It's a common usage which makes no strict logical sense. Someone might say " what is skydiving like?" for example, which means 'how does skydiving feel?', not 'what does skydiving resemble?'. "What is it like to be a bat?" Could be rephrased as 'how is it to be a bat?' or probably better: ' how does it feel to be a bat?'.

:up:

In this case, how exactly is "experiencing a red qual" different from "seeing red"? I'm not asking for an answer, since there is a plethora of posts and indeed treads on the topic. But what is germane is the common use of "like" in "What it is like to be a bat" and "What it is like to see red".

There is nothing "it is like" to see red or to be a bat; there is just seeing red, and being a bat. — Banno

This makes sense to me. Yep, it's the 'what is it like' that I find intractable.

Nagel’s most important insight is that humans aren’t bats.

If someone makes a wrong move in Chess, it is not inappropriate for one to point it out to them.

The line I am taking here is more akin to Austin than to Wittgenstein; qualia as the latest incarnation of Ayer's sense-data nonsense.

And as for games, see Mary Midgley's The game game. Games is an example, not a type.

Just for my own reference, here's the article in question: What is it like to be a bat?. Nagel is arguing that consciousness is irreducible, because "what it is like o be a bat" is irreducible. While I agree with his conclusion, I think his argument is flawed; and I recall that he has somewhere pretty much agreed with that view.

Someone might say " what is skydiving like?" for example, which means 'how does it feel?', not 'what does skydiving resemble?'. — Janus

Sure. Now answer the question - what is skydiving like? What would that answer look like?


What more would one expect or eccept in answer, except what it resembles.

One may not be able to say what it is like to skydive or to bat, but one might show it; in a poem, a video, or a painting; and it will not be exact nor complete, but that will not make it wrong.

If someone makes a wrong move in Chess... — Banno

Fair enough. Enjoy the game.

...intractable... — Tom Storm

:wink:

tractable (adj.)
"manageable," early 15c., from Latin tractabilis "that may be touched or handled, workable, tangible, manageable," figuratively, "pliant," from tractare "to handle, manage" (see treat (v.)). Related: Tractability.

Indeed, one can't put one's hand on what is being claimed.

If someone makes a wrong move in Chess, it is not inappropriate for one to point it out to them. — Banno

For what it's worth, having followed your posts for too many years, it looks less and less like a game of chess and more like a chemical addiction.

Or, say, a game of chess where mate is an illegal move.

A perennially retreating victory. Chasing the horizon.

Interminable, interminably fruitless.

Wiser to warm the bench in the silence of what cannot be said.

"This girl was so hot, it was like seeing red for the first time" - completely understandable, given we had both experienced it.

"Like red, is the colour purple-crimson." - locked in, understood.

"I am like a fly at a time where I am down depressed, desperately looking for positivity through about hundred eyes" - reasonable, suggests artistic likeness, it's nothing major to be fussed about.

We are similar and the same sometimes. This allows us to draw connections between each other, call it special relations, a type of family gene. I can say I am like a fly, because it has similarities (eyes, legs, mind, etc) and we are the same (living, breathing, homeostasis, etc).

Nagel is quite brilliant, and I've learned much by trying to work out what he has said.

it might be worth starting with a look at his suggestion that being objective is attempting the impossible task of adopting a View From Nowhere. The Bat is an extension of this line of thinking into consciousness; that the bat has a view that is different from anything else in the world, and hence irreducible. There is, then, for Nagel, an irreducible aspect of first-person conscious experience.

While it might not be possible to adopt a view from nowhere, that's not what rationality requires. Rather, what is required are explanations that work for many - any - points of view; Einstein's Principle of Relativity makes the point: the laws of physics must be such that they are true for all observers. And if we can do this for physics, why not philosophy?

Rationality does not ask for the view from nowhere, but the view from anywhere.

There is a shared world, a world about which we overwhelmingly agree. A world that we might set out in terms that are agreeable to all observers. So you, I and the bat all see the moth.

That's realism.

And further I am not sure that what I have said here is at odds with Nagel's own position. He has, if I recall correctly, objected to the direction that his bats have been flown. It's not at all uncommon to find folk claiming that because the bat sees the moth differently, there is no moth. An absurd, but ubiquitous, position.

If someone makes a wrong move in Chess, it is not inappropriate for one to point it out to them. — Banno

As long as by 'wrong' you don't mean 'illegal.' Anti-realism, to your lights, may be a wrong or bad move in a game of chess. But it's not fair to call it an illegal move.


At any rate, metaphysics - even philosophy - is a game where the rules are at best in flux, at worst unknown.

The line I am taking here is more akin to Austin than to Wittgenstein — Banno

I get it. But if Wittgenstein ended metaphysics, why go on with it? Genuinely puzzled.

Better to think of Wittgenstein as having provided a set of tools to help undo metaphysical knots. So long as folk keep tying them, there will be a need for untying.

