[taberiand]

I apply the same logic in all cases (as much as any fallible person can), which in your example leads me to assume just as confidently that of course other people have subjective experiences and obviously exist separate to my self. It's the logical conclusion using the same reasoning behind believing the after-life does not exist.

I believe consciousness is an emergent property of the of the brain and body, and the associated connections and (physical/chemical/electrical/etc) interactions

In that context, subjective experiences exist just as much as anything else does, obeying all the laws of physics.

I don't understand why people think the problem is hard, except for hoping and wishing that it is?

[bumby]

It’s usually not considered hard only by those who don’t recognize the difference between the hard and soft problem of consciousness. (And of course, those people exist)

Can you prove to me, an external observer, that you have subjective experience? Can you prove the “redness” you see?[1] You really can’t, and that’s why the problem is hard. You can show brain scans, you can explain the interaction of wavelength on the eye etc. but that describes objective, not subjective, experience. So by your previous logic, your subjective experience does not exist because it’s not provable. Or, more relevant to HN, can you pinpoint when adding those systems to a computer suddenly makes subjective experience emerges in the machine?

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_argument

[taberiand]

Subjective experience is measurable and provable:

I have something that is defined as "subjective experience". That subjective experience exists - as a physical, measurable, system; an emergent phenomenon of the composition and interaction of my brain, body and associated inputs - and it stands to reason that everyone else with the same comparable physical existence also has the same kind of subjective experience.

I think the issues that you describe are only problems of definition and categorisation. It seems me you're basically saying subjective experience is defined as "something impossible to prove" which yeah if you want it that way sure, it's impossible.

[bumby]

I’m not saying subjective experience is by definition that which is unprovable. I’m saying there is a different type of information that may be outside the measure ability of scientific methods. I’m saying there is a different experience being had by a conscious being seeing the redness of something vs something inanimate processing the information of red light.

From the link above, despite Mary knowing everything objective there is to know about color,

“The central question of the thought experiment is whether Mary will gain new knowledge when she goes outside the colorless world and experiences seeing in color.”

By your statement above, it sounds like you define consciousness as a level of information processing. So do you think anything that processes information is conscious? Or is there a tipping point where consciousness emerges? If so, how do you measure when a plant or animal or machine crosses that threshold? That is, how do you measure qualia? You claim that conscious experience is a measurable phenomenon but that makes me think you don’t recognize the distinction between the easy and hard problem of consciousness. You actually describe the hard problem in terms if the definition of the easy problem. (Which is fine, and plenty of people have that view, but it’s a different point than seems debated here and it’s imperative to not conflate the two. You might as well just say there is no hard problem)