Editing Consciousness (section)

===Problem of other minds===
{{Main|Problem of other minds}}

Many philosophers consider experience to be the essence of consciousness, and believe that experience can only fully be known from the inside, subjectively. The [[problem of other minds]] is a philosophical problem traditionally stated as the following [[Epistemology|epistemological]] question: Given that I can only observe the behavior of others, how can I know that others have minds?<ref>{{cite web|last=Hyslop|first=Alec|date=14 January 2014|editor1-last=Zalta|editor1-first=Edward N.|editor2-last=Nodelman|editor2-first=Uri|title=Other minds|url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/other-minds/|access-date=May 26, 2015|website=[[Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]]|publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University|issn=1095-5054}}</ref> The problem of other minds is particularly acute for people who believe in the possibility of [[philosophical zombie]]s, that is, people who think it is possible in principle to have an entity that is physically indistinguishable from a human being and behaves like a human being in every way but nevertheless lacks consciousness.<ref>{{cite web|author=Robert Kirk|title=Zombies|publisher=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2009 Edition)|editor=Edward N. Zalta|url=http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2009/entries/zombies|access-date=2011-10-25|archive-date=2013-12-02|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131202074345/http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2009/entries/zombies/|url-status=live}}</ref> Related issues have also been studied extensively by Greg Littmann of the University of Illinois,<ref name="Ridley Scott pp. 133-144">''The Culture and Philosophy of Ridley Scott'', Greg Littmann, pp. 133–144, Lexington Books (2013).</ref> and by Colin Allen (a professor at the University of Pittsburgh) regarding the literature and research studying [[artificial intelligence]] in androids.<ref name="Machine Morals 2010">''Moral Machines'', Wendell Wallach and Colin Allen, 288 pages, Oxford University Press, USA (June 3, 2010), {{ISBN|0-19-973797-5}}.</ref>

The most commonly given answer is that we attribute consciousness to other people because we see that they resemble us in appearance and behavior; we reason that if they look like us and act like us, they must be like us in other ways, including having experiences of the sort that we do.<ref name=HyslopAnalogy/> There are, however, a variety of problems with that explanation. For one thing, it seems to violate the [[Occam's razor|principle of parsimony]], by postulating an invisible entity that is not necessary to explain what we observe.<ref name=HyslopAnalogy>{{cite book|author=Alec Hyslop|chapter=The analogical inference to other minds|title=Other Minds|year=1995|publisher=Springer|isbn=978-0-7923-3245-9|pages=41–70}}</ref> Some philosophers, such as Daniel Dennett in a research paper titled "The Unimagined Preposterousness of Zombies", argue that people who give this explanation do not really understand what they are saying.<ref>{{cite journal|author=Daniel Dennett|title=The unimagined preposterousness of zombies|journal=Journal of Consciousness Studies|volume=2|year=1995|pages=322–325|author-link=Daniel Dennett}}</ref> More broadly, philosophers who do not accept the possibility of zombies generally believe that consciousness is reflected in behavior (including verbal behavior), and that we attribute consciousness on the basis of behavior. A more straightforward way of saying this is that we attribute experiences to people because of what they can ''do'', including the fact that they can tell us about their experiences.<ref>{{cite journal|author=Stevan Harnad|title=Why and how we are not zombies|journal=Journal of Consciousness Studies|year=1995|volume=1|pages=164–167|author-link=Stevan Harnad}}</ref>