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

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

#111

Post by KingMob »

anon-3988 wrote: post #102
KingMob wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The essay is not about whether a human could experience bat consciousness. > "In so far as I can imagine this (which is not very far), it tells me only what it would be like for me to behave as a bat behaves. But that is not the question. I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat.

This is like asking whats its like to turn fire into water. If you become a bat, you are a bat, you cannot get out of that space and think "oh so that is what it is like to be a bat". Now if you are able to freely transform into a bat and maintain consciousness back and forth, then you are now a consciousness that is able to experience both. Again not a bat. This is to say that I don't even know what it is like to be…

[dead]

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

#112

Post by pandoro »

randallsquared wrote: post #68

> I assume we all believe that bats have experience. Humorously enough, earlier he refers to those who believe that non-human mammals are not all conscious people as "extremists", so it's clear he understands this is not a fully accurate assumption. Two separate meanings of "have experience" are being swapped interchangeably, I think: one is "brain can sense the world around the entity, react to changes, and act or p…

This raises an interesting question: is experience possible without a "point of view" as you call it; without any subject, only sensing and reacting? I don't think so. A purely reactive system cannot experience the world. Subjective experience requires an object to be experienced and a subject experiencing the object. In the case of the bat, the object(s) being experienced are all the signals coming from the sense organs of the bat plus the inner chatter of the bat's mind (if they have some). The subject experiencing those objects is the exact same subject allowing us to experience "human-specific" objects.

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

#113

Post by abc123abc123 »

MarceliusK wrote: post #96
randallsquared wrote: post #68

> I assume we all believe that bats have experience. Humorously enough, earlier he refers to those who believe that non-human mammals are not all conscious people as "extremists", so it's clear he understands this is not a fully accurate assumption. Two separate meanings of "have experience" are being swapped interchangeably, I think: one is "brain can sense the world around the entity, react to changes, and act or p…

A bat might not have a "personal point of view" in the human sense, but that doesn't mean there is no point of view at all

The question is ultimately meaningless. All we have are actions and reactions, and brain scans. We can talk perfectly well based on that, although, it will be a bit cumbersome.

All the qualia, subjective stuff etc. is just shorthand, for whta ultimately boils down to actions in the world.

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

#114

Post by kbrkbr »

randallsquared wrote: post #68

> I assume we all believe that bats have experience. Humorously enough, earlier he refers to those who believe that non-human mammals are not all conscious people as "extremists", so it's clear he understands this is not a fully accurate assumption. Two separate meanings of "have experience" are being swapped interchangeably, I think: one is "brain can sense the world around the entity, react to changes, and act or p…

> "brain can sense the world around the entity, react to changes, and act or plan actions"

vs

> "implements a person, or point of view, or subjectively aware entity that supervises experiencing"

I think you are making a distinction without a difference. "Sense the world", "act", "plan" - that can only figuratively attributed to "the brain".

The concepts are already tied to what is named in the second opposition.

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

#115

Post by simiones »

why_at wrote: post #73
randallsquared wrote: post #68

> I assume we all believe that bats have experience. Humorously enough, earlier he refers to those who believe that non-human mammals are not all conscious people as "extremists", so it's clear he understands this is not a fully accurate assumption. Two separate meanings of "have experience" are being swapped interchangeably, I think: one is "brain can sense the world around the entity, react to changes, and act or p…

I think he makes it pretty clear he's only talking about the second one of your two definitions >What it is like to be a bat could be rephrased as what it would be like to experience being a bat if a person were being a bat He says: >[what] it would be like for me to behave as a bat behaves. But that is not the question. I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat The point is that bats do have a subjective…

> The point is that bats do have a subjective experience of the world which is very different from a person's. It seems like you think only humans have this?

This is definitely a possibility given the very basic level of understanding we have of this. The reality is that we don't know, and we don't even have a well defined way to know (that is, we don't even have any idea what kind of proof we would need to bring that animals have an experience of the world in some sense that is the same as ours but different from a rock's).

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

#116

Post by kbrkbr »

abc123abc123 wrote: post #113
MarceliusK wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bat might not have a "personal point of view" in the human sense, but that doesn't mean there is no point of view at all

The question is ultimately meaningless. All we have are actions and reactions, and brain scans. We can talk perfectly well based on that, although, it will be a bit cumbersome. All the qualia, subjective stuff etc. is just shorthand, for whta ultimately boils down to actions in the world.

