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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?

#71

Post by mensetmanusman »

vehemenz wrote: post #58
ebb_earl_co wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What brought down your level on convinced?

When you reject the idea of reductionism, which Nagel's paper provokes us to do, then the entire idea of emergent phenomena collapses. Everything is on the same level, from fundamental particles to consciousness. Of course, some things can still be reduced and others can't, but in no situation is a phenomenon reduced in its metaphysical status. So what's the "problem" again, exactly? Consciousness doesn't need to be…

This definition is a special metaphysical thing.

Re: What is it like to be a bat?

#72

Post by jibal »

geye1234 wrote: post #43
jibal wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

One big problem with physicalism is that many alleged arguments in its favor are nothing of the sort. Any argument for physicalism that refers to neurological observation is invalid. Physicalism claims that all mental events can be reduced to physical events. But you cannot look at physical events to prove this. No matter the detail in which you describe a physical event, you can't use this to prove, or even argue in…

You're making a number of unsupported assertions. There's a massive amount of literature in support of physicalism. And it's a far cry from "there's no proof of x" to "x is invalid". No metaphysical stance can be proved.

> Same with physicalism: most arguments in its favor limit their method to looking at the physical, so in practice say nothing about whether this is all there is.

This is simply wrong ... there are very strong arguments that, when we're looking at mental events, we are looking at the physical. To say that arguments for physicalism are limited to looking at the physical is a circular argument that presupposes that physicalism is wrong. The arguments for physicalism absolutely are not based at looking at a limited set of things, they are logical arguments that there's no way to escape being physical ... certainly Descartes' dualism is long dead due to the interaction problem -- mental states must be physical in order to be acted upon or act upon the physical. The alternatives are ad hoc nonsense like Chalmers' "bridging laws" that posit that there's a mental world that is kept in tight sync with the physical world by these "bridging laws" that have no description or explanation or reason to believe exist.

Re: What is it like to be a bat?

#73

Post by mensetmanusman »

curiousguy7374 wrote: post #55
RS-232 wrote: post #46

Both consciousness and experience arise from physical means. However, they are very distinct concepts and not mutually exclusive, which can lead to confusion when they are conflated. Sensory deprived, paralyzed, or comatose individuals can be conscious but have no means to experience the outside world, and depending on their level of brain activity, they might not even have an "inner world" or mind's eye experience.…

But I still don’t know what it’s like to be a bat Also, if there is a soul, then how can we be confident concisouness arises from physical means? If there is a soul, it is the perfect means to differentiate concisouness and p-zombies.

There is a soul if you believe we aren’t all p-zombies. (Soul is the all encompassing word to distinguish this. Maybe there are better words?)

Re: What is it like to be a bat?

#74

Post by wagwang »

jibal wrote: post #29
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.

I've never heard any argument that demonstrates any certainty around physicalism. I like the argument bcuz it sounds nice, but I would never ever claim to know it to be true. I mostly arrived at physicalism because there are eggregious problems with the other theories and physicalism seemed like the suitable default naive answer.

Re: What is it like to be a bat?

#75

Post by genericspammer »

axus wrote: post #60
antonvs wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's still possible to believe chatgpt is unconscious for the same reason a game of tetris is unconscious. Certainly. I just didn't know where you stood on the question. In Nagel's terms, there is not something it is like to be a game of Tetris. A game of Tetris doesn't have experiences. "Something it is like" is an attempt to characterize the aspect of consciousness that's proved most difficult to explain - what C…

A running game of Tetris has memory, responds to stimuli, and communicates. There has been evolution and reproduction of games of Tetris (perhaps in the way that viruses do). It isn't able to have feelings, what needs to be added for it to start having feelings and experiences?

I would say a lot would need to be added. Given the same input, the tetris game will respond exactly the same each time. There is no awareness, learning, no decisions made, but purely a 100% predictible process.

The Oxford Living Dictionary defines consciousness as "[t]he state of being aware of and responsive to one's surroundings", "[a] person's awareness or perception of something", and "[t]he fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world".

