Descriptions of what it's like are analogies. — Janus

?

"What it's like" in this sense/context isn't supposed to refer to analogies. It's a way of saying that there's an experiential quality, or a quale, with respect to something.

It's a way of saying that there's an experiential quality, or a quale, with respect to something. — Terrapin Station

Yes, but the point is that it doesn't really say anything at all without either analogy or attitudinal report, as every other question beginning "what is it like..." is seeking.

As Wittgenstein said...

One would like to say ‘I see red thus’, ‘I hear the note that you strike thus’, ‘I feel sorrow thus’, or even ‘This is what one feels like when one is sad, this when one is glad’, etc. One would like to people a world, analogous to the physical one, with these thuses and thises. But this makes sense only where there is a
picture of what is experienced, to which one can point as one makes these statements — Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology

And yet you fully understand what a p-zombie is.

Put down the pretense of confusion.

And yet you fully understand what a p-zombie is. — frank

You can understand a stipulation without believing in it.

I think everyone agrees that there are first person experiences. I don't think everyone agrees with every conclusion people draw from that under every interpretation of how they work (it's so contentious some people might go blargh at even using "how" there, "it's not functionally reductive to anything!:)

You can understand a stipulation without believing in it. — fdrake

So you understand it too? I'm not sure what the previous grief was about, but good.

don't think everyone agrees with every conclusion people draw from that under every interpretation of how they work ( — fdrake

My point from the beginning was that we dont know how it works. Isaac's view is that science does explain it in the light of reduction.

So you understand it too? I'm not sure what the previous grief was about, but good. — frank

Well, I don't understand how people find it so obvious, but I do understand what people mean when they say qualia or "what is it like". This is why I am so suspicious of it. What people go on to say as soon as they start talking in terms of "what is it like" and how bloomin' obvious it seems to them? And then suddenly there's "redness"... inverted spectra, weird shit with metaphysical possibilities and types and it's all so obvious apparently! And people begin imagining that the mere metaphysical possibility of something tells us stuff about the actual world... And there's so much appeal to intuition... All of this is often portrayed as falling naturally out of something we all feel.

reduction — frank

I don't think he ever said that.

Jesus H Christ on a bendy bus you're being snide. — fdrake

Really? Didnt mean to be.

Really? Didnt mean to be. — frank

Aight. Rather than hearing you being supportive and critical at the same time. I heard "I agree with you, by the way what I perceive as your worldview is wrong - here are some flaws I will not gesture to here", it seemed like a very mixed message.

Aight. Rather than hearing you being supportive and critical at the same time. I heard "I agree with you, by the way what I perceive as your worldview is wrong - here are some flaws I will not gesture to here", it seemed like a very mixed message. — fdrake

I said we dont know. You heard "you're wrong."

?

I don't know if you meant that, I thought you were being snide.

See? Contextual.

I like the term bendy bus.

And yet you fully understand what a p-zombie is. — frank

Not at all. I know in what context it was mentioned, what it was trying to say. I certainly wouldn't say I fully understood what one is. I'm fairly sure the concept is either incoherent (something exactly like us in every way but with only consciousness missing), or trivial (something partly like us but with all the constituent mental processes of consciousness missing, whatever they turn out to be).

Put down the pretense of confusion. — frank

Why do discussions about consciousness always end up this way? With increasingly importunate claims that we really do know what you're talking about. We really don't.

Yes, but the point is that it doesn't really say anything at all without either analogy or attitudinal report — Isaac

. . . the latter of which isn't necessarily an analogy. (Not that I'm agreeing with the dichotomy you're specifying . . .after all, there's not even any communication requirement for qualia.)

It's a simple error of people reading "like" to refer to analogies, but in this context, it doesn't refer to an analogy.

the latter of which isn't necessarily an analogy. — Terrapin Station

Attitudinal reports are analogous also, just not directly so. I felt happy, only works as an analogy to the times the person you're speaking to experienced happiness, otherwise it communicates nothing. It's saying "I felt a bit like you did those times when you reported being happy".

And yet you fully understand what a p-zombie is.
— frank

Not at all. — Isaac

Ok.

That Wittgenstein quote seems to agree completely with what I’m trying to say, so if you agree with it may we agree more than we thought. In saying that you cannot know what an experience is like without experiencing it, I mean precisely that there is no external, intersubjective “thus” to point at in the sentences Wittgenstein talks about; the things we’d like to point to to say “it’s like this” are internal, subjective states, and the only way to communicate what it’s like to be in that state to someone is to put them into that state, or invite them to enter into it themselves.

