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Well, not because of emphasizing, but because of there being a viable mechanism in the human case (reasoning being, one can only know that oneself has qualia, but since those likely arise in the brain, and other humans have similar brains, most likely they have similar qualia). For more reading see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

It is important to note, that neural networks and brains are very different.



That is what I'd call empathizing though. You can 'put yourself in the other person's shoes', because of the expectation that your experiences are somewhat similar (thanks to similarly capable brains).

But we have no idea what qualia actually _are_, seen from the outside, we only know what it feels like to experience them. That, I think, makes it difficult to argue that a 'simulation of having qualia' is fundamentally any different to having them.


Same with a computer. It can't "actually" see what it "is," but you can attach a webcam and microphone and show it itself, and look around the world.

Thus we "are" what we experience, not what we perceive ourselves to "be": what we think of as "the universe" is actually the inside of our actual mind, while what we think of as our physical body is more like a "My Computer" icon with some limited device management.

Note that this existential confusion seems tied to a concept of "being," and mostly goes away when thinking instead in E-Prime: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime




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