The ensemble is fronted by Sting obviously, with Bill Frisell, Fareed Haque, David Sanborn, Hank Roberts and Don Alias. Good stuff, but my dog, that moustache!

I'll try to approach this from another angle.

I know that I am 'aware'. That is, not only do I behave as though I was a concious being with self-awareness, I am indeed aware of what's going on. I don't know, however, whether any of you guys are. You certainly behave like it, but there is no way to know for sure.

However, there is no reason to believe otherwise. From an objective point of view, there is nothing about any other human being that is fundamentally different from me, therefore I have no reason to believe that any other human being is not 'aware', just like me.

Now, here's a thought experiment: Make a brain in a vat. Take a live person, somehow extract his brain from his body without killing the poor guy, and place it in a vat. Attach artificial sensory organs and life-support systems, such that all the information that flowed between the brain and the body now flows between the brain and an artificial machine. In the traditional philosophical experiment, the person shouldn't notice any difference, but that's not really important for my purposes. The important thing is that he can experience the outside world.

Is there any reason to doubt his awareness now? I can't see any.

Now continue to mess with our poor victim. Replace his prefrontal cortex with an equivalent ANN (Artificial Neural Network), made out of electronics. Whether or not that's possible, here's the next step:
Abandon the vat and simulate the entire configuration on a computer.

Now we have an ensemble of electronics instead of an ensemble of neurons. Still, the guy's behaviour is essentially the same. The objective facts can be correlated with the facts about the original person. He still has a prefrontal cortex, it just exists in computer memory instead of in a real configuration of neurons.

I still can't find any reason to doubt whether this person is aware. This seems to demonstrate that it's not the 'stuff' you're made of that's important; it's the abstract configurations between the functional units, no matter how the units themselves are manifested in reality. And that seems to argue against any important ontological difference between people and other things.

What a great muppet ensemble.

Yeah, but why waste rounds when you can gang-abuse them:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4857417

In reply to this comment by schmawy:
Oh they're just full of creative ideas...

http://people.howstuffworks.com/riot-control3.htm

In reply to this comment by Rotty:
Just made it up. But I'm sure they're working on it in the labs.

In reply to this comment by schmawy:
What's "crowd control"? Some kind of nasty non-lethal round?

In reply to this comment by Rotty:
No Stormtrooper ensemble is complete without a taser, nightstick and Glock packed with crowd control!

Oh they're just full of creative ideas...

http://people.howstuffworks.com/riot-control3.htm

In reply to this comment by Rotty:
Just made it up. But I'm sure they're working on it in the labs.

In reply to this comment by schmawy:
What's "crowd control"? Some kind of nasty non-lethal round?

In reply to this comment by Rotty:
No Stormtrooper ensemble is complete without a taser, nightstick and Glock packed with crowd control!

Just made it up. But I'm sure they're working on it in the labs.

In reply to this comment by schmawy:
What's "crowd control"? Some kind of nasty non-lethal round?

In reply to this comment by Rotty:
No Stormtrooper ensemble is complete without a taser, nightstick and Glock packed with crowd control!

What's "crowd control"? Some kind of nasty non-lethal round?

In reply to this comment by Rotty:
No Stormtrooper ensemble is complete without a taser, nightstick and Glock packed with crowd control!

No Stormtrooper ensemble is complete without a taser, nightstick and Glock packed with crowd control!

Since you're so curious, Schmawy, it's called "free plate tuning", and it was developed by the recently departed Carleen Hutchins...

Carleen Maley Hutchins (May 24, 1911 – August 7, 2009) was an American former high school science teacher, violinmaker and researcher, best-known for her creation, in the 1950s/60s, of a family of eight proportionally-sized violins now known as the violin octet (e.g., the vertical viola) and for a considerable body of research into the acoustics of violins. She was born in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Hutchins’s greatest innovation, still used by many violinmakers, was a technique known as free-plate tuning. When not attached to a violin, the top and back are called free plates. Her technique gives makers a precise way to refine these plates before a violin is assembled.

From 2002 to 2003, Hutchins’s octet was the subject of an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Titled “The New Violin Family: Augmenting the String Section.” Hutchins was the founder of the New Violin Family Association[1], creator-in-chief of the Violin Octet, author of more than 100 technical publications, editor of two volumes of collected papers in violin acoustics, four grants from the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music, recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships, an Honorary Fellowship from the Acoustical Society of America, and four honorary doctorates. In 1963, Hutchins co-founded the Catgut Acoustical Society, which develops scientific insights into the construction of new and conventional instruments of the violin family.

The Hutchins Consort, named after Hutchins, is a California ensemble featuring all eight instruments.[2]

In 1974, Hutchins and Daniel W. Haines, using materials supplied by the Hercules Materials Company, Inc. (Allegheny Ballistics Laboratory) of Cumberland, Maryland, developed a graphite-epoxy composite top that was determined to be a successful alternative to the traditional use of spruce for the violin belly.[3]

Thanks, Kulp.

In reply to this comment by kulpims:
*promote

if you like brass music, you should also check out this wonderful piece: http://www.videosift.com/video/Hypnotic-Brass-Ensemble-Mercury

hey man,that was really cool of ya postin that slayer vid.
i was all excited..HEY..war ensemble..COOL..
then i started readin the script .....
ya got me..
ya got the tater!
very awesome of you =)

dude....DUUUUDE...
man..what can i say...?
but that you ROCK!
oh..got me some lyrics for those of you who cant understand our boy Tom araya:
Propaganda death ensemble
Burial to be
Corpses rotting through the night
In blood laced misery
Scorched earth the policy
The reason for the singe
The pendulum it shaves the blade
The strafing air blood raid

Infiltration push reserves
Encircle the front llines
Supreme art of strategy
Playing on the minds
Bombard till submission
Take all to their graves
Indication of triumph
The number that are dead

Chorus
Sport the war, war support
The sport is war, total war
When victorys a massacre
The final swing is not a drill
Its how many people I can kill

Chorus

Be dead friend from abve
When darkness falls
Descend into my sights
Your fallen walls
Spearhead break through the lines
Flanked all around
Soldiers of attrition
Forward their ground
Gregime prophetic age
Old in its time
Flowing veins run on through
Deep in the rhine
Center of the web
All battles scored
What is our war crimes
(era forever more...war)

Propaganda war ensemble
Burial to be
Bones shining in the night
In blood laced misery
Campaign of elimination
Twisted psychology
When victory is to survive
And death is defeat

Chorus
Sport the war, war support
The sport is total war
When victorys a massacre
When victory is survival
When this end is a slaughter
The final swing is not a drill
Its how many people I can kill

Call me chum again I'll -- oh hey, that's pretty handy, Bruce. Thoughtful and aesthetically pleasing. How could I ever stay mad at you and your fabulous bat ensemble!

^Heh, this was Ensemble's last game.