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What is it like to be a bat?

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180 points adityaathalye | 1 comments | 03 Sep 25 17:48 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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RS-232 ◴[03 Sep 25 20:29 UTC] No.45120056[source]▶
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.

Anything that is able to be measured is able to experience. A subject like an apple "experiences" gravity when it falls from a tree. Things that do not interact with the physical world lack experience, and the closest things to those are WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles). Truly non-interacting particles (NIP) are presumed to be immeasurable.

So there you have it. The conundrum that consciousness can lack experience and unconsciousness can have experience. A more interesting question in my opinion: what is a soul?

replies(3): >>45120119 #>>45120157 #>>45121339 #
1. the_af ◴[03 Sep 25 20:35 UTC] No.45120119[source]▶
> 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.

If they don't have an "inner world"/"mind's eye" and are sensory deprived, in which sense can they be considered conscious? What is your definition here?

How can an apple "experience" gravity? I think you're overloading the term "experience" to mean two very different things, which happen (in some languages like English) to share the same word. You could say gravity "happens" to an apple, and then there's no confusion with subjective experiences.