Seeing red

[bennyboy]

No, you -don't- have to, but this is precisely what you do when you make the claim that your pov subsumes my own.   You are claiming explanations -for idealism- that you have declared to be -insufficient-.   Do you see what that does to your position?  Do you see the incoherency and inconsistency in this?  

"This stuff is insufficient to explain "x", and idealism works just like it."

Well, do you accept experiences as intrinstically "known" or not? I do. I think therefore I am, and all that, right?

It doesn't matter whether or not they do or they don't represent a fundamental truth.  I could be a brain in a vat, things may not be as they seem.  How many times do I have to keep saying this?  In the context of the question I've asked you it's entirely irrellevant from the outset.  I seem to be conscious, the android seems to be conscious.

If seeming to be conscious is being conscious, then androids are conscious. That's not how I define things.

 There is no dilemma presented to you by an android in the future that is not present for you here, in the present, with me.  The rest of the similarities we share..the fingers eyes and toes...the brain..you tell me that this is -not- the mind..you keep insisting that this be so.  Well, then it can't be used to disqualify the android...or rule me in.  Understand?

I've never told you androids don't have mind. I've told you that I wouldn't find their physical mannerisms sufficient for me to put them under the umbrella of my pragmatic assumption that "If it seems sufficiently like me, I'll accept that it thinks like me."

I can't hope to sway you to materialism until we get some resolution on why I can't convince you of a standard logical fallacy, well described well defined and well demonstrated, and I don't care to until such time as we get that resolution.  I think the area here were we can agree without either of us budging an inch on that count..and where you are inconsistent -to your own stated view and process- ..and regardless of that views truth, is in with-holding in the case of the android what you grant in my own, or vv.

I'm not inconsistent. I have experiences, and form views from them. Insofar as my views represent my experiences, they are all known. Insofar as my views attempt to lay a philosophical framework for those experiences, I'm agnostic and must speculate. Therefore, I stop at the experiences themselves as the basis of my reality, with the underlying "reality" being unknown.

Your comments earlier, regarding a pragmatic assumption and meaning fail to hold an ounce of water, here.  The assumption of an androids consciousness is no more or less pragamatic, and no more or less meaningful...than the same pragmatic assumption, for the same reasons, in my own case..here in the present.  This dilemma doesn't await you on on some distant horizon, it's staring you in the digital face and having a conversation about dilemmas with you...right now, right here.

If my life was filled with androids, and I was raised by an android, and there were android freedom fighters and issues about android rights, etc. I might have to decide to extend that umbrella. However, none of that says anything about whether androids think or just seem to, or whether I should make two ADDITIONAL assumptions-- i.e. that the universe is not only material, but exclusively so?