“The problem is that we have no evidence that other people are conscious and alive, like us. We know that we are conscious because we have direct experience of our own thoughts, our emotions, the unquantifiable way that it feels to be alive, but we have no experience of others’ consciousness, and so—and so, we do not know for sure that they are alive, really alive, experiencing their life as we experience ours. Perhaps we are the only real person, surrounded by hollow shells who act like people, but who have no interior life as we do.
