<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">Taking off from your idea that you cannot verify the consciousness of others:</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">Then you cannot also verify:  emotions, thinking (conscious or unconscious), any kind of mental state, whether hidden or possibly the basis of some external behaviors.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">So, theoretically, you are a solipsist.  </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">But to get along in the world, mustn't you as 'as if' these other people are experiencing similar things to what you experience when they act in certain ways in certain situations?</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">In other words you are functionally a person who believes that the model you have of your own interior experiences and external actions is similar to that of the rest of the world.  </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">Of course, you cannot even verify that your own model is accurate, since self-deception is rampant in everyone, but you must act as if it is.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">I think this makes you no different from anyone else.<br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">bill w</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div></div>