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What is it like to be a bat?

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180 points adityaathalye | 2 comments | 03 Sep 25 17:48 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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bee_rider ◴[03 Sep 25 19:16 UTC] No.45119466[source]▶
Can a bat answer the question of “what is it like to be a bat?” I mean, I guess they would have to be able to comprehend the idea of being, and then the idea that things might experience things in ways other than how they do. Bats don’t seem like very abstract thinkers.

I bet if we could communicate with crows, we might be able to make some progress. They seem cleverer.

Although, I’m not sure I could answer the question for “a human.”

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snowram ◴[03 Sep 25 19:28 UTC] No.45119567[source]▶
Wittgenstein famously said "If a lion could talk, we could not understand him". This subject is a philosophical fun rabbit hole to explore.
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1. card_zero ◴[03 Sep 25 19:30 UTC] No.45119588[source]▶
> I think, on the contrary, that if a lion could talk, that lion would have a mind so different from the general run of lion minds, that although we could understand him just fine, we would learn little about ordinary lions from him.

(More Daniel Dennett)

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2. PreHistoricPunk ◴[03 Sep 25 22:01 UTC] No.45120851[source]▶
That makes any kind of insight into consciousness as a general term impossible though. That would mean we could not learn anything about human consciousness as such from studying specific persons.