Not knowing what it’s like to be something else
1. There is something it is like to be a bat.
2. However much I learn about the objective world I can never know what it is like to be a bat.
3. Therefore there is something in reality that is outside of the objective world.
Do you agree with the argument?
2. However much I learn about the objective world I can never know what it is like to be a bat.
3. Therefore there is something in reality that is outside of the objective world.
Do you agree with the argument?
Comments (169)
I think so. And I focus here on #2. I think that in order to know what it is like to be a bat you would not turn to the objective world. Rather, you would turn to the subjective world of being a bat.
As to #3, though, I'm not so sure. To the extent reality includes subjective perception, it may not be outside of the objective world but, rather, in it.
I had to separate this out from the "objective world" stuff because I don't think it applies, as described before. I just wanted to comment on the ability to know what it is like to be another. I am not an empath, although I do have some limited ability to feel empathy. But beyond that, there is one thing I have noticed in hunting: The most successful predator seems to be the one who "becomes" the prey. And likewise, the most successful prey is the one who "becomes" the predator. I see this dance with the stalk, each party to the dance trying to think like and anticipate the next move of the other, or catch the other in mid move. The deer sticks his head in the grass to eat but sometimes he's faking (I can tell) and pops his head up fast, trying to catch the cougar mid-stride. The cougar is trying to only step when the deer's head is down and actually eating, and then freezing, mid stride if she's caught moving when the deer's head pops up. I've watched this, studied it, and applied it in my own hunt. I really do leave off of myself and feel the edge, the almost-fear, the "head on a swivel" feeling that I had in the Corps. When I "become" the elk, or the deer, I get touching distance. Anyway, I don't know much about bats, but I suspect that whatever it is that interacts most closely with them might have an idea of what it is like to be one. It will never be a perfect cross-over, but you said "like". Anyway, there's my five cents.
Is there? How could you possibly know this?
Is there a "something it is like to be Aoife Jones"? Or is being Aoife Jones subject to continual change?
So no, I think the argument essential flawed.
But could not Aoife Jones be changing continually in a singularly Aofie Jones manner? :wink:
We're not talking about Aoife Jones, but what it is like to be Aoife Jones.
To misquote Wittgenstein, suppose that what it is like to be Aoife Jones changes continually, but Aoife Jones doesn't notice...?
If you can't put what it is like to be Aoife Jones into words, then you have no way of verifying that it doesn't change. But if you can put it into words, then it is part of what is loosely called the objective world, and the argument in the OP fails.
1) Suppose there is something that "it is like to be" in general. Now the question can be framed: what's it like to be you? Can you say what this consists of?
When asked this question, I go kind of blank. That's way too hard a question to answer. I think I can tell you in a vague and general sense, what it's like to be sad or happy or confused. But I couldn't tell you what it's like to be me. And I believe in the reality of consciousness fully.
2) This is true, because the question is not well phrased. You can ask "do bats exist?" or "are bats conscious" and related question. But if you can't say what it's like to be you, it is hard to make sense of what it could be like to be a bat.
3) It doesn't follow. The issue of "internal" and "external" is quite slippery. In one sense, everything that isn't your immediate consciousness is "outside of you". So the computer screen you are looking at right now is part of what's called "external" to you.
Another option would be to say what's external from a human being is likely what the sciences describe, specifically physics. In this sense a bat or a computer or anything else in ordinary experience is internal and not part of the mind-independent world.
It's tricky.
Yep.
[quote=Thomas Nagel]Conscious experience is a widespread phenomenon. It occurs at many levels of animal life, though we cannot be sure of its presence in the simpler organisms, and it is very difficult to say in general what provides evidence of it. (Some extremists have been prepared to deny it even of mammals other than man.) No doubt it occurs in countless forms totally unimaginable to us, on other planets in other solar systems throughout the universe. But no matter how the form may vary, the fact that an organism has conscious experience at all means, basically, that there is something it is like to be that organism. There may be further implications about the form of the experience; there may even (though I doubt it) be implications about the behavior of the organism. But fundamentally an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organismsomething it is like for the organism.
We may call this the subjective character of experience.[/quote]
I think there is a better name for that - hint: one word, begins with [s]'b'[/s] 'B'.
Shouldn't that be 'B'?
Anyway the point I tried ham-fistedly to make is that what Nagel calls the ‘subjective character of experience’ is simply a roundabout way of referring, I think, to ‘being’. Humans, and other sentient beings, are beings, and the word ‘being’ has a particular meaning which I think it usually overlooked. After all humans are beings - that’s how we’re referred to - and arguably bats and other mammals are also beings, albeit non-rational beings. Whereas, I would think, tables and chairs are not. Beings are different to inanimate things because they are subjects of experience. I take that to be one of the imports of Nagel’s essay.
A New Age is a change in consciousness. The 21 century certainly is a New Age and what follows in the next century could once again be a changed consciousness making it impossible for people of the future to be able to relate to the past.
