Yeah, the problem is with the external boundaries and the internal classification of “consciousness”.
I have a first-hand access to my own consciousness. I can assume that other have something similar, because we are biologically similar—but even this kind of reasoning is suspicious, because we already know there are huge difference between people: people in coma are biologically quite similar to people who are awake; there are autists and psychopaths, or people who hallucinate—if there were huge differences in the quality of consciousness, as a result of this, or something else, how would we know it?
And there is the problem with those where we can’t reason by biological similarity: animals, AIs.
Yeah, the problem is with the external boundaries and the internal classification of “consciousness”.
I have a first-hand access to my own consciousness. I can assume that other have something similar, because we are biologically similar—but even this kind of reasoning is suspicious, because we already know there are huge difference between people: people in coma are biologically quite similar to people who are awake; there are autists and psychopaths, or people who hallucinate—if there were huge differences in the quality of consciousness, as a result of this, or something else, how would we know it?
And there is the problem with those where we can’t reason by biological similarity: animals, AIs.