> look like
It "looks like" they have emotions because they have the same conscious experiences and emotions for the same evolutionary reasons as humans, who are their cousins on the tree of life. The reason a lot of "animal cruelty" is not banned is the same as for why slavery was not banned for centuries even though it "looked like" the enslaved classes have the same desires and experiences as other humans—humans can ignore any amount of evidence to continue to feel that they are good people doing good things and bear any amount of cognitive dissonance for their personal comfort. That fact is a lot scarier than any imagined harm that can come out "anthropomorphism".
The best test for consciousness is “can it be turned off” … ie sleep. Mammals, birds, fish sleep, ergo they are conscious.
As opposed to the PhD student, who does not sleep and is not conscious.
> they have the same conscious experiences
You cannot be sure that anyone other than yourself is conscious. It is only basic human empathy that allows people to believe that.
If a person would lack consciousness, they couldn’t possibly know that though?
I always know that I'm me, the soul staring out at the world through my own eyes.
Everybody else? No idea. Maybe they are having the exact same experience as me right now. Maybe they're all golems. Impossible to know. It's something spiritual, something that I just choose to believe in.
I don't find it difficult to believe the same for AIs.
> something that I just choose to believe in.
Specifically, you cannot know another person is conscious in the same way you know a physical fact; rather, you believe in their consciousness through communication, empathy, and shared subjective experience.
Yes.
No idea? Really?
You’re an intelligent mammal, your biological makeup encoded in DNA. So are all other people, who largely share that same DNA. You’re conscious. It’s not a big leap to conclude that so are other people, too.
This kind of solipsistic sophistry is not productive. It might be entertaining if you’re contemplating the underpinnings of epistemology for the first time in your life, but it’s not an honest contribution to the debate.
You might as well claim that you have no idea if gravity will be in effect tomorrow.
> It’s not a big leap to conclude that so are other people, too.
We seem to agree. Not a big leap, but a leap nonetheless.
I think you need to expand what your point is: we know solipsism is a thing. Is it meant as a defense for animal cruelty or...?
It's a defense of the possibility that animals and AI are conscious.
ok! I think that's a logical flaw, solipsism is a floor.
"I can't be certain about anyone else" does not imply "all non-self consciousness claims are equally uncertain". absence of certainty and the absence of evidence and all that.
your "possibility" word is doing a lot of work there I think. you should add "rocks" to your list as well and you'd be equally correct, but we're evaluating the candidates here
Rocks don't have nervous systems.
Why is that a bar suddenly, if we cannot be sure that anyone other than yourself is conscious?
Because it seems illogical, at least to me, to believe that inert objects could be conscious. Brains are as far from inert as can be. Computers are basically magical silicon runes imbued with software, also as far from inert as can be.
Proposed categorization: "definitely not conscious", "maybe conscious" and "definitely conscious". All living things belong in "maybe conscious". Each person is sure that they belong to the "definitely conscious" set, but people cannot prove this to each other. Their empathy causes them to add other people to the "definitely conscious" set. Many choose to add animals to that set too. Some add even inanimate objects to it.
and this is why people do scare me.