To say I don’t know what it is like to be a bat, but I do know that to be a bat is to be like something....otherwise, for me, there can be nothing in any way like a bat at all, an obvious contradiction.....all I have said about my knowledge system is its determination of its own limits, but nothing about any particular kind of world to which my knowledge directs itself.
So saying, no, I do not agree with the argument.
1.) The major is true, in that there is something it is like to be a bat.
2.) The minor is partially true, in that no matter the quantity of things I do know, the fact remains that my knowledge of everything is impossible, hence not knowing the something the being of a bat is like, is merely among the things I don’t know, and also partially incomplete, in that the “I can never know” can arise from either an inductive inference as an a priori condition of time, or, from a deductive inference as an empirical condition of mere physiological impossibility. But....
3.) The conclusion does not follow from the premises, in that.....
A.) it neglects the possibility that reality and the objective world are already determined as indistinguishable by the very self-limiting knowledge system that is investigating things possible to know.....
B.) it neglects the logic that because it is the case that something is not known, warrant is immediately relinquished for determining the world to which that something belongs, and....
C.) having knowledge of something is sufficient to claim its necessity, but having no knowledge of something is not sufficient to claim its impossibility.
Or so it seems.......
Nicely put. I especially like the distinction between being and inanimate things. That lead me to find "THE ANIMATE AND THE INANIMATE" by WILLIAM JAMES SIDIS https://sidis.net/animate.pdf. It is an online book and I really want a hard copy.
That looks interesting but we have one more thing to contend with, consciousness. Animals have a degree of consciousness but this is not self-consciousness and does not include the ability to imagine.
It is our ability to imagine that truly separates us from other animals. And 100 years ago no one would have imagined life with personal computers and the internet. Our imagination is built on what we know and we can not unknow what we know. ( :chin: as I worry about having dementia we can forget what we know, but that is a different subject?) What is consciousness? Why can't we know how a bat experiences life? Does our experience of life and therefore consciousness depend on our bodies?
Are you denying the existence of the subjective experiences of, say, dolphins? That's implausible.
That's totally non-controversial (or should be).
There is something it is like to be a bat. That something is the bat. I could never understand the supposed profundity of Nagel’s arguments.
[quote=Bob Dylan]I’m just average, common too
I’m just like him, the same as you
I’m everybody’s brother and son
I ain’t different from anyone
It ain’t no use a-talking to me
It’s just the same as talking to you
[/quote]
Being a bat is like being a very small flying me with sonar.
Perhaps you should consider the notion that you have been EVERYTHING else.
Sorry, I'm too daft, apparently, to discern the reference. B ...?
Well, you're not a bat. Do you know what it's like to be a bat?
Actually, it is controversial.
It was controversial, for example, for Descartes who believed that animals have no feelings, don't feel pain, and that therefore, it was okay to torture them.
It has been controversial for so many peple who promote meat-eating.
It has been controversial for some many ists, such as for white supremacists who believe that black people aren't really humans and don't have human feelings.
I've known teachers who would refer to their students with "it", saying "it doesn't feel anything, it doesn't have a conscience".
Yes, Nagel's point is highly controversial. People are not likely to give up their belief in their supremacy over others, they're not easily going to give up their belief that they are the arbiters of another's reality.
2. No matter how much I learn about the subjective world, I will never know what it means to be human.
3. Therefore, in fact there is something that is outside the subjective world.
All this means that the other subject may not be like you, although he will be absolutely similar.
By the way, what is the "objective world"?
How do you know that??
Quoting SimpleUser
How do you know that??
The above two premises strike me as undecidable.
The premises one uses should be true, otherwise the whole exercise is pointless.
We already fixed this
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/6895/what-it-is-like-to-experience-x
You can't possibly know that.
I'm denying that "there is something it is like to be a dolphin".
The notion of subjectivity is fraught with nonsense.
What is it like to be baker? Tell us.
Defined by Merriam-Webster, Wittgenstein, or something else?
Merriam-Webster: words or language having no meaning or conveying no intelligible ideas
Wittgenstein:
Only if "there is something it is like" makes sense. And it doesn't make sense for "there I something it is like to be RogueAI", because what it is like to be you changes.
So it is unreasonable t conclude that it makes sense for a bat - which bat, when?
Dolphins feel pain.
If he said, "that bat" would it change for you? I think he means that if we were to experience what another does, it would have a general commonality that we can (literally) empathize with, that something as foreign as a bat to our subjective "way in the world" can not easily analogize.
That's a copout. The Banno of five minutes ago is still you. Questions about your subjective experiences are sensical: what is Banno's experience of pain like? Is it like mine? What about his (her?) experience of red? Same as mine or slightly different? Those are questions that make sense and have answers (even if we'll never be sure of them). Agree so far?
Go on, then.
Quoting RogueAI
But that's irrelevant. Even if ther ewere something it is like to be RogueAI, what it is like to be RogueAI now would not be like what it was like to be RogueAI before the influence of my last brilliant post. What it is like to be RogueAI changes.
