What is it like to be a bat?

>"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.

Do you believe that each run of a ChatGPT prompt has a conscious experience of its existence, much like you (presumably) do?

If you don't believe that, then you face the challenge of describing what the difference is. It's difficult to do in ordinary language.

That's what Nagel is attempting to do. Unless you're an eliminativist who believes that conscious experience is an "illusion" (experienced by what?), then you're just quibbling about wording, and I suspect you'll have a difficult time coming up with better wording yourself.

Wait a minute - it's still possible to believe chatgpt is unconscious for the same reason a game of tetris is unconscious.

I also don't think it's fair to say I'm just quibbling about wording. Yes, I am quibbling about wording, but the quibble is quite essential because the argument depends to such a large extent on wording. There are many other arguments for or against different views of consciousness but they are not the argument Nagel makes.

(Though fwiw I do think consciousness has some illusory aspects - which is only saying so much as "consciousness is different than it appears" and a far cry from "consciousness doesn't exist at all")

> it's still possible to believe chatgpt is unconscious for the same reason a game of tetris is unconscious.

Certainly. I just didn't know where you stood on the question.

In Nagel's terms, there is not something it is like to be a game of Tetris. A game of Tetris doesn't have experiences. "Something it is like" is an attempt to characterize the aspect of consciousness that's proved most difficult to explain - what Chalmers dubbed the hard problem.

How would you describe the distinction?

> fwiw I do think consciousness has some illusory aspects - which is only saying so much as "consciousness is different than it appears"

Oh sure, I think that's widely accepted.

A running game of Tetris has memory, responds to stimuli, and communicates. There has been evolution and reproduction of games of Tetris (perhaps in the way that viruses do). It isn't able to have feelings, what needs to be added for it to start having feelings and experiences?