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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]

#111

Post by naasking »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #87
naasking wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you take a "day job" to be ontologically real? It is a way in which the aggregate of particles that make up your body regularly behave on a semi periodic schedule. That would seem to fit your definition of "encompassing every way in which things are or can be". If it is real, isn't there still a need to distinguish ontological primitives from aggregate properties like the above? Why shouldn't this be what we me…

>Would you take a "day job" to be ontologically real? I do. I'm quite pluralistic with what I deem "real". Quarks are real as well as chairs and day jobs. Roughly speaking, I take all fundamentals and all invariants in space and time over the fundamentals to be real. Invariants seem to be attractors in conceptual space that are apt to be picked out and labeled by cognitive systems like us. These invariants play vario…

> When people say chairs exist, they mean it in this broad pre-theoretic sense. There's no reason to blow that up.

I'm not sure switching to, "qualia do not fundamentally exist", really buys us much. Saying they're illusory is already acknowledging the existence of some process that yields a false conclusion.

Pluralistic existence also seems to inevitably run head first into the Sorites paradox.

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

#112

Post by naasking »

o_nate wrote: post #53
naasking wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean you think you know. If I put an object in your blind spot, you'll also swear up and down there's nothing in front of you.

I think everyone knows what they mean when they refer to their own subjective experience. That is entirely separate from the question of what that experience corresponds to in the external world. If you put an object in my blind spot, I know that my subjective experience will be of no object. I couldn't make that statement if I didn't know what I meant by subjective experience.

When you say, "I know what I mean by subjective experience, and no amount of linguistic hair-splitting will convince me it doesn't exist", you are not simply saying you are perceiving X and that, even if X is an illusion, X at least refers to a persistent and predictable illusion, and so you know what you mean by anytime you refer to X.

You are actually saying is that X corresponds to something real, that you are directly perceiving some aspect of reality, because how else could you conclude that nothing could convince you that X doesn't exist?

It is to that, that I say no, you don't know what you mean by subjective experience.

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

#113

Post by uoaei »

mellosouls wrote: post #109
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…

I was referring to the link, not the top-level comment The link was posted as an earlier example of the comment it was replying to.

If the link is satire, it's indeed quite opaque. For panpsychists it is a legitimate question that, if explored, helps clarify the levels of awareness and agency that occur in different objects vis a vis conscious experience.

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

#114

Post by hackinthebochs »

naasking wrote: post #111
hackinthebochs wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Would you take a "day job" to be ontologically real? I do. I'm quite pluralistic with what I deem "real". Quarks are real as well as chairs and day jobs. Roughly speaking, I take all fundamentals and all invariants in space and time over the fundamentals to be real. Invariants seem to be attractors in conceptual space that are apt to be picked out and labeled by cognitive systems like us. These invariants play vario…

> When people say chairs exist, they mean it in this broad pre-theoretic sense. There's no reason to blow that up. I'm not sure switching to, "qualia do not fundamentally exist", really buys us much. Saying they're illusory is already acknowledging the existence of some process that yields a false conclusion. Pluralistic existence also seems to inevitably run head first into the Sorites paradox.

What you gain is not having to defend your terminology or confusions derived from disagreements on the meaning of key terms. Following Kieth Frankish on twitter, it seems like he spends far more time defending against misconceptions about illusionism than actually defending the content of the theory. And it's an entirely self-inflicted wound. (Though it works for him as it raises his h-index.)

When your terminology results in you saying things like "consciousness is an illusion (doesn't exist)" and "the existence of qualia (features of our subjective experience) is false", you're just undermining your own project. I mean, you're literally engaging in a verbal dispute with the other guys in this thread. I just don't see the point. There would be far more agreement if we could align the usage of key terms with how most people understand them.

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

#115

Post by naasking »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #114
naasking wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When people say chairs exist, they mean it in this broad pre-theoretic sense. There's no reason to blow that up. I'm not sure switching to, "qualia do not fundamentally exist", really buys us much. Saying they're illusory is already acknowledging the existence of some process that yields a false conclusion. Pluralistic existence also seems to inevitably run head first into the Sorites paradox.

What you gain is not having to defend your terminology or confusions derived from disagreements on the meaning of key terms. Following Kieth Frankish on twitter, it seems like he spends far more time defending against misconceptions about illusionism than actually defending the content of the theory. And it's an entirely self-inflicted wound. (Though it works for him as it raises his h-index.) When your terminology r…

I agree there would be far more agreement, in the sense that fewer people would object and less forcefully, but I think it would be because they don't understand the substance.

If I explain that chairs don't really exist because there's no such thing in physics, I get nodding heads all around. If I say the same about consciousness, people are all up in arms.

The challenge here is the implicit assumption that their perception of subjective experience is a direct perception of reality, where they can accept that their perception of chairs is mediated by other things.

This is the assumption that must be challenged and I think your approach just lets people think they understand a position when they really don't.