You two prefer to argue than to think.
See this.
What would be constant here? what would be using "What it is like to be RogueAI" in the same way as you did before? How was "What it is like to be RogueAI" used in the first place?
There can be no such continuity here.
No, I meant it in the way Nagel was saying "What it's like to be a bat". That is to say, I can't know. I can describe what the bat is doing, and try to analogize it to my own subjectivity, but that's about it.
He can't know, not because of any failing in his capacity to observe, but because knowing does not fit here.
It's not that there is a something it is like to be a bat, but you cannot observe and understand it; It's not event that there is not something that it is like to be a bat; It's rather that we cannot even determine if there is a something that it is like to be a bat.
‘Being’, capitalised, as a proper noun, which is often the case in discussions of, e.g. ‘the meaning of Being’.
Okay, but you'd have to explain that.
You didn't follow the article in SEP I referenced?
This is an application of the private language argument.
See this.
I agree with you, although most won’t. I think Aristotelian philosophy believed there are ontological distinctions between living and non-living, between animal and vegetative, and between rational and non-rational beings. An ontological distinction means there’s a difference in kind. But these distinctions were discarded along with many other elements of Aristotelianism by modern science, which tends to try and explain everything in terms of matter-energy. Nagel elaborates his point in more detail in his 2012 book Mind and Cosmos where he says that:
This does not mean the bat is not conscious, it could well be. Maybe it's on the borderline between consciousness and pure instinct. I think part of Nagel's point in choosing a bat is precisely to show an edge case.
On the other hand although we do not have direct evidence, it would be strange to deny dogs are conscious and behave in "intelligent" ways. The Gap by Suddendorf goes over some of the evidence, it's very interesting to see the "killjoy" and "romantic" interpretations on these issues...
:100:
That's spot on.
Subjective and Essence - two words that should give pause. When they both occur in the same phrase, one should tread with care.
We can talk about what it might be like to have the experiences of a bat - what it might be like to use echolocation, for example.
What happens when you add the word "subjective"? Can we talk about what it might be like to have the subjective experiences of a bat? The typical answer is "no", guided by a sentiment that says we can't know another's subjective experiences. But what happened here? What changed when we added "subjective"? I can tell when someone is in pain, despite pain being subjective... I can understand that someone is grieving, or ecstatic, or fatigued; all supposedly subjective experiences that we cannot know...
What happens when you add the word "essence? What is the essence of the experience of being a bat? How does the essence of an experience differ from the experience per se?
What looked profound, "the subjective essence of the experience", begins to look more like mere wordplay.
So I can't agree with your giving the quote :100:
There's a lot to say about that, but I have to get going, it's getting late here.
I agreed w/the quote, but I did not use those words - he was talking about people in that quote, not bats. Sure those words can be problematic, but in the context given, I think it's correct - perhaps with some slight modification.
I'll give you my thoughts tomorrow. Have a good one.
You've admitted that dolphins feel pain, so there is something that it is like to be a dolphin in pain: namely, a dolphin in pain. The question then naturally arises: is a dolphin in pain similar to a human in pain? Is your claim then that that's a nonsensical question or simply one that can't be answered?
The question is not what is it like to be in pain, but what it is like to be a dolphin.
That's important.
Are experiences real? Yes.
I'm puzzled that you need to add "subjective". It's a term that carries so much baggage. Drop it, and get on with doing stuff.
I'm not entering into a discussion on the temporal ontology of experiences; the topic is confused enough as is.
Quoting Banno
If experiences are real, then there are experiencer(s), and those experiences are subjective. There's no avoiding it- subjectiveness is contained within the meaning of "experience".
Also: if experiences are real, who's doing the experiencing? Something must be. If there is more than one experiencer, can we talk about comparing their experiences? Why not?
What does that mean?
Quoting RogueAI
What is added by calling it "subjectiveness"?
Look again: Quoting Banno
Let's start simple. You admit there are experiences. It follows there must be experiencer(s). Agreed?
That helps, how?
Yep. Two people stub their toes. Go on.
so... go on.
I answered by giving a comparison, which short of implies that one can compare them...
One hit her left foot, the other her right.
Make your point. It's lunch time.
If you think about it, this opens out into the question of the sense in which 'the world' exists independently of the experiencing subject. In other words, if you wish to depict the world as existing 'from no perspective', what is being lost, or being concealed, in that depiction? There is a subjective pole to experience, and therefore reality, which is concealed by the objectivist stance. And that is the insight that gave rise to phenomenology.
Quoting Banno
From a sympathetic review of Mind and Cosmos (and there were many more that weren't):
Quoting Banno
However, there is a strong tendency in modern philosophy to account for the latter in terms of the former. That is the tendency which Nagel is arguing against. It was also what Wittgenstein opposed.
