Would you update against other humans being conscious at all, if other humans told you they weren’t conscious? If not, that would be fairly surprising to me. If so, that implies you would update towards other humans being conscious if they tell you they are
That is a sufficiently outré scenario that I can justify denying it my attention until it draws itself to my attention by actually happening, which it won’t.
If an individual insisted to me they were not conscious I would guess that either they had something akin to Cotard’s syndrome, or they were a radical behaviourist, denying the existence of all minds, including their own. (Indeed, having a mild form of Cotard’s might make radical behaviourism convincing.) Or they had philosophised themselves into uttering the words without actually believing them. Or they broke their mind with intense meditation practices. That is, there might genuinely be a lack or impairment of consciousness, but it would be specific to them. If they’re not just trolling. Encountering someone who is blind does not update me towards denying the existence of sight. An epidemic of blindness would be a public health emergency, not evidence that sight had never existed.
That is a sufficiently outré scenario that I can justify denying it my attention until it draws itself to my attention by actually happening, which it won’t.
If an individual insisted to me they were not conscious I would guess that either they had something akin to Cotard’s syndrome, or they were a radical behaviourist, denying the existence of all minds, including their own. (Indeed, having a mild form of Cotard’s might make radical behaviourism convincing.) Or they had philosophised themselves into uttering the words without actually believing them. Or they broke their mind with intense meditation practices. That is, there might genuinely be a lack or impairment of consciousness, but it would be specific to them. If they’re not just trolling. Encountering someone who is blind does not update me towards denying the existence of sight. An epidemic of blindness would be a public health emergency, not evidence that sight had never existed.