The point is, how can you tell if a being is conciousness. We can start with the idea that we think these models aren't (I think they aren't!) A lot of your arg

The point is, how can you tell if a being is conciousness. We can start with the idea that we think these models aren't (I think they aren't!) A lot of your arguments seem to be based in asking questions of the being, whether it can experience things. But seeing as we can't read minds, we can't tell whether it actually believes or experiences what it is saying. So we have (had) to trust that a creature capable of explaining such things is concious. Now we can't do that, hence the dividing line that we feel must exist now moves into some unobservable territory. I'm not commenting on whether such a line exists, just that it's kinda hard to test right now, so any argument about it has to go into hypotheticals and philosophy