Consciousness Trilemma

[The Grand Nudger]

But here's my question for you-- how do you not ride this same view right down to solipsism or even further?

Well, there's not much sense in riding down to solipsism, as you put it..since that particular nut has to be set aside to begin with, to refer to whether or not mental states map - to a brain, and objectively so. 

NO category of subjective mental function can be mapped onto material reality; that's why we can't determine whether any given physical system allows for consciousness (defined as the awareness of qualia, say) to exist, and why I've said in the past that the study of mind (again, defined as the subjective experience of sensations and ideas) is outside the reach of science (if it is science being honestly and properly done).

They simply don't need to refer to subjective mental function..so, regardless of whether or not it exists, it's moot point from that angle.  No, they wouldn't be studying whatever you think mind is...but.......

I've said that you can study brain function and behaviors, but NOT mind, which cannot be shown even to exist.

Mind -is- behavior, from this pov.  Both the behavior of the system, and the behavior of the creature /w the system.  

My problem with you and Dennet and others isn't that you go too far, but not far enough.  You, for example, have consistently insisted on the existence of other-mind, even under the definition of mind as the subjective experience of sensation and ideas (later, we started using the word qualia), despite our obvious inability to locate subjective agency in an objective Universe.  

I assume you have a mind because you act like one.  Behavior.  Regardless of what that mind is made of, that's how you act.  If you don't have one, or if there is no mind...you still act that way and I'd still need to have some explanation for that.  

My unwillingness to do so has been largely responsible for my identifying as "agnostic" and why I've also mentioned "truth-in-context" so often.  In the context of a universe in which others can actually experience pain, it is true for me that harming others for fun is wrong.

Sure is, but that's a hell of an aside, lol.

In the context of a universe in which others are not accepted as anything more that philosophical zombies, then the term "harm" has no real meaning that matters morally, and I can eat babies for breakfast with a clean conscience.

OFC harm still has meaning.  The same meaning.  We talk about harming ecosystems, harming the planet, harming this that or the other not-even-a-p-zombie thing.  

Lay all of that aside though.  Let's suppose that it's not wrong to harm others for fun because harm has no meaning in a universe where em is true.  So what?  It would still be true. Similarly, regardless of whether or not we lived in a universe where there was no clean cut moral answer to the question of eating babies...you'd probably still feel bad about it. The moral angle just isn't relevant with regards to the truth of any theory of mind. Even an evil creatures immoral mind would still need to be explained. To a functional theory, the moral status of the mind or it's actions make no difference.