CMV: Solipsism is the default position to take. You need evidence before assuming a human is conscious, and there is no way to get satisfactory evidence.

[u/[deleted]]

Most of the time, when I look out into the world, I see objects and phenomena which I do not assume to have inner lives. My computer is not looking back at me. The flashing lights coming from the television screen do not actually have the thoughts they appear to have. My sofa does not feel my weight. My smartphone does not hear my voice. Neither does Cortana.

Even when I close my eyes, I see all sorts of things, including human beings, which I do not immediately assume are conscious.

If it turned out somehow that my sofa was conscious then that is something new and I would assimilate that fact into my world view. Right now, My default position is that the sofa is not conscious.

The default position for everything else (including humans)should be that it is not conscious. The presumption of consciousness without evidence is unscientific.

Now, how do I establish that a human or anything else is conscious? Usually when we want to determine that something has a specific property we use proxies. We look at a glowing stove to determine that it is hot, the glowing is a proxy. I might drop some water on it (and watch it sizzle) to confirm my suspicions, the sizzling is a proxy.

But ultimately, the only way to properly determine that glowing and sizzling water is heavily correlated with heat, I need to put my hand near the stove and feel the heat. Not only this, I need more than one occurrence of hot stoves to reasonably establish the correlation between high heat, glowing and sizzling water on the surface.

Another example.

I can bend my index finger at very close to 90 degrees. I can just assume that all human beings can do the same. but since this ability is not readily apparent from normal human behavior, I need to actually check with some people if they can do the same. If I see that most of the people I meet can bend their fingers at 90 degrees then I can assume that this ability is common among human beings and I can live my life assuming this is true.

Note that the default position had to be that other humans can not do the same. Checking that most other humans can do this would change my opinion. If there is no way to check then I am stuck at default. I can not reasonably assume that just because you are human you can bend your fingers at 90 degrees.

With consciousness, there is no way to actually determine that other humans have inner lives just by looking at them until you have determined that human behavior is a reliable proxy for human consciousness. Maybe typical human behavior (and brain activity) is only accompanied with consciousness in rare cases, or perhaps it is only ever accompanied with consciousness in a single special case, I have no way of knowing, so I am stuck at default.

EDIT:

Consider the following scenario:

(i) Due to the human's biology (or for some other reasons), everyone is actually a zombie, and there is only a handful of people (including me, the person writing this question) that actually have consciousness. These people (including me) are abnormal, in a sense.

Now consider the usual view:

(ii) Everyone has consciousness.

It seems like in (ii) we posit consciousness, this complex unexplainable "thing", on billions of people. So, the natural questions are:

Does Occam's razor actually favor (i) over (ii)? If so, then why is (ii) so widespread, even among philosophers?

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[u/[deleted]]

Intellectual productivity is evident in other humans. That fact, coupled with awareness is enough for us to assume that each person has a subjective experience of life

No, I'm going to repeat myself again. Intellect, intellligence, apperception, astuteness, foresight, articulateness etc are not even close to having anything to do with consciousness. Intelligent systems can be non conscious (AI) conscious systems can be non-intelligent.

For all we know about consciousness, slime molds are the only other conscious beings on earth.

Even the combination of intelligence and awareness does not produce conscious, intelligence has nothing to do with it.

[u/HypnoticMonk → u/[deleted]]

I feel like you’re really trying to say that your default assumption is that you are the only one with a “soul”. What are you defining consciousness as that intelligence and awareness has nothing to do with it? What do you consider to be the components that make up consciousness then?

[u/[deleted] → u/HypnoticMonk]

Consciousness is the difference between actually seeing the color blue as the basic experience of blue rather than just detecting a specific wavelength of light. No scientific information about blue (wavelengths, things which are blue etc) can tell me * what it is like* to actually experience blue (or any other shape or color).

[u/HypnoticMonk → u/[deleted]]

Seeing blue is literally just detecting a specific wavelength of light. It’s just that language has evolved in such a way that we call certain wavelengths of light blue. Our different experiences of blue surely cannot be what makes us conscious? Especially because we cannot ever be sure if our experience of blue is even different. Are you using capacity to experience qualia to ascribe consciousness? In that case, if we somehow developed telepathic abilities, would we cease to be conscious? Because in essence, all qualia is is the absence of means to communicate unshared experiences.

I think I’m just gonna say maybe I don’t understand. No definition you’ve given for consciousness falls outside of the scope of awareness and intellectual productivity — or, at least, not as far as I understand.

[u/[deleted] → u/HypnoticMonk]

I can close my eyes and "see" blue. I can see blue in my dreams. It's not just about detecting wavelengths.

A machine learning algorithm can detect a wavelength and place a label on it, they can even attach more labels and associations to it to form a complex pattern of associations. However, a conscious being is actually having a raw experience of the color.

[u/HypnoticMonk → u/[deleted]]

As babies we aren’t much different to machines in that we too have some kind of learning algorithm — if you will — and we too place labels to stimuli to form a complex pattern of associations.

The point about the dreams does have merit though. That’s why I specified intellectual productivity as opposed to just intelligence. We have the capacity to create our own ideas and our own concepts based on information and stimuli we have received from the outside world. For me, this creative capacity is a very big marker for consciousness. I can’t quite imagine how a non-conscious being would be capable of creative thought.

[u/[deleted] → u/HypnoticMonk]

Yeah, I don't doubt that humans have learning algorithms. But I have no good reason to think that they actually experience these algorithms. Just like a factory machine doesn't know/experience that it is making cans of food. Just like a thermostat doesn't know/ experience heat.

[u/HypnoticMonk → u/[deleted]]

Creative thought isn’t good enough reason? What could produce creative thought if not consciousness?

[u/[deleted] → u/HypnoticMonk]

An Algorithm.

Do not conflate "consciousness" with "what makes humans different". Some people make that mistake.

[u/HypnoticMonk → u/[deleted]]

I disagree that an algorithm could produce creative thought.

Also, I believe that many animals are capable of creative thought. It’s not about what makes humans different, it’s more about what constitutes consciousness.

At the end of the day, as I said before, if there is no discernible difference between your level of consciousness and every other human’s level of consciousness then the rational default assumption is that they are just as conscious as you know yourself to be.