(January 6, 2019 at 7:05 am)Thoreauvian Wrote:(January 3, 2019 at 8:48 am)bennyboy Wrote: I won't answer the rest of your very long post right now, because I don't want to provide too many distractions to a very simple question: how do you know that any physical system you are studying is conscious at all, without simply declaring it so by fiat? What scientific observations can you make which demonstrate that such a thing as subjective experience exists at all, in any form, in the Universe?
Easy. We observe our conscious states in ourselves first of all. Then people tell us, all the time, what's going on inside their heads. We can even infer them in animals, by proxies. All of these things fall within the realm of scientific observations for certain sciences.
That robots can imitate humans and essentially lie about such states means nothing whatsoever to our evolved abilities.
What is evolutionary purpose of consciousness/subjective experience? Robot-like p-zombie would be just as good at survival
