Yes, I was going to comment in the same way. From the original post:
In the future, if you realized that uploads were not conscious, you might want to change their substrate in order to make them conscious again. Let’s assume you were cryopreserved, and then were uploaded as your revival method.
How would you “realize” such a thing? There is no evidence that you could find that would distinguish between being in a world in which such high-fidelity uploads were conscious and those in which they were not. Did you mean “realize” by some non-rational means, such as religious revelation or something?
Even in that case, I expect that your upload would behave as if it had either received irrefutable evidence that it was actually conscious after all, or that it actually is not an upload and someone is trying to fool it into thinking that it is an upload. If the biological human would have protested that of course I’m conscious, then so would the upload.
If it can be presented with something that does makes it behave as if it is convinced that it is an upload, without losing conviction that uploads are unconscious, then the same would happen for the biological human if you were able to somehow give them the same evidence (e.g. by means of direct sensory nerve control). That’s inherent in it being a perfect behavioural replica.
So you would also have to conclude that a corresponding conscious biological human could likewise be convinced that it is not actually conscious and have them want to download into a biological body. Which is not out of the realm of possibility, but it hardly seems like a universal or even likely sort of thing.
it’s not their observation of their consciousness or lack thereof that changes their mind because p-zombies act the same as if they were not conscious
the difference is that when they look at their brain they see it is made of different material than the non-uploads and think that material doesn’t support consciousness (just like their non-uploads counterpart also believe)
Yes, I was going to comment in the same way. From the original post:
How would you “realize” such a thing? There is no evidence that you could find that would distinguish between being in a world in which such high-fidelity uploads were conscious and those in which they were not. Did you mean “realize” by some non-rational means, such as religious revelation or something?
Even in that case, I expect that your upload would behave as if it had either received irrefutable evidence that it was actually conscious after all, or that it actually is not an upload and someone is trying to fool it into thinking that it is an upload. If the biological human would have protested that of course I’m conscious, then so would the upload.
If it can be presented with something that does makes it behave as if it is convinced that it is an upload, without losing conviction that uploads are unconscious, then the same would happen for the biological human if you were able to somehow give them the same evidence (e.g. by means of direct sensory nerve control). That’s inherent in it being a perfect behavioural replica.
So you would also have to conclude that a corresponding conscious biological human could likewise be convinced that it is not actually conscious and have them want to download into a biological body. Which is not out of the realm of possibility, but it hardly seems like a universal or even likely sort of thing.
it’s not their observation of their consciousness or lack thereof that changes their mind because p-zombies act the same as if they were not conscious
the difference is that when they look at their brain they see it is made of different material than the non-uploads and think that material doesn’t support consciousness (just like their non-uploads counterpart also believe)
Sure, that’s the sort of thing that’s covered by “realize by some non-rational means”.
i see yeah!