[matt-attack]

I actually think it’s questionable if a new born infant is conscious. I think it takes years of sensory input and possibly even language development to establish real consciousness. Of course it’s entirely impossible to determine if any organism other than yourself of conscious. I might be acting like I am, but truly you have no idea if I’m actually having a subjective experience.

Other interesting thought experiment: if you developed as a baby with the complete absence of senses. No sight, touch, smell, etc. would you ever develop consciousness? I suspect not. I believe our inner subjectivity is inexorably tied to our senses.

[nh23423fefe]

This is just a no true scotsman mixed with p-zombies. Not really compelling. Babies are obviously conscious.

[xboxnolifes]

This is just deflection followed by a statement without evidence.

[nh23423fefe]

checkmate

[matt-attack]

How is that obvious? There is literally no known objective method to ascertain if another organism is conscious.

[nh23423fefe]

Sure, you can claim without evidence that babies are not aware of their surroundings. And I can point at all the babies in the world which interact with their environment meaningfully. This is what is meant by obvious. You will say this is not "objective". A demand I don't find meaningful or persuasive.

You posit again without evidence that sensory input and language development create "real consciousness" which you haven't bothered to differentiate from pre-"real consciousness". This self-refuting argument demands an unaware newborn become aware by the mechanism you like, interacting with the world. Whereas I believe they are conscious by construction.

I would refute this by saying the baby was always conscious and simply learned some new behavior. This devolves into a ship of Theseus argument about whether a fetus is conscious or whether an embrybo or zygote is conscious. You have created a fake boundary you can't identify and put newborns on one side of the boundary.

I've already said what I think about p-zombies. They are an incoherent impossibility. I could use your same argument and say that even adults aren't really conscious. They are simply lying zombies reporting subjective states that don't exist. What is gained by claiming babies are zombies until the day they aren't.