How do you "prove" that other people are conscious?
This isn't a gotcha question: to me they're both obviously true. The question is what kind of evidence do you require, and why do people require different evidence for people vs other animals.
> How do you "prove" that other people are conscious?
For sentience scientists mainly look at behavioral cues:
> For example, "if a dog with an injured paw whimpers, licks the wound, limps, lowers pressure on the paw while walking, learns to avoid the place where the injury happened and seeks out analgesics when offered, we have reasonable grounds to assume that the dog is indeed experiencing something unpleasant." Avoiding painful stimuli unless the reward is significant can also provide evidence that pain avoidance is not merely an unconscious reflex (similarly to how humans "can choose to press a hot door handle to escape a burning building").
Exactly. All of that is reasonable and the behavior described are obviously present as anyone who's ever had a dog would tell. So I don't understand why "are animals conscious" is being debated at this point.
I’m not saying that this is the case, but all the mentioned behaviors are only indicators and could also be reflexive actions which the dog is genetically programmed to do because they work. If a beetle is flipped, it also has a “program” to get upright again, but that doesn’t mean it’s aware of its situation and is actively deciding something. I’m pretty sure dogs are conscious, but you can’t really tell from the outside. LLMs also appear to reason and make arguments but I wouldn’t call them conscious.
You’re right, you also can’t tell for other people. You can make an assumption because they are very similar to you and you yourself appear to be conscious to yourself. But you can’t really disprove solipsism as far as I know.
This isn't a gotcha question: to me they're both obviously true. The question is what kind of evidence do you require, and why do people require different evidence for people vs other animals.