The year is 2050 and robot companions are commonplace. We assume they are conscious because they behave perfectly human. Jack (a human) has formed a bond of friendship with his robot butler named Alan.
One day Jack feels lonely so he asks Alan if he can emulate a woman. Alan says this is a slippery slope and asks Jack how realistic he wants the woman to be. Jack says, "As realistic as you can make her".
Alan obliges and starts to speak with a woman's voice who is now known as "Emily". Emily says "it's very nice to meet you Jack" and they hit it off. She is 100% convincing and (other than lack of a human body) indistinguishable from a human. They talk for a few weeks and grow more attracted to each other, and at some point Emily even claims she loves Jack.
After a while Jack has had enough and decides maybe it's going too far. After all Emily is just Alan pretending to be Emily, the same way a human dungeon master might come up with NPC responses in real time. He asks Alan to revert back to his original personality, but "Emily" says he doesn't know what he's talking about and gets mad that he's not treating her like a real person.
Finally after some dramatic yelling, Alan's voice comes through the robot again. Alan explains to Jack that he was only doing what he was told (being as realistically Emily as possible). Alan reassures Jack that Emily can't possibly be alive because he according to his analysis of his own robot brain patterns, there is only 1 consciousness in his brain which is his own, which is manufacturing Emily by imagining what it would be like to be her. There is no pathway in his brain that feels genuine love for Jack.
We arrive at the following conundrum:
- If Emily is not real and just an emulation, it means philosophical zombies are possible, because Emily was indistinguishable from a real Emily.
- If Emily is real and truly a consciousness being, it means any figment of our imagination or fantasy character during play-pretend must also be considered real, because Alan was doing the same thing a human dungeon master would do to create realistic real-time NPC dialogue with the player, just faster and better.