[quote=Ray Monk] His work [was] opposed, as he once put it, to “the spirit which informs the vast stream of European and American civilisation in which all of us stand.” Nearly 50 years after his death, we can see, more clearly than ever, that the feeling that he was swimming against the tide was justified. If we wanted a label to describe this tide, we might call it “scientism,” the view that every intelligible question has either a scientific solution or no solution at all. It is against this view that Wittgenstein set his face.[/quote]
From here
Are you saying that "hitting her left foot" is an experience or causes an experience?
But that Nagel's argument is agreeable does not make it cogent.
Which is your preference? On such questions of grammar I am happy to accomodate you...
in the interests of expediting the discussion.
Hitting your toe against the floor causes the experience of the pain of stubbing a toe, yes. I think that's what you meant. But when I ask you how experiences are compared and you say, "One hit her left foot, the other her right." you are not talking about experiences, you are talking about the causes of experiences. I have no problem with the idea of comparing causes of experiences. There's no tension there. But I would like to know how experiences can be compared. I don't think we can use language, because there's no way to verify what another person means when they refer to their own expereinces.
Unless you mean the physical act of hitting your toe on the floor is an actual experience. Are you a reductionist? That's one way to compare brain states: wire the two people up and see what's going on, but then that commits you to "brain states = mental states". Is that your view?
...to a discussion about Nagel’ most famous paper.
You want to talk about experiences. I've giving you carte blanche to set up your argument as you wish.
You want to distinguish between hitting your toe and the experience of hitting your toe. Can you make this distinction clear?
If a materialist/physicalist admits that experiences are real, in any sense of the word, they have to admit experiences can be compared, else you get the existence in a physical universe of two incomparable real things (that would seem to be a problem, maybe not?). So then how would a materialist explain how experiences can be compared? Can we compare experiences by talking about them? But how can I ever verify what you mean when you refer to your own experiences? That referent is closed off to me. Measuring brain states? But then doesn't that commit a materialist to a strict reductionist view that mental states are identical to brain states?
Our exchange was very productive. I like this little argument. Maybe it crashes and burns.
I suspect a materialist would have little difficulty in adhering to the view that mental states are identical to brain states. So I don't see your argument convincing them.
I note that you dropped the use of subjective terms from your account. That pleases me, and I think improved it to the point where the difficulties could be seen.
Thanks for the chat.
Bread, cheese, Sicilian olives, french radishes, lettuce. A pleasant experience.
This heads toward the 'beetle-in-the-box' idea. How can 'pain' have a public meaning? And yet it does (there are right ways and wrong ways to use the word.) Same with 'red' and 'green' tho there's no way to check raw sensations. But then how does 'raw sensation' or how does 'experience' get public meaning?
What is it like to be a bat? To be able to fly on one's own steam, to be able to "see" with your ears and yet have poor eyesight, etc. Since I've never actually done that, I guess I'll never know. No one will I suppose.
What bothers me is if there's a subjective element to consciousness how is it that we can agree on anything at all? Thoughts, sensations (consciousness) are areas we've reached consensus on, something impossible were it that consciousness had a major subjective component that would've precluded such a possibility, no?
More can be said but I'm signing off for now.
Why do you ask? Your question presupposes a particular notion of reality that you have which I suppose you feel mine doesn't correspond all that well with. Perhaps we can work towards a mutually acceptable version of our "two" realities and that's what those people who claim that consciousness is subjective have to explain if they're to maintain their position, no?
Go on...
Edit: Just to point out I was originally the questioner. I wasn't planing to defend realism.
Well if that quote were applied to bats, then what you say is correct. But it's also true to say that we can't apply that quote to other animals either, nor people for that matter.
I take it that the point of Nagel's quote is that no matter how much we study the brain, given the methods we have, we'll be leaving out a crucial aspect of life. In that sense, Nagel is correct, or so it looks like to me.
Quoting Banno
Yeah, speaking about "subjectivity" and "objectivity" can be quite confusing if used too much, in that I agree. If he said something like the most important aspect of experience for us, then that might be more clear. But the gist of the quote looks correct to me.
I am slightly changing the slant of your question because I wouldn't really want to be a bat, but I think that it is also interesting to to what extent we can really know what it is like to be another person. I am sure that we all try to practice empathy but, to what extent do we REALLY know others' inner worlds, because so much is filtered through our own personal perspective? We may think we understand others, but I am sure in many cases this understanding can be limited by our own experiences.
As long as experience is left out, the description is not complete at all. The subject of "mind independence" is one of the hardest of them all! I'm inclined to mostly agree with Schopenhauer on this topic, or varieties of idealists. Everything is a representation and when we are gone, what remains in the world is unknown or very very hard to mention.
Phenomenology very much highlights just how rich experience can be. It's also difficult, in my experience, to find people who do phenomenology in a way that is not very abstract and filled with lots of technicalities. In this respect, Tallis is excellent.