Re: What is it like to be a bat?

#76

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

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…

I believe you're falling into a purely linguistic trap. In other languages we wouldn't even use the word "like" in this kind of constructions, that's an English thing because other wordings sound awkward, but I don't think it entails comparison.

In translations to Spanish, the article is titled "¿Qué se siente ser un murciélago?", literal word by word translation "What is felt being a bat?"

In French, "Quel effet cela fait-il d'être une chauve-souris?", literal word by word translation "What effect it makes to be a bat?"

In Chinese, "成为一只蝙蝠可能是什么样子", i.e., "To become a bat could be what feeling/sensation?"

None of these translations has a comparative word. And at least in Spanish (I won't speak about the other two because I'm not so proficient in them), using a comparative expression similar to "being like" in English ("¿A qué se parece ser un murciélago?") would sound awkward and not really convey the point. Which is why the translators didn't do so.

Of course I know that the original article is in English, but I think the author basically meant "What is felt being a bat?" and just used the "like" construction because it's what you say in English for that to sound good and clear. Your highlighted text could be rendered as "An organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that is felt being that organism – something that is felt by the organism." and it would be more precise, just doesn't sound elegant in English.

Re: What is it like to be a bat?

#77

Post by biophysboy »

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…

I think that's why he states it as a biconditional, which makes the exclusive restriction you're arguing is necessary

Re: What is it like to be a bat?

#78

Post by nsriv »

mistidoi wrote: post #7

Somebody used this paper to make the term batfished, which they defined as being fooled into ascribing subjectivity to a non-sentient actor (i.e. an AI). https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2025/06/30/what-is-it-like...

I love this, hope it takes off like "enhsittification" or "slop" have already.

Re: What is it like to be a bat?

#79

Post by jibal »

vehemenz wrote: post #45
jibal wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You're getting a little ahead of yourself. First, ontological assertions need to reflect reality. That is, they need to be true or false, and many philosophers, including prominent scientists, don't think they qualify. Indeed, the arguments against ontological realism are more airtight than any particular metaphysical theory.

> You're getting a little ahead of yourself.

Nonsense.

> First, ontological assertions need to reflect reality.

You're getting ahead of yourself to imply that somehow physicalism does not reflect reality, or that an assertion has to be proven to reflect reality before being made.

> That is, they need to be true or false

No, that's not what reflecting reality means. Of course ontological assertions are true or false, if they aren't incoherent, but that's neither here nor there.

> and many philosophers, including prominent scientists, don't think they qualify.

What's this "they" that don't qualify? The subject was physicalism, and again almost all scientists and most philosophers of mind subscribe to it ... which leaves room for some not doing so. Whether or not the outliers are "prominent" is irrelevant.

> Indeed, the arguments against ontological realism are more airtight than any particular metaphysical theory.

That's a much stronger claim than that physicalism is wrong ... many dualists are ontological realists. And it's certainly convenient to claim that there are airtight arguments for one's views, and easy to dismiss the claim.

Re: What is it like to be a bat?

#80

Post by genericspammer »

bondarchuk wrote: post #62
antonvs wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's still possible to believe chatgpt is unconscious for the same reason a game of tetris is unconscious. Certainly. I just didn't know where you stood on the question. In Nagel's terms, there is not something it is like to be a game of Tetris. A game of Tetris doesn't have experiences. "Something it is like" is an attempt to characterize the aspect of consciousness that's proved most difficult to explain - what C…

There is no distinction: the idea that there is a distinction rests on a linguistic confusion. The sentence "something it is like to be a bat" tries, as it were, to split the concept of "being a bat" in two, then makes us wonder about the difference between the two halves. I reject that we have to answer for any such difference, when we can show that the two halves are actually the same thing. It's a grammatical tric…

There’s no trick to it, you’re overanalyzing. It’s just saing if I were a stone -> no experience, a bat -> some kind of experience. It is not claiming to define the ”something” as you seem to think.
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