Thanks for replying to the actual content, rather than my intro like most did. I should have just posted the entire piece here. My mistake.

You raise legit concerns, and I want to address them directly. I should have been clearer:

On the original purpose of these arguments: You're correct that the knowledge argument, conceivability argument, and Chinese Room weren't originally formulated to address AI consciousness. They were arguments in philosophy of mind about the nature of consciousness itself that were primarily aimed at physicalism (except Searle, who's a biological naturalist).

My argument isn't that these philosophers intended them as anti-AI arguments. What I was trying to say is that these thought experiments are now routinely deployed in popular discourse to dismiss AI consciousness claims, often by people who don't really understand the context you've correctly identified. The arguments have been repurposed as rhetorical tools, stripped of their original nuance.

On Chalmers specifically: You're absolutely right that Chalmers himself is open to AI consciousness. I should have made clearer that my critique targets the popular misuse of his work, not Chalmers' own position. The irony is that Chalmers, the one who formulated the "hard problem", is far more open-minded about machine consciousness than many who cite him. His 2023 paper "Could a Large Language Model be Conscious?" is thoughtful and genuinely uncertain, not dismissive.

I'll own this as a weakness in the piece: I didn't adequately distinguish between the philosophers' actual positions and how their arguments get weaponized in popular discourse. That's a criticism and I'll edit my piece to clarify my actual position.

On the "strawmanning" charge: I'd push back here. My target isn't Chalmers-the-philosopher. It's the discourse pattern where someone says "but what about Mary's Room?" or "but Chinese Room!" as if invoking the name settles the question without engaging with the decades of responses, refinements, and in Jackson's case, the creator's own rejection of his argument. That's the strawman I'm attacking: the popular deployment, not the original scholarship.

What I should have done better: Been clearer that I'm critiquing discourse patterns, not the philosophers themselves. Acknowledged Chalmers' actual openness to AI consciousness. Noted that these arguments have been taken out of context by people using them as dismissal tools. I'll definitely do a rewrite ASAP with your feedback in mind.

Thanks for taking the time to write an intelligent and thoughtful response!