Anti-realism, to your lights, may be a wrong or bad move in a game of chess. But it's not fair to call it an illegal move. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I think it is illegal. It is plain that there are things that are true regardless of how we represent them. Claiming that this is not so is an error.

Nagel’s most important insight is that humans aren’t bats. — NOS4A2

I think so.

There is a shared world, a world about which we overwhelmingly agree. A world that we might set out in terms that are agreeable to all observers. — Banno

There is a world. Not sure what you refer to as "overwhelmingly agree" about.

While it might not be possible to adopt a view from nowhere, that's not what rationality requires. Rather, what is required are explanations that work for many - any - points of view; Einstein's Principle of Relativity makes the point: the laws of physics must be such that they are true for all observers. And if we can do this for physics, why not philosophy?

Rationality does not ask for the view from nowhere, but the view from anywhere.

There is a shared world, a world about which we overwhelmingly agree. A world that we might set out in terms that are agreeable to all observers. So you, I and the bat all see the moth.

That's realism. — Banno

:100: Thanks.

Nagel’s most important insight is that humans aren’t bats. — NOS4A2

:smirk:

Better to think of Wittgenstein as having provided a set of tools to help undo metaphysical knots. So long as folk keep tying them, there will be a need for untying. — Banno

Showing flies the ways of matryoshka fly-bottles. :up:

Nothing is more clear to me than what it is like to eat an apple while I'm eating an apple. — Hanover

:snicker:

I think Nagel puts a lot of weight on "like" and never really defines it. In the end, "what it is like" does not really mean anything.

I think it is illegal. — Banno

If you only think it is illegal then you only think you know the rules of the game.

What kind of game is it in which the players only think they know the rules? Is such a game worth playing? worth taking seriously? Is not such a game best described as a playful chaos? If so, what is the use of investing so much time and intellect in a playful chaos? What is the justification for taking a playful chaos seriously?

Read the Midgley article cited above.

It will answer all the questions I've posed to you? Do you promise?

Doctors, I came to know, encounter the subjectivity of experience on a daily basis. A patient walks into the consultation room, sits down, and begins "doctor, I have this pain in my tummy and it's like someone grabbed my stomach and gave it a hard twist."

Then there are other occasions when people say things like "I felt like a million dollars!"

These are workarounds to the insurmountable problem of sharing, making public, the subjective facet of experience. The objective here is to give the listener/reader some idea of what the speaker/writer is feeling/experiencing by looking for familiar landmarks such as winning a million dollars and being grabbed and wrung hard.

:snicker:

t might be worth starting with a look at his suggestion that being objective is attempting the impossible task of adopting a View From Nowhere. The Bat is an extension of this line of thinking into consciousness; that the bat has a view that is different from anything else in the world, and hence irreducible. There is, then, for Nagel, an irreducible aspect of first-person conscious experience.

While it might not be possible to adopt a view from nowhere, that's not what rationality requires. Rather, what is required are explanations that work for many - any - points of view; Einstein's Principle of Relativity makes the point: the laws of physics must be such that they are true for all observers. And if we can do this for physics, why not philosophy?

Rationality does not ask for the view from nowhere, but the view from anywhere.

There is a shared world, a world about which we overwhelmingly agree. A world that we might set out in terms that are agreeable to all observers. So you, I and the bat all see the moth.

That's realism.

And further I am not sure that what I have said here is at odds with Nagel's own position. He has, if I recall correctly, objected to the direction that his bats have been flown. It's not at all uncommon to find folk claiming that because the bat sees the moth differently, there is no moth. An absurd, but ubiquitous, position. — Banno

That's one of the most helpful insights I have seen on this matter to date. Appreciated.

Let's give this particular fact, that we're unable to share the subjective component of our experience, a name, shall we?

How about The Great Wall of Consciousness or The Veil of Consciousness or ____ (fill in the blanks)

What is it like to be a bat?

To answer that question, one has to give an account of the iinner conscious life of a bat.

We seem to have been able to imagine what being a bat is like (Daredevil, Marvel Comics) and we can probably do it for real with the right ultrasound equipment. Nevertheless, that isn't the point now, is it?

The question, at the end of the day, wants us to realize that some files of consciousness aren't shareable. They remain private and only you are privy to them and there's, as of the moment, nothing you can do about that. These files are what constitute one's subjective, first-person experience. The only way I can access these files on another person's consciousness is to literally be them; impossible, as of now, and ergo, the hard problem of consciousness but, mind you, this is probably just a temporary setback. The future is notoriously difficult to predict.

So you, I and the bat all see the moth.

That's realism. — Banno

It isn't.

After all these years realist folks about these parts are still content to straw-man anti-realism to death. That's a Triumph of the Will, right there. A circle-jerk of bottleflies giving a round of thumbs-ups.

:up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up:

(And I had thought flies had no thumbs.)

And as for games, see Mary Midgley's The game game. Games is an example, not a type. — Banno

At any rate, into the files. Goodgamegoodgamegoodgamegoodgame

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3750115

~~ Cheers.

Is that all you have to offer?

Be interesting.