I mean precisely that there is no external, intersubjective “thus” to point at in the sentences Wittgenstein talks about; the things we’d like to point to to say “it’s like this” are internal, subjective states, and the only way to communicate what it’s like to be in that state to someone is to put them into that state, or invite them to enter into it themselves. — Pfhorrest

I don't read what Wittgenstein was saying that way, maybe taking it out of the context of the piece wasn't helpful of me. He's saying that the expression "what it is like" always refers to some this or thus, that it is incoherent otherwise. To say something is 'like' the thing it is doesn't make any sense as a proposition. So I don't think he's pointing out quite what you're arguing, but more along the lines of saying there is nothing 'it is like' to have some experience. It just is the experience, it's an event, it's not like anything, you couldn't communicate it to another person, even if you could somehow make them experience it themselves, because there is no it, the whole concept of 'the experience of seeing red' as opposed to just 'seeing red' is incoherent.

Descriptions of what it's like are analogies. — Janus


?

"What it's like" in this sense/context isn't supposed to refer to analogies. It's a way of saying that there's an experiential quality, or a quale, with respect to something. — Terrapin Station

Yes, but I was talking there about " descriptions of what it's like". I am familiar with the philosophical idea of quale, but I am not convinced it is useful or even coherent; it seems to be more of a reification.
In other words I am suspicious of the notion that there is a quality of experience which somehow is different or more than the things and sensations that are apprehended.

:up:

It sounds like you still think I am essentializing the experience of something apart from the thing itself, when the thing itself is itself an experience such that even phrasing this sentence is difficult. (I first wanted to type “...the experience of something apart from the experience of something”, because “the thing itself” in this instance just is an experience).

Seeing red is an experience. The experience of seeing red isn’t something separate from the seeing of some red, it’s just the specific experience that is the seeing of some red. Like how Los Angeles is a city, and the city of Los Angeles isn’t something different from Los Angeles, it’s just the specific city that is Los Angeles. Saying “the city of Los Angeles” doesn’t abstract some separate “city” entity apart from Los Angeles; Los Angeles IS the city.

You and fdrake seem to really want to take this really basic way of talking about things to imply a lot more than I mean by it. As for your interpretation of the Wittgenstein quote, that still agrees with what I’m trying to say in every substantive way. There isn’t anything you can say to communicate an experience to someone, they just have to have it. You can’t tell someone what seeing red is like, in a non-analogical sense of that phrase that just means to describe it to them; they just have to see it themselves.

Seeing red is an experience. The experience of seeing red isn’t something separate from the seeing of some red, — Pfhorrest

Yep. Or: the experience of having an orgasm isn't distinct from having an orgasm, just to put a megaphone on it.

:up:

The experience of seeing red isn’t something separate from the seeing of some red, it’s just the specific experience that is the seeing of some red. — Pfhorrest

No, the point is there is no such thing as the experience of seeing red. There is only an experience which may from time to time, involve seeing red. So...

You can’t tell someone what seeing red is like, in a non-analogical sense of that phrase that just means to describe it to them; they just have to see it themselves. — Pfhorrest

...doesn't make sense. They will never experience for themselves what you just experienced, only things like it. Things which can as easily be described with no less error.

If I have experience X and I want to get another person to understand what it was for me to go through experience X, I have only two imperfect methods. Put them through experience Y which I think is similar enough to experience X to invoke the same feelings, or describe experience X in terms of experiences A, B and C which they've already had and recall. Neither are really any better than the other, they each have their merits in different situations, neither actually communicate what experience X was, for me.

You still act like I’m trying to essentialize when I’m not at all. The point about particular experiences all being slightly different isn’t at all in contradiction of what I’m saying. You can’t step in the same river twice, in a really pedantic sense, but we nevertheless give rivers names and talk about multiple visits to them and whether or not two people have stepped in the same one. Likewise with things like “red”: that names a range of possible experiences people can have, and no two will be exactly alike, but the point of needing to have some experience in that range to know what experiencing something in that range is like still stands. You’re going way out of the way to import much deeper metaphysical baggage to this really ordinary way of talking than is called for, which makes it look like you’re just looking for something to disagree with just to win the argument, when nothing you’re saying in “rebuttal” disagrees with anything I’m saying so I really see no need for that.

So the sticking point is still an epistemological one because you're still suggesting that something about the experience can be learnt by having the experience, but this is not true if you accept that the two things are different. That's like saying you can learn something about Marx by reading Smith. The two books are different. You're not going to learn anything about seeing red (the family of experiences) by seeing red yourself. It might be that your experience is similar to others and so teaches you something about the family, or it might be that your experience is dissimilar to other (as for example with synaesthetes), in which case it tells you nothing about the family (as in the very next second a new synaesthete is born who changes the definition), and you'll never know which by your standards of knowledge here.

Furthermore, if you want to use some kind of Wittgensteinian family resemblance idea to say 'seeing red' is an experience you can learn about by having it, then the only way you'd be able to do that was by communicating with others. The very thing you're saying cannot be done.

One thing that always bothers me about 'what it is like to experience X' questions is the assumption - at least it seems to me like an assumption - that the thing in question (X) is already-individuated or 'picked out'. Like, if we take something less generic than 'red', and substitute my cat, 'Tabby', the question becomes far more ambigious.

