We may be able to tell with great confidence what you’re thinking or feeling but not how it feels to you. There’s a subjective, 1st person experience. Something that it’s like to be you which is different from me. I can’t tell what it’s like to be someone else, or be another animal, or if it means anything to be a rock.
Privacy doesn’t mean that nobody can tell what you’re thinking. It means that you will always be more justified in believing yourself to be conscious than in believing others are conscious. There will always be an asymmetry there.
Replaying neural activity is impressive, but it doesn’t prove the original recorded subject was conscious quite as robustly as my daily subjective experience proves my own consciousness to myself. For example, you could conceivably fabricate an entirely original neural recording of a person who never existed at all.
Plus, privacy of consciousness may just be a technological hurdle.
We may be able to tell with great confidence what you’re thinking or feeling but not how it feels to you. There’s a subjective, 1st person experience. Something that it’s like to be you which is different from me. I can’t tell what it’s like to be someone else, or be another animal, or if it means anything to be a rock.
Privacy doesn’t mean that nobody can tell what you’re thinking. It means that you will always be more justified in believing yourself to be conscious than in believing others are conscious. There will always be an asymmetry there.
Replaying neural activity is impressive, but it doesn’t prove the original recorded subject was conscious quite as robustly as my daily subjective experience proves my own consciousness to myself. For example, you could conceivably fabricate an entirely original neural recording of a person who never existed at all.