Whether or not the uploads are non-conscious, nobody can know that they’re not conscious. The biological beings can’t, because the uploads acts perfect as if they are conscious. The uploads can’t know either, because they have no first person experience to “know” anything at all, but instead behave as if they were conscious. This hypothetical fact about the world does not present itself to anyone inside that world.
So I think “now we’ve got a great idea what plays a causal role in consciousness” is false, and nothing helps the inhabitants of this hypothetical world isolate anything about it.
Some people were arguing that uploaded minds (or any digital minds) wouldn’t be conscious, but rather philosophical zombies—that is a mind that acts exactly as if it was conscious without actually being conscious.
How are these people who think this assessing whether or not the digital minds are conscious or not? That was my point. If they have a very strong argument (which wasn’t presented) or evidence that digital minds are not conscious, out of that comes the delta, right? If there is no delta, we have as much reason and evidence for the digital mind being conscious as we do for the biological one.
Whether or not the uploads are non-conscious, nobody can know that they’re not conscious. The biological beings can’t, because the uploads acts perfect as if they are conscious. The uploads can’t know either, because they have no first person experience to “know” anything at all, but instead behave as if they were conscious. This hypothetical fact about the world does not present itself to anyone inside that world.
So I think “now we’ve got a great idea what plays a causal role in consciousness” is false, and nothing helps the inhabitants of this hypothetical world isolate anything about it.
I was responding directly to this:
How are these people who think this assessing whether or not the digital minds are conscious or not? That was my point. If they have a very strong argument (which wasn’t presented) or evidence that digital minds are not conscious, out of that comes the delta, right? If there is no delta, we have as much reason and evidence for the digital mind being conscious as we do for the biological one.