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What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]

warwick.ac.uk

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Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]

#41

Post by naasking »

AlbertCory wrote: post #35
goatlover wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consciousness means there is "something it's like" to have an experience. It need not be human. That would be needlessly anthropocentric. Animals have a range of sensory organs and body plans which differer from humans. Why wouldn't they also have a range of differing conscious experiences? It could be seeing the world in more than three primary colors, hearing frequencies we cannot, detecting the Earth's magnetic fi…

You're begging the question here, which is: What defines 'consciousness'?

In philosophy it literally means "subjective, qualitative experience". It's almost certain that all animals have it, but of course the qualities they experience will be different.

Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]

#42

Post by gizajob »

nbramia wrote: post #31
uoaei wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of retort is a rookie error in the field of philosophy of mind. It clings too closely to notions of 1) self-awareness as an essential component of awareness per se (it's not) and 2) awareness as an essential component of experience per se (it's not). Edit: I was referring to the link, not the top-level comment. It reads like an attempt at rebuttal from someone relatively unfamiliar with the field writ large…

This kind of retort is a rookie error in the field of comedy. It clings too closely to notions like 1) there's no place for humor in a serious discussion (there is) and 2) you're smarter than everyone else (you're not)

Yeah my retort about the cricket bat came from someone with a postgrad in philosophy from a top British University. I reckon Wittgenstein would have been tickled by it.

Plus with contemporary metaphysical interest in panpsychism, then "what is it like to be a cricket bat?" isn't even a moot question.

Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]

#43

Post by AlbertCory »

naasking wrote: post #41
AlbertCory wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're begging the question here, which is: What defines 'consciousness'?

In philosophy it literally means "subjective, qualitative experience". It's almost certain that all animals have it, but of course the qualities they experience will be different.

Still begging the question, i.e. assuming that which you need to prove.

How would you prove an animal has a "subjective, qualitative experience"?

Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]

#44

Post by uoaei »

AlbertCory wrote: post #8

I've read this before. That's why I think the question "do animals have consciousness?" is meaningless, because "consciousness" usually implies "like ours." They have something that probably bears some relationship to ours. Some birds have a "theory of mind" where they know what you know, e.g. whether you saw them hide the food. It would be possible (maybe someone's already done it?) to enumerate the N tests of "cons…

Consciousness is only defined in the philosophy of mind as "phenomenological experience", full stop, i.e., "experiencing the color yellow" as something beyond just a certain wavelength incident upon and mechanistic reaction within the organism.

"Consciousness" as defined in colloquial settings, such as the one we inhabit now, is usually substantially more elaborate than thae one used by philosophers and includes things like capacity to develop cognitive models of the outside world and the capacity to reason about their environment having placed themselves within it. I usually reserve the words "awareness" and "sentience" for these two latter concepts to distinguish between the bare experiential aspects which are typically the subject of this kind of discussion and the more familiar everyday (though extremely high-level) experiences we have as intelligent beings.

It's important to maintain the distinction or else discussions very quickly devolve into people talking past each other with differing definitions. It's no surprise people don't know the basics of this when they're not philosophers, and it's only a slight surprise that people on HN will deviate so greatly from these conventions while nonetheless projecting an air of competency.

Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]

#45

Post by AlbertCory »

adamisom wrote: post #13
AlbertCory wrote: post #8

I've read this before. That's why I think the question "do animals have consciousness?" is meaningless, because "consciousness" usually implies "like ours." They have something that probably bears some relationship to ours. Some birds have a "theory of mind" where they know what you know, e.g. whether you saw them hide the food. It would be possible (maybe someone's already done it?) to enumerate the N tests of "cons…

A disturbing extension of that is if there's some M>N such that only some humans possess M (and others N). I think this must be so (I have a Down's-syndrome relative), the disturbing question is if there's a distribution of humans on gradients from N to M (probably M close to N imo).

Yes. Inevitably, the legal definition would turn out to be "whatever a person not legally brain-dead can experience, maybe" just so we couldn't say any human in a coma is "not possessing consciousness." After all, some comas last for years.

In other words, it's just not ever going to be a scientific concept. There are components of it that are.

Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]

#48

Post by uoaei »

AlbertCory wrote: post #43
naasking wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In philosophy it literally means "subjective, qualitative experience". It's almost certain that all animals have it, but of course the qualities they experience will be different.

Still begging the question, i.e. assuming that which you need to prove. How would you prove an animal has a "subjective, qualitative experience"?

That is what David Chalmers calls "The Hard Problem of Consciousness".

Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]

#49

Post by wizofaus »

naasking wrote: post #41
AlbertCory wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're begging the question here, which is: What defines 'consciousness'?

In philosophy it literally means "subjective, qualitative experience". It's almost certain that all animals have it, but of course the qualities they experience will be different.

Almost certain that all animals have it? The conjecture that, say, a coral polyp or an earthworm (not to mention something like a trichoplax) might have a subjective qualitative experience of existence seems to be an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary proof. I don't know exactly how similar a brain has to be to a human brain for us to say with reasonable confidence the owner likely has such an experience but I'd be very surprised if included even half of all known animal species. It's possibly not even all (adult) mammals, and indeed not even all humans if you include infants and possibly those with severe brain damage etc.

Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]

#50

Post by o_nate »

naasking wrote: post #39
o_nate wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what you mean by sleight of hand. It seems a very straightforward question that makes sense in our everyday use of language, as you admit. Just because it's difficult to rigorously analyze this statement into scientific concepts, it doesn't follow that the question is invalid. In fact the point of the question is to show shortcomings in our current science. Also, I would dispute the assertion that…

> I don't understand what you mean by sleight of hand. He means that it implicitly smuggles in a certain conclusion. For instance, "I think therefore I am" seems logically sound, but actually begs the question in presupposing "I" to then conclude that "I" exists. Or ask an innocent person a question like, "when did you stop beating your wife?" > There are many synonymous ways of phrasing the question: e.g., describe…

I'm afraid this is far too clever for me to understand. I know what I mean by subjective experience, and no amount of linguistic hair-splitting will convince me it doesn't exist.
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