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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]

#151

Post by kelseyfrog »

satvikpendem wrote: post #143
kelseyfrog wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a human who objectively knows what it's like to be a bat. I have greater epistemic authority over what I know than others.

> who objectively knows what it's like to be a bat. Sigh. Thinking you know and knowing is not the same, especially thinking you "objectively" know something. Maybe you should read the article posted instead of commenting these sorts of sentences.

I've read it many times over the years. I objectively know what it is like to be a bat and you cannot claim I don't without claiming you objectively know what it is like to be me.

If this frustrates you, then congratulations; we have a starting point for discussion. Be open to describing where that frustration originates.

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

#152

Post by kelseyfrog »

themafia wrote: post #89
kelseyfrog wrote: post #4

I know what it's like to be a bat. I don't have anqualia, the inability to imaginatively summon what an experience is like. In other words, I have the ability to imagine what an experience is like. Do others not have this?

Do Bats reminisce about the past? How far ahead do Bats plan their next action? Can a Bat be jealous?

Great questions, unfortunately being like a bat is a qualia and just as I cannot describe the qualia of redness, I can only describe the qualia of batness as a thing in itself.

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

#153

Post by kbrkbr »

abc123abc123 wrote: post #150
kbrkbr wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Ethics is just code for expressing how we feel about things. There is no "ethic" in nature, just the words we say to express it. Every day life, and the way we talk about it, _is_ far away, many layers of abstractions, and that was precisely my point. Thank you for providing an example.

That's one opinion out of many. Some say so, some say so.

But you did not answer my question on how we talk about ethics in terms of actions and brain scans.

The devil is in the details, and when you try to express why it is bad to kill people over a small argument in terms of actions etc., then you might find that this is not as simple as you insinuated.

"There is no 'ethic' in nature" is also easy said in the armchair, but becomes a lifeless abstraction pretty fast when confronted with real human suffering and tears.

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

#154

Post by KingMob »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #149
KingMob wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Our experience of a color is based on recall of things of that color. You're getting memory mixed up with current experience. I think you mean to say that experience is based on the neural substrate associated with a color (mostly area V4 in human brains, which causes achromatopsia when damaged bilaterally). (If memory is mandatory, then infants wouldn't see color when they first open their eyes, which seems unlike…

An infant's perception of the world, in the days/weeks/months following birth is not going to be like our own until they have indeed started to form memories/associations of things outside of the womb (where the main color they will be exposed to is red - light filtered through the mother's stomach). Even after birth it's going to be a while (depending on parents/environment) until they have much exposure to certain…

You are still missing the point, and talking about everything BUT the disconnect between objectivity and subjectivity. I don't know how many times I have to mention the Hard Problem in the comments before people address it in their responses.

Yes, subjective experience is unique, based in neural architecture, color-blindness, experience, etc, etc etc. All of that is irrelevant to the essay.

> The real point is that the subjective experience of a color like red is not some absolute thing tied to the neural inputs for "red", since the experience is the same even when those inputs change

Not the real point of the essay at all. Please, just go read up on the Hard Problem.

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

#155

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

KingMob wrote: post #154
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An infant's perception of the world, in the days/weeks/months following birth is not going to be like our own until they have indeed started to form memories/associations of things outside of the womb (where the main color they will be exposed to is red - light filtered through the mother's stomach). Even after birth it's going to be a while (depending on parents/environment) until they have much exposure to certain…

You are still missing the point, and talking about everything BUT the disconnect between objectivity and subjectivity. I don't know how many times I have to mention the Hard Problem in the comments before people address it in their responses. Yes, subjective experience is unique, based in neural architecture, color-blindness, experience, etc, etc etc. All of that is irrelevant to the essay. > The real point is that t…

That's not really what Nagel is talking about - the paper is about the difficulty, if not impossibility, of using reductionism to explain some things such as subjective (conscious) experience.

Note that at the beginning of the paper Nagel says "Conscious experience is a widespread phenomenon. It occurs at many levels of animal life ...". His starting point is a willingness to accept that higher order animals are indeed conscious, and that by extension it is indeed like something to be them.

