself can also never physically check say Plato's skull either but I doubt that deters you from thinking he had a brain.
    - burrows 5y ago
      > You can't but that doesn't change the mechanism of arriving at beliefs. I’m trying to question the coherence of the proposition itself, and not trying to refute an argument in favor of it. > You yourself can also never physically check say Plato's skull either but I doubt that deters you from thinking he had a brain. The Plato’s brain question (PB) confuses me, but here is my attempt at an analysis. First, I think PB is tricky in the same way that all historical propositions are tricky. And I think this trickiness is different than the trickiness around the proposition “other people are conscious”. Second, here is a scenario that I think is like PB. Consider the proposition, “The Great Wall of China exists.” I’ve never been to China, but say you go and tell me that you saw the wall. And in principle I could go see the wall for myself. But now what if the wall is destroyed before I go to see it? Was the proposition that, “The Great Wall of China exists”, coherent before the wall’s demise, but now incoherent? But if you tell me, “I am having subjective experiences”, how can/could I ever in principle examine this for myself, as I could the Great Wall?
      - Tenoke 5y ago
        >I’m trying to question the coherence of the proposition itself, and not trying to refute an argument in favor of it. The point is that just because you can't prove something to yourself it doesn't make the belief incoherent. And you can use your other tools to arrive at likelihoods for said belief. At any rate, there's plenty of things we believe about say quantum mechanics without being able to observe them directly by using theory and observing secondary effects. In theory it's also possible to eventually have an exact definition of what we mean by consciousness, figure out which parts of the brain are relevant in what ways and observe secondary effects and use theory to confirm others have it same as with QM. It's all caused by physical effects and at a higher level than things we already reason about just fine.
        burrows 5y ago
        > The point is that just because you can't prove something to yourself it doesn't make the belief incoherent. If a proposition doesn’t make predictions about my empirical experience then what is it saying? And if a proposition does make such empirical predictions, than it’s effectively just a name for those predictions. That’s essentially the view I’m coming from. > At any rate, there's plenty of things we believe about say quantum mechanics without being able to observe them directly by using theory and observing secondary effects. I don’t know any physics so I can’t comment. Why are propositions about consciousness different from propositions about faeries?

Tenoke 5y ago

>If conscious is defined as “to have subjective experiences”, then I don’t believe “other people are conscious” is coherent. Coherent but about as likely as Last Thusdayism. You have to factor the probability and potential mechanisms of what might give rise to consciousness and if you do you should have a very low probability on other humans not having it, just as you have a low probability on a random human you meet physically not having a brain without having to confirm by looking inside their head.

burrows 5y ago
Right, I have a low probability belief that a random human won’t have a brain in their head. But in principle, I could open someone’s skull and look for a brain. How would I examine another human body for consciousness?
- Tenoke 5y ago
  You can't but that doesn't change the mechanism of arriving at beliefs. You yourself can also never physically check say Plato's skull either but I doubt that deters you from thinking he had a brain.
  - burrows 5y ago
    > You can't but that doesn't change the mechanism of arriving at beliefs. I’m trying to question the coherence of the proposition itself, and not trying to refute an argument in favor of it. > You yourself can also never physically check say Plato's skull either but I doubt that deters you from thinking he had a brain. The Plato’s brain question (PB) confuses me, but here is my attempt at an analysis. First, I think PB is tricky in the same way that all historical propositions are tricky. And I think this trickiness is different than the trickiness around the proposition “other people are conscious”. Second, here is a scenario that I think is like PB. Consider the proposition, “The Great Wall of China exists.” I’ve never been to China, but say you go and tell me that you saw the wall. And in principle I could go see the wall for myself. But now what if the wall is destroyed before I go to see it? Was the proposition that, “The Great Wall of China exists”, coherent before the wall’s demise, but now incoherent? But if you tell me, “I am having subjective experiences”, how can/could I ever in principle examine this for myself, as I could the Great Wall?
    - Tenoke 5y ago
      >I’m trying to question the coherence of the proposition itself, and not trying to refute an argument in favor of it. The point is that just because you can't prove something to yourself it doesn't make the belief incoherent. And you can use your other tools to arrive at likelihoods for said belief. At any rate, there's plenty of things we believe about say quantum mechanics without being able to observe them directly by using theory and observing secondary effects. In theory it's also possible to eventually have an exact definition of what we mean by consciousness, figure out which parts of the brain are relevant in what ways and observe secondary effects and use theory to confirm others have it same as with QM. It's all caused by physical effects and at a higher level than things we already reason about just fine.
      - burrows 5y ago
        > The point is that just because you can't prove something to yourself it doesn't make the belief incoherent. If a proposition doesn’t make predictions about my empirical experience then what is it saying? And if a proposition does make such empirical predictions, than it’s effectively just a name for those predictions. That’s essentially the view I’m coming from. > At any rate, there's plenty of things we believe about say quantum mechanics without being able to observe them directly by using theory and observing secondary effects. I don’t know any physics so I can’t comment. Why are propositions about consciousness different from propositions about faeries?