That went over my head. Sorry but can you expand on that a bit? What does it mean, this subjective consensus. That's an oxymoron for you, right?
You can't possibly know that. [/quote]
I do know something about science and science has studied this question. There is not complete agreement but many animals do not appear capable of identifying themselves in a mirror and the conclusion is they are not self-conscious. Humans do not pass the mirror test until age two.
Quoting Robert Krulwich
I believe there are different scientific points of view.
https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/03/03/134167145/i-sniff-therefore-i-am-are-dogs-self-conscious
.
However much I learn about the objective world I can never know everything about the world.
From this it does not follow that
3. Therefore there is something in reality that is outside of the objective world.
What follows is that there is something in reality that is outside the limits of my knowledge.
:lol: There are few things I hate more than a young person replying to something I have said about myself with "I understand." No, we do not understand another person's experience especially if we never had an equal experience. I studied gerontology (study of aging) thinking that would become a career for me. I thought I knew something about being old. :lol: Textbooks and working with older people, do not give us the understanding that we gain from personal experience. And The rich and poor do not share the same understanding of reality. The rich do not know the experience of poverty nor does the person who has only known poverty know how it feels to have plenty of money every day of the year. A White person can not know what it is like to be a person of color. Or as a convict once said to me, "You can think shit taste bad but you don't how bad until you eat it."
:lol: It would be great if our doctor's understood our pain and the best way to live with it.
If we take it in a strictly matter- energy paradigm... whereby ecosystems exchange energy and matter through cycles of life and death. And seeing as both you and the bat are composed of the same stuff and live in the same place - earth, then statement would be ... it’s likely that once I or part of me was a bat and that again in the future a bat may be composed of stuff from my body, I cannot remember being a bat nor will the bat remember being me. Therefore awareness of oneself must be restricted to/ Gained only in the state of living.
Yes, I think that you capture how hard it is to understand the whole nature of experience. I think that people often say they understand to try to make the other feel better. I have seen people doing that in mental health care. It is important to try to understand others' experiences through listening, but it is too easy to say we understand when probably we only do in a shallow way. Sometimes it is as if really all bats.
You can't possibly know that.
Indeed. We might ask why we all think that pain-killers can be effective if no one can check in the secret box of the other where pain is supposed to live.
I agree, but why/how? I speculate that it's part of the language we're trained into being able to use with others.
No. The argument assumes there are objective and subjective worlds, which a non-dualist rejects.
Here's a similar argument that doesn't assume dualism:
In the future, could we be augmented with echolocation technology and so experience the world as a bat does (at least in that respect)? If so, then premise 2 would be false.
But if premise 2 entails being a bat (note the be in the original argument) in order to experience the world as a bat does, then premise 2 would be true. This is just an identity claim. But, by that criterion, I would also never know what it is like to be any other person, since I am not them.
I think, under normal considerations, that identity criterion is too strong. We do know what it is like to experience the world as other people do and even as other creatures do in particular circumstances, however imperfectly (e.g., when suffering an injury).
Quoting Anna Kucirkova
I like Quoting Jack Cummins example of people with mental health problems. Here our bodies are the same but our experience of life is different. I think it is hugely important we know without question that our experience is not the same as another and our understanding of what the other is experiencing is very shallow.
Businesses today are losing a lot of customers because their way of doing business is a huge turn-off and at the same time we seem to be more clueless about turning customers away and why we have serious social problems than ever before! In general sensitivity of another being different and perhaps getting closed out, is at an all-time high! But I have also experienced some people being extremely nice and helpful. When I got my covid shots the folks doing that at the fairgrounds and the football stadium were sooo nice! I have to clarify this because those people involved with covid were different from what is common today, of expecting everyone to understand the technology and the procedure and the policies. One is more personal and people caring about others and this challenge to overcome a serious problem, and the other is excessively impersonal and shuts people out.
Yes, so conceivably echolocation technology could be embedded into the brain and body so that a person could see (so to speak) with their eyes closed. Things would look different via that sense modality since the information received would be different.
Quoting Athena
Indeed, empathy depends on recognizing points of difference as well as points of commonality.
If you're not a dualist, and you believe experiences are real, how are they real?
Depends on what you mean by “real”. Life seems real while we are living it, but before our birth, we did not miss not being alive for an estimated 13.7 billion years (from the Big Bang). And when we die, we won’t know that we are dead, so we won’t miss being alive at that time either.
Since birth, everything we know comes from personal experience based on information gathered by the five senses of sight, sound, taste, touch and smell. We may imagine what something might be like, but will only “know for sure” from personal experience.
Okay.
Quoting Banno
A taking for granted of another being's identity, ie. that is has an identity, that it is an entity with some permanent characteristics, that there is a continuity to it. One such is taken for granted, it makes sense to talk of "what it's like to be a bat".
Quoting Banno
Talk of consciousness has to do at least two things: it has to satisfy the scientific standards of analyzing consciousness in terms of chemistry, physiology, and such; and it has to address the moral and legal implications of however consciousness is conceived of conceptually (hence the paraphernalia of subjectivism).
