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What is it like to be a bat?

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Re: What is it like to be a bat?

#21

Post by trescenzi »

bondarchuk wrote: post #19

> "An organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism – something that it is like for the organism." IMHO the phrasing here is essential to the argument and this phrasing contains a fundamental error. In valid usage we only say that two things are like one another when they are also separate things. The usage here (which is cleverly hidden in some tortured la…

There is no fundamental error it’s purposefully exactly as you state. Nagel is saying that consciousness is that second thing.

Re: What is it like to be a bat?

#22

Post by adityaathalye »

wagwang wrote: post #13

Can we just all admit there has basically been no real progress made to the mind-body problem. They all rest on metaphysical axioms of which no one has any proof of. Physicalism is about as plausible as solipsism. Exhibit a > Nagel begins by assuming that "conscious experience is a widespread phenomenon" present in many animals (particularly mammals), even though it is "difficult to say [...] what provides evidence o…

If anything, it's getting weirder... real progress looks, well, batshit insane. For example:

Against Mind-Blindness: recognizing and communicating with diverse intelligences - by Michael Levin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD5TOsPZIQY

Re: What is it like to be a bat?

#23

Post by antonvs »

bondarchuk wrote: post #19

> "An organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism – something that it is like for the organism." IMHO the phrasing here is essential to the argument and this phrasing contains a fundamental error. In valid usage we only say that two things are like one another when they are also separate things. The usage here (which is cleverly hidden in some tortured la…

Do you believe that each run of a ChatGPT prompt has a conscious experience of its existence, much like you (presumably) do?

If you don't believe that, then you face the challenge of describing what the difference is. It's difficult to do in ordinary language.

That's what Nagel is attempting to do. Unless you're an eliminativist who believes that conscious experience is an "illusion" (experienced by what?), then you're just quibbling about wording, and I suspect you'll have a difficult time coming up with better wording yourself.

Re: What is it like to be a bat?

#25

Post by antonvs »

card_zero wrote: post #9

Dennett has a character telling a story about a bat: Here's Billy the bat perceiving, in his special sonar sort of way, that the flying thing swooping down toward him was not his cousin Bob, but a eagle, with pinfeathers spread and talons poised for the kill! He then points out that this story is amenable to criticism. We know that the sonar has limited range, so Billy is not at least perceiving this eagle until the…

What is that criticism supposed to be criticizing?

Nagel's paper covers a lot of ground, but none of what you described has any bearing on the point about it "what it's like" as a way to identify conscious experience as distinct from, say, the life of a rock. (Assuming one isn't a panpsychist who believe that rocks possess consciousness.)

Re: What is it like to be a bat?

#26

Post by iLemming »

iLemming wrote: post #12

The article basically talkes about "umwelt" (there is a link at the bottom) - "is the specific way in which organisms of a particular species perceive and experience the world, shaped by the capabilities of their sensory organs and perceptual systems" How it at all related to let's say programming? Well, for example learning vim-navigation or Lisp or a language with an advanced type system (e.g. Haskell) can be umwel…

I suppose someone (even an experienced vimmer) might argue that learning vim is not so much "umwelt-transformative", but rather like "muscle memory training", like LeetCode drilling.

Indeed, basic vim-navigation - (hjkl, w, b) is muscle memory.

But, I'd argue the umwelt shift comes from vim's modal nature and its language of text objects. You start perceiving text as having an inherent grammar - "inside parentheses", "around word", "until comma." Text gains topology and structure that was invisible before.

The transformative part isn't the keystrokes but learning to think "delete inside quotes" (di") or "change around paragraph" (cap). You see text as composable objects with boundaries, not just streams of characters. This may even persists when you're reading on paper.

That mental model often transforms your keyboard workflow not just in your editor - but your WM, terminal, web browser, etc.

Re: What is it like to be a bat?

#27

Post by scubakid »

rout39574 wrote: post #10
scubakid wrote: post #4

To me, "what is it like to be a" is more or less the intersection of sensory modalities between two systems... but I'm not sure the extent of the overlap tells you much about whether a given system is "conscious" or not.

Do you really mean that it's very nearly the same thing "To be a" you, and an Elon Musk, a homo sapiens infant, and an Orangutan? And only modestly different from these to be a dog or a horse? If I've understood you correctly, I'll suggest that simple sensory intersection is way way not enough: the processing hardware and software are material to what it is like to be someone.

good point, I'd agree sensors are just a piece of the picture

Re: What is it like to be a bat?

#28

Post by o_nate »

The problem itself is at least centuries old, if not millennia. In his "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" (1689), John Locke phrased the same problem clearly, using different words:

"How any thought should produce a motion in Body is as remote from the nature of our Ideas, as how any Body should produce any Thought in the Mind. That it is so, if Experience did not convince us, the Consideration of the Things themselves would never be able, in the least, to discover to us." (IV iii 28, 559)

Re: What is it like to be a bat?

#29

Post by jibal »

wagwang wrote: post #13

Can we just all admit there has basically been no real progress made to the mind-body problem. They all rest on metaphysical axioms of which no one has any proof of. Physicalism is about as plausible as solipsism. Exhibit a > Nagel begins by assuming that "conscious experience is a widespread phenomenon" present in many animals (particularly mammals), even though it is "difficult to say [...] what provides evidence o…

> Physicalism is about as plausible as solipsism.

Physicalism is an ontological assertion that is almost certainly true, and is adhered to by nearly all scientists and most philosophers of mind. Solipsism is an ontological assertion that could only possibly be true for one person, and is generally dismissed. They are at opposite ends of the plausibility scale.

Re: What is it like to be a bat?

#30

Post by card_zero »

bettating wrote: post #15

What is it like to be another person?

It's more or less OK, thank you for asking. Recently I felt:

Disappointed when I went somewhere and there wasn't any tea,

Enthralled by a story about someone guarding a mystical treasure alone in a remote museum on a dark and stormy night,

Sympathetic toward a hardworking guy nobody likes, but also aggravated by his bossiness to the point of swearing at him,

Confused due to waking up at 7 pm and not being sure how it happened.

You probably don't entirely understand any of those. What is it to entirely understand something? But you probably get the idea in each case.

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