Anyway, if someone claimed to create such a machine I would, in fact, very much doubt that it actually creates the same experience simply because no human brain is quite physically the same, so it will interact differently with the machine. That's true even if experience is entirely physical.
> The only realistic way we either build that device or prove that it can't be built is science.
There's another possibility: the device remains in the realm of hazy infeasibility forever, where no one succeeds convincingly but we also never articulate why it's impossible. I think this is more likely. Certainly the engineering would be extremely difficult.
Any candidate device will face the usual objections about the relationship between experience and its physical correlates, plus the one I mentioned above about physical differences between brains, and probably a dozen more depending on the details. You'll be able to choose to believe it proves consciousness is physical, or not, but you can already choose that today with equally strong evidence. It's like a binary Rorschach test for your assumptions about metaphysics.
If we understood conscious experience well enough to capture and replay it so closely that the person who had the experience could verify it, then almost no one would care about the hard problem.
Sure, there'd be a speck of doubt. But if the removal of all doubt is required to solve a problem then no problem is soluble.
> There's another possibility: the device remains in the realm of hazy infeasibility forever, where no one succeeds convincingly but we also never articulate why it's impossible. I think this is more likely. Certainly the engineering would be extremely difficult.
That's where we are now. And we should just admit it, instead of claiming that "consciousness is inherently subjective" or whatever.
> Any candidate device will face the usual objections about the relationship between experience and its physical correlates, plus the one I mentioned above about physical differences between brains, and probably a dozen more depending on the details. You'll be able to choose to believe it proves consciousness is physical, or not, but you can already choose that today with equally strong evidence. It's like a binary Rorschach test for your assumptions about metaphysics.
What equally strong evidence exists today? Comparing it to a rorschach is absurd. I worry your view amounts to epistemological nihilism. The vast majority of peope would admit that we had a thorough understanding of consciousness if we could record and replay it, two things we certainly can't do today.