Ambiguity and the "big" problems in philosophy

General Philosophy
1

While I think there are legitimate problems that philosophy aims to deal with, I contend that a not small subset of what we might think of as the “big” problems in philosophy aren’t real problems, but rather examples of ambiguity masquerading as mystery. A few prime examples are “what is it like to be a bat?”, “why is there something rather than nothing?”, and the “hard” problem of consciousness. I’d also suggest that to those that ask these questions earnestly, there is no answer that would satisfy, making them not really honest questions, but rather rhetorical ones. If you examine what each of these questions (and others) are rhetorically pointing toward… it’s ambiguity.

I think there are those that would suggest that this ambiguity is an arrow pointing toward some mystery in the world. While not impossible, we know a lot about language, and we know that ambiguity is common and often confuses and confounds us. If an apparent mystery can be equally well described as insoluble for decades or centuries, or just a trick of language, we know how common tricks of language are. I get how viscerally we feel like these are real problems, but I have yet to see that we can demonstrate that they actually are.

Let me tackle “what is it like to be a bat?”. Literally, the question is asking about simile. It is asking “what is similar or comparable to being a bat?”, however, in philosophy, we are trying to ask something more like a combination of “what does it feel like to be a bat?” and “what is it to be a bat?”. When posed as the original question, these feel like the same thing, but they are clearly different. “What does it feel like to be a bat?” is an exercise in imagination, and another request for simile. We might answer it like this:

To be a bat would be like swimming in the ocean. Where you cannot really hear much underwater and have to rely on your other senses, just so with the bat and sight. it would also be like being surrounded by elephants. As a bat, you would be much smaller than many creatures around you…

You can take issue with how well I described what it might feel like to be a bat, but certainly you can see that I am actually answering the question as asked. The distinct question, what is it to be a bat is also perfectly answerable. To be a bat is to be a winged mammal of the order Chiroptera.

I think that the reason this problem feels so much like a real problem and not an example of ambiguity is because cognitively, we lean so heavily on language to model the world, that sometimes we can temporarily forget that the word isn’t the thing it describes.

I’ve never deeply studied Wittgenstein, but it seems to me that this is what he was saying. I think these problems are examples of our intelligence being bewitched by our language.

2

What you claim to know, and what your brain knows are likely much different.

Your brain, knows a lot more than you claim you know here, typing, with use of the hands.

The brain, if possible to communicate using it directly, would probably amaze with it’s expressions.

We cannot communicate so easily using our native language, there are a lot of limitations. Of course it’s possible to explain in typed words, what you claim to know(as said, you’re probably far off, your brain knows more), but it’s likely that your typed-up intelligence is far off your brains.

We are thrown off by words, especially if we don’t believe we are equipped with a pro-agile brain.

Some questions have ineffable answers, yet the brain understands the answer.

I would say it’s less ambiguous and more analogous. Our brains have different, more clear answers than our hands are able to type from the get go.

I think the hard problem of consciousness, can be, and is probably solved by our brains.

Language is automatically puzzling. Fitting together a neat reply, isn’t the way brain figures things out and answers.

3

The “what is it like” is the quality, as opposed to the quantity. Chalmers coined qualia to be like quanta, or the qualitative as opposed to the quantitative. They are related also to the analog, and the digital. In that the analog is continuous, indistinct, indiscrete flowing from one thing to the next without clear boundaries. The digital is discrete, countable and separated by clearly defined boundaries. Russell said “Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.” Wittgenstein did think that ambiguity was the problem in the Tractatus, but had abandoned that by the Investigations, accepting that ambiguity is necessary, and cannot be done away with.

4

Okay, lets tease this out a bit. I was talking about the question “what’s it like to be a bat”, and you responded with an explanation of the philosophical term “qualia”. While I totally get why you did that, and why you think it sheds light on the question, I’d suggest that it actually adds further ambiguity. Saying the “what it’s like” is the quality isn’t helpful. “What’s the quality of being a bat?” What is the question even asking? What is it trying to determine? I think that depending on the context, it’s either trying to determine what it would feel like to be a bat, or to rhetorically point to the fact that our descriptions of what it would feel like to be a bat are (unsurprisingly) not identical to actually being a bat.

As far as “doing away with ambiguity”, I think that giving up on that project is sensible. It’s a flat linguistic fact that natural language can’t occur without ambiguity. My suggestion isn’t that we try to rid the world, or even philosophy, of ambiguity. It’s that we don’t confuse ambiguity with real mysteries.

5

It is often taken to be the difference between third person sharable information, and first person experience of being there, and doing that. This is illustrated by the Mary the super scientist thought experiment. Where Mary is given all possible, exhaustive, measurable descriptions and information about the color red. Then you are asked if upon seeing the color red herself, first person, for the first time, if she learns something new? Is there something about first person experience, of what red is like, that is not sharable by any possible third person description whatsoever? Data on Star Trek also uses this in measure of a man, to refuse to let star fleet copy his memories, and make another Data from them. He says that only the information would be copied, but the actual quality of having literally been there for the experiences that formed those memories they would be copying could not be delivered to the copy. They are his alone, and as such, the copy would be lacking something important.

6

Yes, good.

But none of these would be on my list.

Generally, when ambiguity threatens to create a false problem, it’s because two people are taking a term in two different senses without realizing it. Is that really what’s going on here?

It seems that your objection to the “what is it like . . .” formulation is not that it’s ambiguous, but that when it’s used in the potentially interesting sense of “what is it to experience . . .” the question is incoherent, or at least insufficiently specified. That may be true (though I don’t think it is) but that’s not due to ambiguity – two people talking past each other.

“Something rather than nothing” is merely unanswerable, no? Do you have any trouble understanding it, or the terms? I don’t.

I’m not sure how the hard problem, as Chalmers states it, would bring up questions of ambiguity, but maybe I’m not seeing what you are. Do you think that the question gets different answers depending on what we mean by “consciousness”? I would have said that there aren’t any good candidate answers (sorry, Dan Dennett!) but again this isn’t due to ambiguity, but to our current lack of knowledge.