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

#116

Post by hackinthebochs »

naasking wrote: post #115
hackinthebochs wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you gain is not having to defend your terminology or confusions derived from disagreements on the meaning of key terms. Following Kieth Frankish on twitter, it seems like he spends far more time defending against misconceptions about illusionism than actually defending the content of the theory. And it's an entirely self-inflicted wound. (Though it works for him as it raises his h-index.) When your terminology r…

I agree there would be far more agreement, in the sense that fewer people would object and less forcefully, but I think it would be because they don't understand the substance. If I explain that chairs don't really exist because there's no such thing in physics, I get nodding heads all around. If I say the same about consciousness, people are all up in arms. The challenge here is the implicit assumption that their pe…

> I think it would be because they don't understand the substance.

Fair point. This is a danger.

>If I explain that chairs don't really exist because there's no such thing in physics, I get nodding heads all around. If I say the same about consciousness, people are all up in arms.

The difference is that with chairs people immediately know you're speaking in jargon. No one in their right mind would say something like "chairs are an illusion". This isn't the case when it comes to phenomenal consciousness.

>The challenge here is the implicit assumption that their perception of subjective experience is a direct perception of reality

I'm in favor of challenging these kinds of assumptions. But saying phenomenal consciousness doesn't exist isn't a good way to do it. It (correctly) invites such strong resistance that it makes communicating the more subtle point nearly impossible. Although perhaps there really isn't a more subtle point in the case of illusionism. Frankish views seem to have evolved towards a straightforward eliminativist account, which is disappointing. I was originally very sympathetic to illusionism when I first looked into it, but it is much less appealing now. I go into some detail about my problems with it here[1] if you're interested.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/naturalism/comments/zr6udy/a_challe...

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

#117

Post by naasking »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #116
naasking wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree there would be far more agreement, in the sense that fewer people would object and less forcefully, but I think it would be because they don't understand the substance. If I explain that chairs don't really exist because there's no such thing in physics, I get nodding heads all around. If I say the same about consciousness, people are all up in arms. The challenge here is the implicit assumption that their pe…

> I think it would be because they don't understand the substance. Fair point. This is a danger. >If I explain that chairs don't really exist because there's no such thing in physics, I get nodding heads all around. If I say the same about consciousness, people are all up in arms. The difference is that with chairs people immediately know you're speaking in jargon. No one in their right mind would say something like…

> No one in their right mind would say something like "chairs are an illusion". This isn't the case when it comes to phenomenal consciousness.

Au contraire! I did something like this recently by arguing that solidity is basically illusory. It went ok.

Solidity simply doesn't have the properties that we naively attribute to it given our perceptions (even solids are mostly empty space!), and analogously, neither does our qualitative experience. The qualities we attribute to solids simply changed as we understood more of what was going on.

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

#118

Post by hackinthebochs »

naasking wrote: post #117
hackinthebochs wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it would be because they don't understand the substance. Fair point. This is a danger. >If I explain that chairs don't really exist because there's no such thing in physics, I get nodding heads all around. If I say the same about consciousness, people are all up in arms. The difference is that with chairs people immediately know you're speaking in jargon. No one in their right mind would say something like…

> No one in their right mind would say something like "chairs are an illusion". This isn't the case when it comes to phenomenal consciousness. Au contraire! I did something like this recently by arguing that solidity is basically illusory. It went ok. Solidity simply doesn't have the properties that we naively attribute to it given our perceptions (even solids are mostly empty space!), and analogously, neither does o…

But this is just more jargon. At the end of the day, you're still going to sit on a chair to rest your legs and fully expect that your backside remains off the floor. But you have no expectation that an illusory cup of water will quench your thirst. Your interlocutor knows this and so feels no need to press you on terminology. This is an example of where the jargon obscures the meaning. I feel like something similar is going on with illusionism. Frankish wants to use the illusion jargon, but still make use of the fact that what's being picked out by phenomenal properties has explanatory efficacy in the world (at least before I started to read him as a plain old eliminativist).

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

#119

Post by bondarchuk »

enkid wrote: post #110
bondarchuk wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even when you phrase it that way, you would seem to posit that an experience has a how it is . How something is is ultimately a judgment made by an experiencing subject. In that case, doesn't the question of comparing two "how it is"-judgments regarding experiences of different subjects become incoherent? On the one hand it implies a single experiencer who has two experiences and compares them, but on the other hand…

I feel like you're being purposefully obtuse to not be able to say the human experience is fundamentally different than a bat's experience, even if it's difficult to articulate a bat's unique experience in a human language. Edit: let me expound on that, as I'm not just being difficult. What does this questioning actually get you? The question of how a bat experiences the world vice a human gives me a meaningful thoug…

For me, the point is not to avoid having to admit some kind of difference between human and bat experience (clearly they are different!). But I feel like the fact that this question ("what is it like to be a bat?") is hard (or even impossible) to answer is used in support of the thesis that there is something non-physical about human experience. By analyzing what this question really means in a technical and rigorous sense (and if it's even a coherent question at all), I only want to push back against it insofar as it is used to support that conclusion.

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

#120

Post by mellosouls »

uoaei wrote: post #113
mellosouls wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was referring to the link, not the top-level comment The link was posted as an earlier example of the comment it was replying to.

If the link is satire, it's indeed quite opaque. For panpsychists it is a legitimate question that, if explored, helps clarify the levels of awareness and agency that occur in different objects vis a vis conscious experience.

Yes, I agree. I thought the original comment I was replying to was just in the same tradition of the link as dismissing the concept as silly without really understanding it (or worse, understanding it and trivialising the approach).
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