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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: 0.199s | source
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vehemenz ◴[03 Sep 25 18:18 UTC] No.45118876[source]▶
I'm less convinced with consciousness as some sort of exceptional phenomenon—and how it's been used to define the "hard problem"—but the paper is still valuable as it provides an accessible entry point into the many problems of reductionism.
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ebb_earl_co ◴[03 Sep 25 18:31 UTC] No.45119004[source]▶
What brought down your level on convinced?
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vehemenz ◴[03 Sep 25 20:40 UTC] No.45120174[source]▶
When you reject the idea of reductionism, which Nagel's paper provokes us to do, then the entire idea of emergent phenomena collapses. Everything is on the same level, from fundamental particles to consciousness. Of course, some things can still be reduced and others can't, but in no situation is a phenomenon reduced in its metaphysical status. So what's the "problem" again, exactly? Consciousness doesn't need to be explained in terms of objective facts—it's not a special metaphysical thing but merely a theoretical term like anything else.
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1. glenstein ◴[03 Sep 25 23:02 UTC] No.45121297[source]▶
>When you reject the idea of reductionism, which Nagel's paper provokes us to do, then the entire idea of emergent phenomena collapses. Everything is on the same level, from fundamental particles to consciousness

Interesting. I would have said that something like that is the definition of reductionism.

>Consciousness doesn't need to be explained in terms of objective facts

If there's one good thing that analytic philosophy achieved, it was spending the better part of the 20th century beating back various forms of dualism and ghosts in the machine. You'd have to be something other than a naturalist traditionally conceived to treat "consciousness" as ontologically basic.