That already presupposes a very narrow idea of what's meaningful that is quite far away from everyday life, where we talk about and evaluate subjective experiences all the time.

How do we talk about ethics in terms of actions, reactions abd brain scans please? That looks like an uncovered check.

In what sense are they a shorthand for actions in the world?

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

#117

Post by simiones »

skc wrote: post #104

So I've always thought what if each of our individual consciousnesses is like a radio frequency that is unique to each individual? This would explain why we regain consciousness when we wake up, because our physiology is locked to whatever that frequency happens to be. Under this model, 'you' don't actually reside inside your skull. Instead, your brain is just biological hardware translating a non-local broadcast, me…

This is pure pseudo-science at its finest. You're using sciencey words without putting any real meaning behind them. A frequency has to be a frequency of something (e.g. an electromagnetic wave). There would also have to be a mechanism that would explain why each body is tied to exactly one and only one "frequency" throughout its entire life, and why it never happens that different bodies share a consciousness; and there are thousand other things - but I'll stop here as I've already put more thought into this non-idea than it deserves.

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

#118

Post by randallsquared »

kbrkbr wrote: post #114
randallsquared wrote: post #68

> I assume we all believe that bats have experience. Humorously enough, earlier he refers to those who believe that non-human mammals are not all conscious people as "extremists", so it's clear he understands this is not a fully accurate assumption. Two separate meanings of "have experience" are being swapped interchangeably, I think: one is "brain can sense the world around the entity, react to changes, and act or p…

> "brain can sense the world around the entity, react to changes, and act or plan actions" vs > "implements a person, or point of view, or subjectively aware entity that supervises experiencing" I think you are making a distinction without a difference. "Sense the world", "act", "plan" - that can only figuratively attributed to "the brain". The concepts are already tied to what is named in the second opposition.

In the first phrase, thermostat can substitute for "brain". A thermostat has a sense of (or "method of collecting data about") something not in the thermostat, and can react to changes in data reported by that sense, and some can plan changes based on expected future reports. None of that requires a person interior to the thermostat receiving that data and processing it.

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

#119

Post by randallsquared »

why_at wrote: post #73
randallsquared wrote: post #68

> I assume we all believe that bats have experience. Humorously enough, earlier he refers to those who believe that non-human mammals are not all conscious people as "extremists", so it's clear he understands this is not a fully accurate assumption. Two separate meanings of "have experience" are being swapped interchangeably, I think: one is "brain can sense the world around the entity, react to changes, and act or p…

I think he makes it pretty clear he's only talking about the second one of your two definitions >What it is like to be a bat could be rephrased as what it would be like to experience being a bat if a person were being a bat He says: >[what] it would be like for me to behave as a bat behaves. But that is not the question. I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat The point is that bats do have a subjective…

If I was certain that bats had a subjective experience of the world, it would mean I think bats are people, just non-human ones. That's what being a person is: a subjective experiencer. Since we don't understand how personal experience happens in humans, yet, I can't be fully sure that bats aren't persons, but I would agree that I think it's unlikely they are.

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

#120

Post by randallsquared »

pandoro wrote: post #112
randallsquared wrote: post #68

> I assume we all believe that bats have experience. Humorously enough, earlier he refers to those who believe that non-human mammals are not all conscious people as "extremists", so it's clear he understands this is not a fully accurate assumption. Two separate meanings of "have experience" are being swapped interchangeably, I think: one is "brain can sense the world around the entity, react to changes, and act or p…

This raises an interesting question: is experience possible without a "point of view" as you call it; without any subject, only sensing and reacting? I don't think so. A purely reactive system cannot experience the world. Subjective experience requires an object to be experienced and a subject experiencing the object. In the case of the bat, the object(s) being experienced are all the signals coming from the sense or…

> The subject experiencing those objects is the exact same subject allowing us to experience "human-specific" objects.

That's the question, is it not? We don't know how that "subject" is implemented in humans, but assuming we figure it out, we'll be able to see if that process is happening in other brains as well.

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