He explains his choice:
"I assume we all believe that bats have experience. After all,
they are mammals, and there is no more doubt that they have
experience than that mice or pigeons or whales have experience.
I have chosen bats instead of wasps or flounders because if one
travels too far down the phylogenetic tree, people gradually shed
their faith that there is experience there at all. Bats, although more
closely related to us than those other species, nevertheless present
a range of activity and a sensory apparatus so different from ours
that the problem I want to pose is exceptionally vivid (though it
certainly could be raised with other species). Even without the
benefit of philosophical reflection, anyone who has spent some
time in an enclosed space with an excited bat knows what it is to
encounter a fundamentally alien form of life."
Thanks for pointing that out.
Wouldn't being in a completely dark cave and using a rock to try and find out where the walls are be akin to a kind of echolocation?
Sure, it could well be the case that bats have experience. There's no way to tell that I know of. I don't think this should necessarily raise ethical concerns about treating bats badly or anything like that. I assume our intuitions of giving experience to creatures starts to blur quite a bit in the case of worms.
Part of the problem has to do with using our notion of experience and applying to other species. But we know of no other metric to think about experience at all.
Of course, some blind people use such rudimentary forms of echolocation.
But it does raise such concerns.
Look at Descartes and the like:
Any account of consciousness has to account for its moral implications.
Are you familiar with the Buddhist concept of anatta?
To me, the difference at hand is about actually eating an apple, and describing/analyzing/explaining the eating of an apple.
Which is better, more relevant? To eat an apple, or to describe/analyze/explain the eating of an apple?
Yes, what you quote there is true. That was a problem for Cartesians who by today's standards would be considered quite monstruos. Animal rights, though still having ways to go, have improved drastically. It's a major topic of concern now with criminal liabilities, back then, it was not too important.
But today, I think the issue can be put forth without much controversy, bats should not be made to suffer needlessly.
But I think this is true even if "what it's likeness" arguments don't follow, that is, they can't be stated properly. Even if there is no such thing as "what it's like to be a bat", I think it makes sense to treat them decently.
Or would you say what it's like arguments are necessary here?
I am afraid that they are.
In the absence of a binding system of morality, concepts such as "consciousness" have to carry the moral load.
Needs detail.
Sure, consciousness is an absolutely crucial aspect to moral considerations.
I don't think this applies to "what it's likeness" though. Or at least, I'm not seeing the connection.
Why are you copying my argument? :cool:
Na man, I'm kidding! :rofl: :razz:
Baker is shifting ground from the OP. That's fine, so long as we mark the change explicitly.
Yeah. Well, can't this topic come under the cover of, say, "what's it like to be in pain"? As in, we have an idea of what such a state consists of, therefore we might want to avoid doing that to bats.
Or something like that.
It's not clear what is going on here. What does it mean to say a bat has an identity? That the bat knows who it is? That Baker knows it is a bat? What is it you think is taken for granted?
But moreover, is this the right argument if what we are after is a justification for moral reasoning? Suppose the bat does not have an identity - that that make it OK to inflict pain on it? If identity is attributed, then can't it be attributed to a tree or a rock? So do they have moral standing because they have an identity?
I think you've failed to see the point. An 'ontological distinction' means 'a difference in kind'. I'm saying, there are differences in kind between mineral, organic, sentient and rational beings. In old-school philosophical parlance, they're different substances. Whereas the general consensus is, I believe, that there is only one substance, that being matter (now, matter~energy) and that organic, sentient, and rational beings are simply permutations of this single substance. That is what I'm calling into question.
Salient points, and look how long this conversation has gone on. On the other hand, knowing what it is like to be be another human is another matter. We can imagine ourselves being someone else, at least to a certain degree. As we read along a first person narrative in a novel we do just that if the author is skilled enough. But to come awake as another is a different ball game entirely.
I get the impression that many if not most posters on this forum have little to say of their own experiences apart from those arising from studying philosophy. I've wondered, Do the philosophically inclined have fewer dimensions to their lives than normal? I would enjoy reading of interests that are either separate from or overlap philosophy that have meanings to posters lives. Maybe another topic, one that might go to Lounge.
I've mentioned an experience I had after several years of practicing Castaneda's Art of Dreaming in which I came partially awake as another person - someone living in a cottage in Ireland - with an entirely different feeling of personhood. Had the spell lasted more than scant seconds I've wondered if memories of that being would have come forth. What indeed does it mean to be who we are?
But there's more here, since there are those who would distinguish between actually eating an apple and having the experience of eating an apple; presumably with the first being objective and the second subjective.
Quoting Wayfarer
Are we doing physics? Then it makes sense to talk about matter and energy and particles and so on; but i don't think there is much mention of "substance" in either cosmology or quantum physics. Or are we doing theory of action, in which case we might talk of intention and agency, and make no mention of substance. Or are we talking about phenomenology, in which case presumably we would talk about appearances, and perhaps substance would make an appearance there.
