(March 2, 2018 at 11:19 am)robvalue Wrote: I find it rather ironic that the only thing any of us could ever know for sure, that we're having an experience, is the one thing we can never ever demonstrate to anyone else. That makes me suspicious of the whole thing.
The fact we are unable to demonstrate it to anyone else doesn't mean that conscious beings don't have first hand proof that they're conscious though. You have no more reason to be suspicious of your own consciousness than you have reason to be suspicious that a square has 4 sides. The fact other people could, possibly, be zombies... doesn't make you not know that you aren't one.
The fact of a conscious being's first hand evidence of its consciousness is stronger than the evidence for evolution or anything else from science. In fact, like I say, it's absolutely proven. The fact that someone is aware of themselves asking the question means they already know the answer.
If we seem to ourselves to be conscious, we are conscious.
And don't forget that the entirety of science studies each of our conscious experience of reality, and not reality itself. We know that we have evidence of the world we experience, and we don't know that we have evidence and facts about the world that we don't experience. We don't even know that there is a world that we don't experience. Although the idea of there being no existence outside of our own consciousness is indeed absurd.... just like the idea that we ourselves are conscious but everyone else is zombies is absurd.
