> It's not valid, you're correct. But I don't believe other human
> beings have minds on logical grounds anyway.
>
> If I built a "brain" out of trained donkeys and pulleys that
> performed all the operations of a brain, which if a brain is just a
> series of physical objects performing operations should be possible,
> it would seem... odd to say that the complex of trained donkeys and
> pulleys had a mind.
A lot of odd things are true, but as you say, we don't ascribe subjectivity for logical reasons. So you'd probably call the donkey abacus a mind if it could gossip about your love life and a zombie if it only yammered on about the rings of Saturn or Russel's paradox or whatever.
If an alien could speak, would we understand it?
>