If you want to discuss the hard problem, then you are talking about the wrong paper, and should be reading Chalmers (or Kirk's earlier "Zombies v. Materialists") not Nagel. However, Nagel is of course right, and the p-zombie is a non-sensical construct. If you have a sufficiently advanced cognitive apparatus then of course you can reflect on your own mental life - of course it "feels like something".

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

#156

Post by pandoro »

randallsquared wrote: post #120
pandoro wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That might be too much of an assumption to make because of the binding problem. Imaging knowing absolutely everything there is to know - measurably, quantifiably, down to atomic/quantum states - about what happens when a human sees red but only having experienced a black and white world. Do you learn anything new when seeing a cherry for the first time? You experience red for the first time. Measurement is third-person by definition, and consciousness is irreducibly first-person. So no instrument, however precise, can ever close that gap. Consciousness/"the subject" is the raw material of reality. Matter, sensory inputs and mind are experienced as objects in consciousness not the other way around. So in that sense "the subject" is exactly the same for the bat or the human.

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

#157

Post by randallsquared »

pandoro wrote: post #156
randallsquared wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That might be too much of an assumption to make because of the binding problem. Imaging knowing absolutely everything there is to know - measurably, quantifiably, down to atomic/quantum states - about what happens when a human sees red but only having experienced a black and white world. Do you learn anything new when seeing a cherry for the first time? You experience red for the first time. Measurement is third-pers…

> Measurement is third-person by definition, and consciousness is irreducibly first-person. So no instrument, however precise, can ever close that gap.

In a "logical proof" sense, yes.

However, that doesn't stop us from being able to experiment and understand consciousness, any more than it stops us from understanding the rest of the world around us. For example, "readiness potential" experiments, and the reliable cessation of consciousness under anesthesia.

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

#158

Post by pandoro »

randallsquared wrote: post #157
pandoro wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might be too much of an assumption to make because of the binding problem. Imaging knowing absolutely everything there is to know - measurably, quantifiably, down to atomic/quantum states - about what happens when a human sees red but only having experienced a black and white world. Do you learn anything new when seeing a cherry for the first time? You experience red for the first time. Measurement is third-pers…

> Measurement is third-person by definition, and consciousness is irreducibly first-person. So no instrument, however precise, can ever close that gap. In a "logical proof" sense, yes. However, that doesn't stop us from being able to experiment and understand consciousness, any more than it stops us from understanding the rest of the world around us. For example, "readiness potential" experiments, and the reliable ce…

Interesting examples, thanks for the nice discussion!

I believe it goes deeper than the "logical proof" sense. It's a category mistake. Consciousness can never be "objectified".

About the readiness potential I'd argue that it's still happening in consciousness just not being registered by the mind of the participant. In the experiment "conscious decision" or "unconscious brain activities" are misnomers. Thoughts, decisions, memory, latent biases, etc. are processes of the mind not of consciousness.

Anesthesia and deep sleep are also useful scenarios to investigate. There is an interesting question to contemplate for those examples: are they an absence of experience or an experience of absence? I'd contend that it's the experience of the complete cessation of all workings of the mind and sense organs. But consciousness is still there. Otherwise how would you experience the transition from waking state to deep sleep/anesthesia and then back to waking?

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

#159

Post by KingMob »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #155
KingMob wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are still missing the point, and talking about everything BUT the disconnect between objectivity and subjectivity. I don't know how many times I have to mention the Hard Problem in the comments before people address it in their responses. Yes, subjective experience is unique, based in neural architecture, color-blindness, experience, etc, etc etc. All of that is irrelevant to the essay. > The real point is that t…

That's not really what Nagel is talking about - the paper is about the difficulty, if not impossibility, of using reductionism to explain some things such as subjective (conscious) experience. Note that at the beginning of the paper Nagel says "Conscious experience is a widespread phenomenon. It occurs at many levels of animal life ...". His starting point is a willingness to accept that higher order animals are inde…

"the paper is about the difficulty, if not impossibility, of using reductionism to explain some things such as subjective (conscious) experience"

...uh, what else do you think the Hard Problem IS?

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Absolutely slays me that the commenters here don't even recognize it when rephrased.

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