<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On Dec 12, 2009, Gordon Swobe wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Verdana; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I have a choice either to 1) infer that because my brain has consciousness, others also have it, </span></blockquote><br></div><div>Are you telling me that if you'd never had a course in biology and learned the importance of brains you'd think you were the only conscious being in the universe? And you don't think other people are conscious all the time, not when they don't act like they are such as when they are asleep. </div><div><br></div><div><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Verdana; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; ">or 2) consign myself to a dead end solipsistic philosophy in which you and everyone I know have the mental life of vegetables. I choose 1) by reductio ad absurdum.</span></blockquote><br></div><div>Then why isn't it also absurd to think that an intelligent computer has the mental life of a vegetable?</div><div><br></div><div> John K Clark</div><br></body></html>