Is there an experience of Tabby? And what does that mean? An experience of the weave of colors that is Tabby? The textures of her fur and the glossiness of her eyes? Or is there an experience of Tabby's movement as she knocks over the vase? What about her warmth? Do I experience Tabby-the-animal? Tabby-my-loved-cat? Do I 'experience' something named Tabby at all (does one experience a 'named' thing? - what difference does a name make?). Is my 'experience of Tabby' an aggregate of all these? Some but not others? In some situations but not others?

So I tend to find questions about 'what it is like to experience red?' to be a kind of cheat: it doesn't ask an interesting question. It takes for granted a certain 'how' of experience, it 'fixes' - in the sense of nailing down - the 'object' of experinece in a completely artificial way. It's a bad question. Everything interesting about 'what it is like to experience X' happens outside, beyond this question.

---

Merleau-Ponty has some beautiful passages trying to get at this:

"We must first understand that this red under my eyes is not, as is always said, a quale, a pellicle of being without thickness, a message at the same time indecipherable and evident, which one has or has not received, but of which, if one has received it, one knows all there is to know, and of which in the end there is nothing to say. ...

[Instead], Its precise form is bound up with a certain wooly, metallic, or porous configuration or texture, and the quale itself counts for very little compared with these participations. ... The color is yet a variant in another dimension of variation, that of its relations with the surroundings: this red is what it is only by connecting up from its place with other reds about it, with which it forms a constellation, or with other colors it dominates or that dominate it, that it attracts or that attract it, that it repels or that repel it. In short, it is a certain node in the woof of the simultaneous and the successive. It is a concretion of visibility, it is not an atom.

If we took all these participations into account, we would recognize that a naked color, and in general a visible, is not a chunk of absolutely hard, indivisible being, offered all naked to a vision which could be only total or null, but is rather a sort of straits between exterior horizons and interior horizons ever gaping open, something that comes to touch lightly and makes diverse regions of the colored or visible world resound at the distances, a certain differentiation, an ephemeral modulation of this world— less a color or a thing, therefore, than a difference between things and colors, a momentary crystallization of colored being or of visibility." (The Visible and the Invisible)

Great quote! :up:

The following doesn’t really help other than to hone in on the title of the thread “What is it like to experience x?”

My answer?

“It is like experiencing y yet unlike experiencing y.”

This falls readily into the old Kantian question of what do we, or can we, know a priori? In more legible words, what is innate that provides us with experience?

Personally I’m more intrigued by the nature of the ‘question’ itself (as in the ability to question). My general, and poorly clad approach, leads me to the concept of ‘becoming’, or the ‘nascent’. It is clear enough that we quickly take up existence as an ‘exploration’ of experience. We ‘possess’ a memory bank, and then data it placed in it - the memory bank changes as more data comes in and the avail of a certain set of data comes packaged in multi-varied forms. Meaning an ‘experience’ is neither a singular unit nor a complex of singular units. This leaves us open to a degree of free association by way of which differences accumulate according to the flow of incoming information.

Our primary function is pretty much what Kant said it was. Our experience is ‘grounded’ in our ‘intuitions’ (which Kant meant as ‘grounded in our faculties of ‘knowing’ something only if grounded in both a sense of time and space - yet we are able after this matter of fact to abstract items that have no apparent ‘existence’ in time and space, but rather having reality as forms of distinction).

Before conscious sense experience (I mean awareness) there is a means of processing sensory input. Instantly the means of input becomes part of the ‘input’ - that is generally the conflation of dualism in action. We categorise items to understand, yet as we categorise items the categories themselves become items, and so on. A rather perplexing thought and one intricated by Kant’s CoPR, yet understandably he quickly finds he cannot ‘answer’ his own initial question but manages to glean a great deal of insightful thoughts and ideas from exploring the implications of the posed question of - excuse my clumsy attempt a paraphrasing his question in a more accessible parse - “What is there prior to sense experience in terms of something akin to ‘knowledge’?”

It's just a turn of phrase which some people find helpful.

X has first person experiences = there is something it is like to be X

There is something it is like for John to see red = John experiences red

There is nothing it is like for Roger the Robot to see red = Roger the robot does not experience red

In some contexts it's clumsy and unhelpful. I think the most helpful use of the phrase is to use it as another way to refer to things that have experiences. Human beings have experiences, but rocks don't. There is something it is like to be a human being, but there is nothing it is like to be a rock. (This is of course wrong, panpsychism is true. You know that now because I've told you.) We don't have to use this language if it is isn't helpful. Anyone who likes to use "what it's like" language could just replace it with something else involving words like 'experience', 'feeling', 'sentience', 'consciousness'.

Street's title is unhelpful as it mixes the two. "What it's like to experience X" invites the reader to think there is something over and above experiencing X that is what it's like to experience X. That's not how the turn of phrase is supposed to work, as far as I understand. And if it is used in such a way that it seems to imply that, then I suggest finding another expression.

is what it is like to experience X distinct from just doing X?

So is experiencing eating cake different from eating cake?