(I've corrected the subject title by inserting the non-optional middle initial. Apologies go to anyone whose e-mail clients interpret this as a completely unrelated message.)

Warren Smith wrote:

How do I know you are aware of your own existence? Because you say you are?

Exactly, you don't know that I'm conscious. You don't know that anyone is conscious, with the (possible!) exception of yourself. Indeed, for a very long time people believed that I was a fictional being invented by Dr. Geoff Smith in an attempt to motivate people training for the British IMO team.

Well, a Turing machine could print out a statement saying it is, too.

Correct.

In principle a Turing machine presumably could/should exist which would completely emulate Adam Goucher's every utterance and action.

Indeed.

This seems to prove Adam Goucher is not a conscious being (rest of proof supplied by AG himself previously).

That is an epic case of ignoratio elenchi. I asserted that machines incapable of consciousness are capable of human-like behaviour, and not that humans themselves are incapable of consciousness. Sincerely, Adam P. Goucher