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What is it like to be a bat?

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180 points adityaathalye | 6 comments | 03 Sep 25 17:48 UTC | HN request time: 0.213s | source | bottom
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bondarchuk ◴[03 Sep 25 19:34 UTC] No.45119634[source]▶
>"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 language) implies that there is a "thing" that is "like" "being the organism", yet is distinct from "being the organism". This is false - there is only "being the organism", there is no second "thing that is like being the organism" not even for the organism itself.

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1. trescenzi ◴[03 Sep 25 19:46 UTC] No.45119712[source]▶
There is no fundamental error it’s purposefully exactly as you state. Nagel is saying that consciousness is that second thing.
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2. bondarchuk ◴[03 Sep 25 20:00 UTC] No.45119826[source]▶
>Nagel is saying that consciousness is that second thing.

That's exactly what I'm saying is erroneous. Consciousness is the first thing, we are only led to believe it is a separate, second thing by a millenia-old legacy of dualism and certain built-in tendencies of mind.

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3. trescenzi ◴[03 Sep 25 20:20 UTC] No.45119974[source]▶
So then are you saying there is no such thing as consciousness? That everything is conscious? The intent of that quote is to say “consciousness is subjective experience”. You don’t need dualism to agree with that quote. I agree with Nagel’s general construction but I’m also a materialist. The hard problem doesn’t mean magic is needed to solve it, just that we don’t have a good explanation for why subjective experience exists.
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4. bondarchuk ◴[03 Sep 25 20:39 UTC] No.45120168{3}[source]▶
>The intent of that quote is to say “consciousness is subjective experience”

I doubt Nagel would go out of his way to offer such an unnatural linguistic construction, and other philosophers would adopt this construction as a standard point of reference, if that was the sole intent.

>So then are you saying there is no such thing as consciousness?

No, not at all. I'm only saying that if we want to talk about "the consciousness of a bat", we should talk about it directly, and not invent (implicitly) a second concept that is in some senses distinct from it, and in some sense comparable to it.

5. mensetmanusman ◴[03 Sep 25 21:23 UTC] No.45120558{3}[source]▶
Materialists don’t even know what materials are though.
6. goatlover ◴[04 Sep 25 05:36 UTC] No.45123919[source]▶
That's just idealism. Idealism doesn't have a hard problem. But it does have a problem with accounting for how the world appears to be physical independent of any mind experiencing it, such as before any life evolved or in many places were no life is around.