Comment by xelxebar

I believe you completely miss the point.

The interesting observation is this: when we judge something to have subjective experience, we are invoking moral intuitions. There is no objective measure we can perform (yet?), and it's not even clear whether such a measure makes sense. You may disagree, but this is still a central debate in serious discussion on "hard" consciousness.

I would say that your entire argument just begs the question by implicitly assuming consciousness to have real, independent existence. Does elan vital (the substance that provides the motive force of life) have mass? You're saying that this is a theorem; the article questions the entire premise.

> The cogito argument is about thinking, not qualia.

Bizzare. "If it rains, the car will get wet." Is this a statement, as you say, about rain? Descarte tries to prove the existence of his God and states an axiom. The atecedent "I think" seems to be about thinking, whatever that may mean, and "I am" makes an existential claim based on subjective experience... or something. Who knows why Descarte believed cogito ergo sum to be solid starting ground.

IMHO, your rebuttal here reads as little more than a complaint that something disagrees with your personal assumptions about the world.

You clearly got me riled up just as much as you did against OP, so thanks for the elan vital!