[vidarh]

Well, I am not certain whether it is the case. There is no need to be certain about that to treat other people the same way, because whether or not I believe they have a subjective experience has zero impact on how they react to stimuli.

It does, however, have relevance when we consider whether or not other, non-human, entities can have consciousness: If we can't know what consciousness actually mean with respect to humans, that is a strong argument for not insisting that we know whether or not other entities are conscious.

If we then choose to treat other humans purely on the assumption that they e.g. do feel distress the same way, we ought to consider that we do not what the pre-requisite to reach a level of awareness to feel distress is.

[bonoboTP]

If they have no moral weight, then it wouldn't matter how they react to stimuli. They would be instruments to be used for the only conscious being, the solipsistic self. Maybe sometimes they would present powerful obstacles in the way of the ego person, and require some mouth noises and worse in their direction to align them with only moral weight of the universe, the solipsistic ego. A very ugly philosophy.

[vidarh]

It matters how they react to stimuli because we do not know, and can not know, whether they have consciousness or not, and so the safer assumption is to treat them as if they do.

But if we accept that we also need to consider that we do not know, and can not know whether other entities are conscious or not either.

We can only tell whether they present as if they are.

And we should consider that when deciding how to treat them.

Furthermore we should be cautious about how high we set the bar.