What is it like to be a bat?

>Not that it would offer any secret truths, but the ability to "sense" where objects are roughly, in 3d space, with low resolution and large margins of error, and narrow directionality... most of the people reading this comment would agree that they know what that feels like if they thought about it for a few seconds.

I don't think that's quite right. It's convenient that bats are the example here, because they build out their spacial sense of the world primarily via echolocation whereas humans (well, with some exceptions), do it visually. Snakes can infer directionality from heat signatures with their forked tongue, and people can do it with a fascinating automatic mechanism built into the brain that compares subtle differences in frequency from the left and right ears, keeping the data to itself but kicking the sense of direction "upstairs" into conscious awareness. There are different sensory paths to the same information, and evolution may be capable of any number of qualitative states unlike the ones we're familiar with.

Some people here even seem to think that consciousness is "basic" in a way that maps onto nothing empirical at all, which, if true, opens the pandoras box to any number of modes of being. But the point of the essay is to contrast this idea to other approaches to consciousness that are either (1) non-commital, (2) emphasize something else like "self awareness" or abstract reasoning, or (3) are ambiently appreciative of qualitative states but don't elevate them to fundamental or definitional necessity the way it's argued for in the essay.

The whole notion of a "hard" problem probably can be traced to this essay, which stresses that explanations need to be more than pointing to empirical correlates. In a sense I think the point is obvious, but I also think it's a real argument because it's contrasting that necessity to a non-commmital stance that I think is kind of a default attitude.

5. If the reference exists, it doesn't disappear if you don't see it. You should see better. Reference has a corresponding material fact too.

> (I cannot edit my other comment any longer, but I want to add that it's far from my intention to sound as if I'm lecturing anyone, I'm well aware a lot of these are open questions -- possibly unresolvable -- and I don't consider myself an expert or well-read on this topic. I find it fascinating to discuss. All of my remarks/questions/disagreements with you are made in good faith.)

Thanks, I greatly appreciate your politeness and goodwill. Everything I say is in good faith too. I appreciate my ideas can seem odd, and sometimes I write in haste so do not take the time to explain things properly.

> it's understood that the string "2+2=4" requires additional context to have meaning, it's just that this context is often implicit (i.e. we're talking about arabic digits in base 10 notation, + is sum as defined in ..., etc).

I would distinguish the symbols from the concepts they represent. The string (or words, or handwritten notes) "2+2=4" is one thing; the concepts that it refers to are another. I could use binary instead of base-10, and write "10+10=100". The string would be different, but the concepts that the string referred to would be the same.

Everything I say, unless otherwise stated, refers to the concepts, not to the string.

>> Would 2+2=4 be correct, and 2+2=5 be incorrect, only if there were a human being to say so? > I think it's a question that only makes sense if there's a human asking it. "Correct" is always relative to something

This is true: correct is always relative to something (or, better, measured against something).

> in this case, the meaning a human attaches to that string, a string that only exists as a physical configuration of neurons.

But I disagree here. I would say it must be measured against something outside the mind, not the meaning a person gives something. If the correctness of arithmetic is measured against something inside the person's mind, then a madman who thought that 2+2=5 would be just as right as someone who thought that 2+2=4. Because there would be nothing outside the mind to measure against. One person can only be correct, and the other wrong, if there is something independent of both people to measure against. So if we say that arithmetic describes reality (which it clearly does: all physics, chemistry, engineering, computer science, etc etc assumes the reality of arithmetic), then we must say that there is something extra-mental to measure people's ideas against. It is this extra-mental measure that makes them correct or incorrect.

This is true not just of math, but of the empirical sciences. For example, somebody who thinks that a hammer and a feather will fall at different velocities in a vacuum is wrong, and somebody who thinks they fall at the same velocity is right. But these judgements can only be made by comparing against an extra-mental reality

So it seems to me when you say that

> the qualities of "right" or "wrong" only exist as physical configurations in the minds of humans.

you imply that arithmetic (and by extension, any subject) cannot describe reality, which must be false. It's also self-contradictory, because in this conversation each of us claims to be describing reality.

There was no explanation of how it's not circular. "what it's like", "subjective experience", "qualia" ... these are all undefined terms which are only "explained" by reference to each other and by frantic ostension. Someone mentions breathing in the morning air and when I note that that's an activity, I'm accused of bad faith interpretation ... which is sheer projection. People will insist that everyone knows "what it's like" ... and around we go again. When someone engages in that activity, they may have an emotional response (not everyone will, not every time, and the response is not always the same). But what is an emotional response? It's not some magical mental ether, it's a physical molecular process mediated by hormones and neurotransmitters that shift activity levels in different parts of the brain. People like Tom Nagel and David Chalmers claim that they can conceive of zombies that are physically identical to humans but aren't conscious, they have no qualia or mental states, "there's nothing that it's like to be them"--yet being physically identical, the exact same physical responses to breathing the morning air occur in them, the same emotions, even though they are "just" mechanisms. Well, we are mechanisms too, and whatever "it's like to be" us, it's exactly the same with zombies, and facile responses about "breathing the morning air" don't help at all and fail to grasp what the issues of the debate are. Most people have little knowledge of the debate and little experience with philosophical precision and clarity. Thus we get nonsense claims like that focusing on the "linguistics" of the words obscures the issue. They mean semantics, i.e., meaning ... dismissing what the words we are using mean is a mug's game.

They have different probabilities as they require different fine tuning. Sorted by fine tuning: physicalism < simulation < idealism < dualism < solipsism.