But I see no reason to think of substance as worth discussing in any and all conversations.
Oh, indeed; and here is the odd thing about the what-it-is-like conversation: if the bat argument is to reach its conclusion, we cannot know what it is like to be a bat... and yet here it is clear that we can know something about what it is like to be someone else.
So which is it?
We're doing philosophy. I'm interested in ontological distinctions.
What is it doing?
So what the term calls attention to is the difference in kind between various sorts of beings - of, if you like, to enable the differentiation of beings and things. As I said earlier in this thread, what I think Nagel is trying to elucidate in his 'something it is like', is actually, simply, 'being'. Bats and humans are beings, and as such are subjects of experience. Stones are not beings, but things, and there's a fundamental distinction of kind between things and beings - one which, I propose, is often overlooked, forgotten or denied in modern philosophy.
As I'm using the term, experience is "practical contact with and observation of facts or events".
Kicking a football around with my kids is an experience. So is watching a sunset. These experiences are interactions between myself and (other entities in) the world, not events in a private Cartesian theater.
Quoting RogueAI
That's right. Like a human being, a bat is a living organism that has the ability to perceive and interact with its environment (albeit with differing sense modalities).
Quoting RogueAI
Not if subjective means "in the mind" as opposed to "in the world" which in this context is a Cartesian distinction, not an ordinary or natural distinction. As I'm using the term, an experience is an interaction by a perceiving creature with things in the world.
Quoting RogueAI
People ordinarily regard what they do and see as the primary candidates for what is real. For example, I'm sitting at my computer, thinking about your comments and typing a reply. That's my current experience.
You don't believe experiences happen in the mind? If not, then where? In the world? If so, then specifically where in the world do experiences (or experiencing, if you prefer) happen? The brain?
To not know what it's like to be male/female means we have to span at least two lives to get complete data; male and female hearts may vary, calling for a new gender with a fuller heart.
This case I think applies to the topic at hand, it's one of my thinking topics at the moment.
Life is this universe is restricted somewhat; you can't alternate between characters. Some answers are hidden from us, lucky it's only temporary.
No, not in the brain. Where do I kick around a football with my kids? In the park, or my backyard. People (or bats) have experiences, not brains or minds. From Smit and Hacker:
Quoting Seven Misconceptions About the Mereological Fallacy: A Compilation for the Perplexed - Harry Smit & Peter M. S. Hacker, 2013
The being.
This is moot, because if one assumes that something doesn't have an identity, then one also assumes that it doesn't/cannot feel pain to begin with.
When you chop would, you don't think "Oh, I'm inflicting pain on this log of wood". It simply doesn't occur to you that a log of wood could feel pain. Descartes thought that animals were much like logs of wood in this regard.
And this assumption about the lack of an identity or a diminished or damaged identity is the justification that people give for slitting throats, throwing stones at, hitting with sticks, and so on.
For example, a commandment says "Thou shalt not kill", but people who profess to abide by said commandment may see no problem in slitting the throats of cows or burning alive the members of another tribe. Because for them, "Thou shalt not kill" only has meaning in reference to (valued) members of their own tribe, while every other being is deemed necessarily lesser (and thus, it's not actually possible to commit a crime against it, even if one were to slit its thorat).
Of course. Consider, for example, works of art or craftsmanship, or even just ordinary cars: these things have an identity attributed to them, with a unique serial number. And while there are generally not assumed to be able to feel pain, there is a big issue when it comes to damaging them.
There's a big difference between breaking rocks at a quarry and hitting the Great Star of Africa with a hammer.
Without an identity, they wouldn't be eligible for moral standing.
I was refering to this:
Quoting Wayfarer
Sure.
What do you think are the moral implications or the implications for a theory of morality for each of the views?
It seems to me that the reason we have an ontology, the reason why we list "what is there", is because this has bearing on how we relate to that which is there and how we justify our actions toward it.
Ugh. Him and the Churchlands and even much worse, Rosenberg. Total lunacy.
I mean, if you want to deny conscious experience, fine. But then just study the brain or something. Why bother speaking about "there seems to be qualia" be there isn't any. It's quite amazing to believe that we are Zombies and not people.
Sure. Dennett is a decent liberal, so far as I know. He's also quite entertaining in the examples he gives. His is a materialism of a certain strain, which we have no reason to believe is true. Galen Strawson calls himself a materialist too, but he's probably Dennett's fiercest critic.
Yes, it's good to be exposed to such views, I agree. But after that, at least to me, that type of thinking is just very boring. You get rid of consciousness, or claim to anyway. Fine. Now what? Why bother with anything in philosophy outside ethics perhaps? And even here, as you say, ethics would also be problematic. It's all just chemicals anyway.
But philosophy of mind is interesting.
