What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]
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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]
#2[deleted]
Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]
#3I have always liked the way that this paper frames the distinction and tension between the feeling of subjective experience and the "detached" rational scientific descriptive perspective that purports to be outside of that experience.
What is Real by Adam Becker was a fun foray into why this is so in (some) modern science philosophy as well - there's some desire to say that there isn't a "there" there when we talk about the world, just stuff. I'm probably with Alan Watts on the whole thing, that we are in some sense local aspects of a larger consciousness pretending it isn't so, and the hard work done by detached, disembodied perspectives like the scientific descriptive one are more and more steps to an unfolding game.
Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]
#4I 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?
Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]
#5One of the seminal papers of the 20th century. And like any truly good philosophy paper the argument is very clear and a real head-scratcher.
Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]
#6I 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?
You know what it would be like for you to imagine being a bat, but you don't know how it feels for a bat to be a bat, as "you" aren't.
Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]
#7I 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?
How do you justify that your intuition about what echolocation is like tracks with what a bat actually feels?
Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]
#8I 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?
You only pretend to know, that's not true knowledge.
Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]
#9I 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?
You only pretend to know, that's not true knowledge.
How do you know that? Do you know what it's like to be me?
Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]
#10Random thought I had on bats since they "see" by hearing reflected sounds:
Can bats know what another bat is looking at or even see what another is seeing by listening to the other's echoes? I imagine they can also recognize each other's voices and so identify individuals in flocks with the images they are seeing. I imagine this would be like being able to beam a stream of visual information into another's head.