Does it just mean that the animal feels something then? — Janus

I believe that's what Nagel means. I think "There's something it's likes to be a bat" means "There's something it feels like to be a bat.". But not a physical feeling.

ChatGPT doesn't play with language in the sense I mean. It is programmed to sample vast amounts of relevant language and predict the most appropriate sentences to any question as I understand it. It doesn't claim to be self-reflective either. — Janus

I don't know enough about ChatGPT to know if it's a good example of the idea that's only half-baked in my head. I'm wondering what you mean by "playing with language". How does that come about? Can we program a computer to do that? If so, does that mean it's self-reflectively aware? Even if it doesn't claim to be? If it needs to claim to be, but doesn't, what is it about us that makes us claim to be, despite the fact that we aren't? What extra programming would we have to give the computer?

But not a physical feeling. — Patterner

What else could feelings be but bodily?

We will just have to agree to disagree then :wink: .

Sorry. It was getting late, and I forgot to finish my thoughts.

Does it just mean that the animal feels something then? — Janus

I believe that's what Nagel means. I think "There's something it's likes to be a bat" means "There's something it feels like to be a bat." But not a physical feeling. At least not only physical feelings. Do you have a feeling of your own existence aside from your physical body? Yes, we feel when our skin is torn. But we have a feeling about pain. We feel different ways about different people. We feel a certain way about one genre of music, but differently about another. We have feelings about specific pieces of music. I have very strong feelings about various instrumental works be Bach, Beethoven, and others. The last half of Layla, by Derek and the a Dominoes is a good example. We feel certain ways about political issues and moral issues. We feel love and hate. Many different feelings and types of feelings. And it all combines into what it's like to be me.

Animals don't have feelings about political issues. I doubt they have moral concepts. What about music; food; being chased, or hugged, by a human? Which animals is there something it is like to be? Which are self-reflectively aware?

I don't know about you, but all my feelings seem physical, visceral, bodily, to me. Even mental associations, such as I may experience when reading, looking at artworks, listening to music or thinking about someone I love, evoke feelings I can only understand and describe as bodily.

I believe that's what Nagel means. I think "There's something it's likes to be a bat" means "There's something it feels like to be a bat." But not a physical feeling. At least not only physical feelings. Do you have a feeling of your own existence aside from your physical body? — Patterner

I think the obvious but un-stated point in David Chalmer's famous paper, Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness, is about the nature of being. Consider the central paragraph:

The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience.

'Something it is like to be...' is actually an awkward way of referring to 'being' as such. We are, and bats are, 'sentient beings' (although in addition h.sapiens are rational sentient beings), and what makes us (and them) sentient is that we are subjects of experience. When the term 'beings' is used for bats and humans, this is what it means. And the reason that 'the nature of being' is such an intractable scientific problem is that it's not something we are ever outside of or apart from, and thus it can't be satisfactorily captured or described in objective terms.

↪Patterner I don't know about you, but all my feelings seem physical, visceral, bodily, to me. Even mental associations, such as I may experience when reading, looking at artworks, listening to music or thinking about someone I love, evoke feelings I can only understand and describe as bodily. — Janus

You and I seem to be very different. :rofl: This isn't the first time our conversation has made me think of things like aphantasia and anaduralia. I don't know which of us lacks this or that ability that the other has, but we experience life very differently.

This isn't the first time our conversation has made me think of things like aphantasia and anaduralia. I don't know which of us lacks this or that ability that the other has, but we experience life very differently. — Patterner

I don't think it has anything to do with those conditions. It's just different interpretations is all.

I didn't mean those conditions specifically. I just used them as things that are sometimes very different from one person to another. You and I are not always simply interpreting things differently.

I didn't mean those conditions specifically. I just used them as things that are sometimes very different from one person to another. You and I are not always simply interpreting things differently. — Patterner

We have much in common physiologically speaking. I seems to me that the greatest divergence consists in the ways we each interpret the general nature of experience.

'Something it is like to be...' is actually an awkward way of referring to 'being' as such. — Wayfarer

Hmm, interesting observation possibly.

Glad someone noticed!

I think it's a vague way of approaching the issue, and I think it has to be. Part of what Nagel was saying is that we can't understand what it's like to be a bat. We're too different to even pretend we can imagine being a bat.

But we can still consider whether there's anything it's like. As opposed to what it's like to be a rock. There's nothing it's like to be a rock. Who thinks a bat's subjective experience is as absent as a rock's?

We have much in common physiologically speaking. I seems to me that the greatest divergence consists in the ways we each interpret the general nature of experience. — Janus

I think we have at least a couple of major differences. Going back to an earlier conversation, I can definitely look at something, and be aware that I'm looking at it, at the same time. I can talk about my awareness of looking at it, and anything else about it, and I will still notice if something blocks my vision of the thing, moves it, throws paint on it... I wouldn't see it move or change if I was not still looking at it while discussing my awareness of looking at it.

If you cannot do that, then we are very different.

I think it's a vague way of approaching the issue, — Patterner

It's not vague. As David Chalmers says, 'It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience.' And subjects of experience are generally referred to as 'beings', while minerals are not. Chalmers goes on to sketch what would be required for a satisfactory theory of consciousness, but in my view he doesn't wrestle with the question of ipseity, the nature of subjective awareness as such. That is more a topic of consideration in Evan Thompson's Mind in Life. But the question of the nature of being is the subject of philosophy.

in my view he doesn't wrestle with the question of ipseity, the nature of subjective awareness as such. — Wayfarer

So then he doesn't get specific. Which sounds something like inn there neighborhoods of vague to me. Anyway, I have Mind in Life. I hope to get to it soon.