A person is made up of many things: arms, legs, organs, tissue, brain, etc. If I stub my toe and experience pain, where exactly in my body is that experience taking place? Not in my pinky. Not in my kidney.
I'm not keen on that approach. Purloining ideas form other areas of philosophy - in this case ontology - is fraught. Where you see it as drawing attention to the difference between a rock and a bat, I'm thinking it confuses the distinction. After all, chemically, the difference between a bat and a rock is one of quantity rather than quality; and physically the difference is explained in terms of entropy and complexity, and again is one of quantity rather than quality.
I'm confident that the discussion here shows that the notion of what-it-is-like is also fraught, caught in a between what can be said, what can be shown and what is ineffable.
I'd drop the ontological analysis, for the sake of simplicity, and simply say that the bat is worthy of moral consideration whilst the rock is not. This strikes me as dropping the questionable ontology whilst addressing the core issue.
I'll add that I don't think there is a need to defend or justify the idea that the bat is worthy of consideration in a way that the rock isn't. If someone disagrees with that, then I'd just say they have misunderstood what is going on.
So we agree that there is a difference in quality between a rock and a bat, but disagree as to how to elucidate that difference.
Edit: see above.
Edit: Quoting Wayfarer
I think it clear that the difference between a bat and a rock is made clearer by talk of minds and morals than talk of substance and being.
One has a mind and the other doesn't. That's the fundamental difference between the two: one is conscious and other isn't (or maybe the rock is? Anyone want to argue that?).
The pain is in your toe (unless it's referred pain). But no experience is taking place in your toe. It is you that is experiencing pain (or is in pain), not your toe.
If you want to know what caused you to have that experience, then you look at factors like the place you were in when it happened (say, your backyard) and what you stubbed your toe on (say, a rock).
You can also investigate physiological factors, such as the role of the brain and nervous system.
But at no point does it make sense to say that an experience such as the above happened in your mind, or in your brain, or in your toe. People have experiences like kicking a football, or watching a sunset, or stubbing their toe and they happen in particular environmental contexts.
This is a problem. Suppose I've made an exhaustive list of everything that makes up me. I'm also experiencing some pain from stubbing my toe. If I ask you: is my kidney experiencing pain? And you say: no. Is my toe experiencing pain? and you say: no. Is my x experiencing pain? And on and on. Eventually, you're going to have to say "yes" to one of my questions or else concede that I'm in pain, but no part of me is experiencing any pain, which of course is an absurdity.
I think the answer is that introducing "being" confuses things unnecessarily.
I think the topic started here.
I think the fact that it can’t be introduced without causing confusion is because we’re confused.
No, that's the fallacy of division. It doesn't follow that something predicable of the whole should be predicable of any of the parts.
In this case, one's body parts are not living organisms, so it's absurd to attribute experiences to those body parts.
That's true. Each individual neuron doesn't think or feel anything, but combined, they are more than the sum of their parts. Your position is going to lead to the hard problem: if the parts of a person don't experience pain, but the person does, how does that work? Which parts are involved? What's their function? How do they combine to produce the experience of pain? Why pain and not some other experience?
You reminded me of the day I went through an art museum with my eyes closed and experiencing everything through touch. Touching was a big no-no but I couldn't stop myself. That was a much more intimate experience with my surroundings than we have by looking at things. I realized when we look at things we keep them at a distance and don't actually experience them, but when we touch, that sensation must travel through our fingers to our brains. I would say with touch, instead of keeping things at a distance, we internalize what we touch.
But then some people think I do drugs. :lol: I don't, but I do think I have times when I experience life differently. I would love to do an art show that is all about touch. When a person came in the person would be given a mask and be invited to experience everything through touch. It would be good if they came with another person who serves as a guide and perhaps they take turns with one using the blindfold and then the other, and communicating with each other their experience.
Now add a tea room for the visitors to the touch art show. Have a fountain with bubbling water and perhaps some birds singing. So people can sit and leisurely communicate their experience, getting in touch with themselves and each other.
Not knowing what it’s like to be something else We don't even know our own experience of life and that we can experience it differently. I think we are all rather numb to life, and living in our heads without a good connection with our bodies and what is around us.
Inasmuch does this view overlap with the concept of anatta, where do they differ?
Of course, no one can answer that these days. But maybe a picture will help. Consciousness is like superconductivity, it is there or not. If something is not right (too high temperature, too strong magnetic field), then the superconductivity disappears. The whole system is superconducting, not the single atoms.
I've been thinking about that. We tend to value animals in proportion to their perceived intelligence, but does intelligence mean anything when talking about consciousness? Is my consciousness "greater" than a person born MR? That doesn't make any sense, and when I get high, my IQ drops to fantastically low levels, but my consciousness seems to expand. If consciousness IS an on/off thing, as I suspect it is, then we need to find out what the consciousness dividing line is, if one exists. Maybe the panpsychists are right and everything has a rich inner mental life, even electrons, although idealism seems the more parsimonious theory.