I think most of that is accommodated in the Lewis article. I’ll see if I can find it.
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This makes sense. When we say, the world appears same to us, it is based on the possibility of verification, agreement or sharing the contents of our experience in the world via discussions, arguments and actions.
But in the case of bats, there is no such possibilities at all, as bats being a simpler creature with no linguistic and reasoning abilities.
All they talk about bat is from the observations or hearsay of what bats do for their survival. In that situation, to say what appears to bats in their perception of the world, is the same world as appears to us, sounds groundless and unintelligible claim.
This sounds like, ‘give up’ on knowing how the bat is experienced. In theory, if you know how eyes work, and you know a bat’s eyes well, you can imagine a bats vision.
You’re confusing, knowing how a bat is experienced, with having the exact same experience or reconstruction of the exact same experience. It’s truthfully nothing like learning about how a bat experiences life.
Sorry but this discussion you’re having is mostly inflated. It’s a poor discussion if you don’t correct some of the premises.
Mainly, full-data is not obtainable unless you can experience the thing exactly as that persona or reconstruct exactly as that persona, for that data.
That is exactly the problem I was pointing out. You are talking as a bat, or from bat’s point of view. Not from human rational point of view. But you are not a bat, so what you are saying has no grounds.
I’m not a bat, but I have working eyes and looking at a bats eyes, and studying them, I may be able to imagine how it sees.
My attempt at judging it’s vision: It’s sight would be filled with echo-cancellation and the upper-half vision normal stranding.
My attempt at judging a cat’s vision: it is one with the seasons, there are four aspects of its vision.
The fact your claim is totally based on your eyes seeing what bats do, it has not enough ground for truth. We are seeking for more reasonable arguments here. Reasonableness comes from possibility of verification, analysis and agreements. Not mere seeing what bats do.
The reason that we could say that you and I are seeing the same world is based on our agreements and verification on the shapes of the world we see. Not just seeing and guessing what you or I are doing.
A bat’s eyes are an subject of interest. Your logic is, that cannot be fathomed. However, you know how to open a lunchbox.
The image of you is filled with science, each part of you, when studied from a frame of reference where I can aptly name all your parts, can be understood.
There is no way to verify or understand what bats are seeing without listening to bat’s description of what it is seeing.
You can describe what a lunch box or apple looks like. From that I can see you and I are seeing the same world. There is no possibility for that with a bat.
I’m saying you’re wrong, but I’d like to read some other people’s posts.
I am saying you are making groundless claim based on your guessing.
I get your point, honestly, but you drive a mind that’s much more capable.
Well, I do think that people pick bats, because there is something about sonar particularly that seems interesting. Like it is almost a special modality, in some people’s minds. I think it is probably just really good stereo hearing, combined with adding their own noise to be able to discern the distance (and who knows what else?) of objects in their vicinity. I think that butterfly or mantis shrimp eyes would probably be cooler to know what it is like, as they have ridiculously more visual range than we do – but as you would predict based on what I suggested, they have much lower discernment, or ability to individuate, or distinguish similar colors from one and other like we can. Or our big ol’primate brains allows us to blend colors, to see gradients, and subtle changes, but they can’t do that with their tiny shrimp brains. Still, mantis shrimp’s 16 color cones to our 3 seems pretty wild.
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I agree with every point your saying. Great detailed post based on the facts. Thanks.
And your friend’s understanding of green is as complete as yours?
Does the complexity of our language increase the probability for knowing what it’s like to be a bat?
I’m thinking that signaling without a finite set of disjoint signs is more complex, making every difference or nuance potentially significant.
Right, one might add that perception is continuous, non-detachable, indexical. Conception, however, is the organisation, and has typically the disjoint structure of descriptions. It can be detached, shared, and preserved through time.
The perceptual part is what I think we can share with bats. The conception however might be a problem.
Increase our probability of knowing what it is like to be a bat compared to what? Like a mongoose? A dolphin? A fruit bat? If I have never had mint strawberry ice-cream, then reasonably we would describe it by employing the closest similar things I have tried. When we don’t know the thing, we have to move away from it, and relate it to the closest similar thing we do know (say strawberry ice-cream and mint tea). Animals with a similar kind of wild life style, body or echolocation of their own, or some such likely have me beat, but they also probably can’t conceive of the problem. Or appreciate that bats have different experiences, and characterize conceptually how those experiences may differ. Many of their literal experiences are likely qualitatively more similar than mine are though. Concepts act directly on precepts. There is plenty of interesting research on the way language effects color perception, for instance. You can look into that, how cross culturally, and historically color discernment and descriptions differ, because their words, and thus concepts differ. So it isn’t just that we can’t talk to bats, but our language and concepts have significant influence over how we perceive the world, and its complexity.
We have made electronic tongues that can identify certain substances. Is there anything different between their experience of tasting these substances and ours?
I expect by now you are aware that the third of these is generally taken to be the same as the first? The later discussions (under the third title) supply an alternative thought experiment by way of a zombie robot, to be which there is conceivably nothing it is (or would be) like. I don’t know if any discussions have considered a zombie robot bat. Anyway the point of it all has been to try and define the terms of consciousness so as to minimise their ambiguity but maximise their conveyence of important and possibly valid intuitions about the poorly understood phenomenon? I don’t think anyone had failed to notice the potential hazards of semantic ambiguity.
The second example, you’re right that most people give up on a positive answer, and say, ok it’s a brute fact unless you want an equally unsatisfying infinite regress. Again, though, I don’t see how that suggests the question was empty or idle?
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Perhaps I’m not seeing what you see, but it still looks like you’re using “knowledge” and “knowing” in only one way, which flies in the face of both usage and (I would say) experience. To “know something” is savoir. To know of something, to relate to it via some kind of proximity, to have a certain experience of it, is connaitre. This, if I understand you, is demoted to a “source of information.”
Now I quite agree that knowledge of the latter kind can often produce knowledge of the first kind. My experience of walking through a woods at sunset may teach me a great deal about colors, sounds, proprioception; and these items of savoir-type knowledge can be communicated to others. But you’re wanting to say that the “sources of information,” as you call them, can’t also be considered a type of knowledge – presumably because you’ve stipulated how the word must be used.
How to resolve this? It can’t be resolved in the sense of finding that one view is correct, the other not; we’re just talking “dueling definitions,” a wrangle over how to use certain words. At least I think that’s all it is, since it seems you do acknowledge the kind of experience I’m calling connaitre-type knowledge; you just don’t think it should be called knowledge. If it turned out that you don’t even think there are such experiences, we’d have a different sort of problem. But your “sources of information” seem to be those experiences.
So I’d suggest two more pragmatic ways: Which view is more useful, philosophically, in terms of clarity and orderliness? and Which view better captures what our language(s) consider to be important?
You write that a bat’s individuation, quantification etc will be significantly fewer, simpler, and less consistent than a person with a complex language and community, recall.
Hence my question, and questioning of the assumption that language is more complex than the ways bats (or other non-linguistic animals) make sense of the world.
A semantic externalist would disagree. The ways in which we encounter the world have arguably more influence on our language than language has on the ways we encounter the world.