:flower:

:heart:

I think there is neurological development that happens in infancy, so an alien could go through a human childhood.

some of her colleagues were wrong. — Marchesk

Then they made fun of her because she looked like a nerd with her new glasses

Some experts back home dispute whether color could actually be a conscious sensation. — Marchesk

Alien scientists certainly know about electromagnetic radiation. I doubt there would be any controversy about animals being able to sense different frequencies. Some animals can echolocate or sense magnetic or electric fields and we don't think that's hard to believe.

Also - sight has evolved at least twice on earth. It's a very valuable sense. It could be a fairly universal sense among organisms who evolve on worlds where light and color are a major characteristic of the environment. Some biologists think that convergent evolution will mean that life evolving in similar environments on different worlds will be very similar in structure and function.

Sometime later, alien Mary learned that humans had found out about what she had done. She read what they said about her, and discerned they had anthropomorphized her because she had used logic in her research. “See, even advanced aliens use logic!” they said. “See, even blind aliens can learn to see!” they said.

She scratched her head and wondered if logic had been used to create vision in the first place, or if it was merely relegated to explanation after the fact. She discerned that the logic both she and humans had used was merely explanatory. She discerned that vision itself had come into existence without the aid of logic.

She then applied her considerable intellect toward accomplishing what she had done, obtaining vision, but without the use of logic; and she created in herself vision as it had originally been done, sans logic. She succeeded, and then realized how primitive humans are, in anthropomorphizing their intellectual superiors. She thought of Jesus, agreed with herself that she must be right, shrugged her shoulders, jumped back on her space ship and left.

Speeding off through space, further away from humans, she recalled that she had always known how to achieve vision without logic, just as humans had done. She realized that she and her type had always been able to see. She wondered if something about humans had dumbed her down to the human way of thinking about things? If something about humans, or maybe even logic, had suspended her memory of the way things really are? She wondered how she had been so blind when studying humans?

With enough distance from humanity, her old self began to reassert itself. She then rested in comfort knowing that an explanation will never come close to that which is explained. She realized she had gone too far up the river, into the heart of darkness, aligning herself with the blind. She also noticed the irony: when “civilized” humans had gone too far up the river, into the heart of what they mistakenly perceived as darkness, they actually got closer to the truth, to that which they had tried and failed to explain, to reality, to unobstructed vision, like the vision she had always had.

“Civilized” humans, the explanation of logic had proven, are an aberration. What they used to be, before civilization, before explanation, before logic, was closer to what she and her advanced species are now. Hmmm, she thought: perhaps their original sin was trying to explain instead of being?

Everyone should go up the river at least once in their life.

That's fine. I mean, yes this is debated, I don't know why, but to insist that the colour experience red or the word "red" is 620 to 750 nanometers is simply a category mistake.

Just Google "red" an click on "images", and look. That's red.

Those are not numbers. Yes, somehow the wavelength of red and the numbers involved are important for astronomy and physics but it doesn't tell you anything about the experience.

It's not too hard.

:lol:

And you say that "these kids gazing at there navel", that was great stuff. :up:

Welcome to the club.

Welcome to the club. — Manuel

:grin:

Everyone should go up the river at least once in their life. — James Riley

Very interesting and well written story. I don't know what it means, but that's ok.

Everyone should go up the river at least once in their life. — James Riley

Also - anything with "Heart of Darkness" references get's my vote.

Alien scientists certainly know about electromagnetic radiation. I doubt there would be any controversy about animals being able to sense different frequencies. Some animals can echolocate or sense magnetic or electric fields and we don't think that's hard to believe. — T Clark

The controversy would be over color sensation, not the physics of EM radiation. Same problem we have when discussing bat sonar sensation, except bats have no language to name it for us.

Mary's species wouldn't know anything about color the same way we don't know anything about whatever sensation bats have when experiencing sonar.

So is this one of those threads where someone starts a philosophical tall-tale and everyone else adds on to it? I can't wait to see what monstrous aberration that produces. Maybe we should publish it.

The controversy would be over color sensation, not the physics of EM radiation. Same problem we have when discussing bat sonar sensation, except bats have no language to name it for us.

Mary's species wouldn't know anything about color the same way we don't know anything about whatever sensation bats have when experiencing sonar. — Marchesk

Some philosophers would say that if she studied and observed enough to be able to use terms of color and seeing appropriately then she would know what it means to see and to see color. Is that pragmatism? It makes sense to me.

Some philosophers would say that if she studied and observed enough to be able to use terms of color and seeing appropriately then she would know what it means to see and to see color. Is that pragmatism? It makes sense to me. — T Clark

So you're saying if a bat could talk sonar, we would understand it?

So you're saying if a bat could talk sonar, we would understand it? — Marchesk

I'm not sure what you mean by "talk sonar." If you mean without any device to allow us to detect and interpret the sounds, then no. If you mean can we understand bat language, I don't think there is one. If you mean if a bat could talk sonar that we could pick up on our equipment in an actual language expressing concepts, perceptions, and feelings, I don't see why not.

If you mean if a bat could talk sonar that we could pick up on our equipment in an actual language expressing concepts, perceptions, and feelings, I don't see why not. — T Clark

So you think learning bat language would give us sonar sensations? Doesn't that just move the problem from the brain to language?

So you think learning bat language would give us sonar sensations? — Marchesk

No, but I think that learning bat language and being able to detect bat sonar signals might allow us to understand what bats are saying and how they think and see the world. As for "giving us sonar sensations," some thoughts. First, I don't know how different echolocation is from hearing, so I don't know how different the experience is. Also, humans use sound waves to understand the world in ways beyond hearing. We use sonar to detect underwater objects and seismic sensing to detect underground objects. Both these methods provide visual records of what the sound has detected. As for the experience of echolocation, as I wrote before, if we know how it works well enough, to some people, including me, that means we can know what the experience is like.

But bats may experience sonar in a way that's entirely different from any of our sensations. It's just an example. I'm sure one can find others in the animal kingdom. The thought that humans experience the entire range of conscious experience is silly. Surely there are sensations we have no idea about. Thus alien Mary not having eyes and therefore no color sensations.

Maybe we should publish it. — Marchesk

I don't know, but whatever you do, please don't illustrate it. Right now, based upon your description, I get the feeling she is hot. Really hot. I'd hate to have my bubble burst.

She just doesn't know she's wearing red, or that the Matrix code is green.

The thought that humans experience the entire range of conscious experience is silly. Surely there are sensations we have no idea about. — Marchesk

Yeah, when my son was little he came home from school and told me about the Mantis Shrimp. I don't know how we know about what they can see since we can't see it, but regardless, I think they render us "silly" by comparison.

She just doesn't know she's wearing red, or that the Matrix code is green. — Marchesk

That'll do. :smile:

We know what their eyes can detect, and something about what their brains can process visually. If they are conscious, we don't know what those sensations are.

But bats may experience sonar in a way that's entirely different from any of our sensations. It's just an example. — Marchesk

Some philosophers also believe that people may not experience common human sensory input the same way others humans do. In the case of bat vs. human perception, there certainly is a stronger argument to be made. I'll go back to what I wrote first - if I can observe and study how a bat uses sound waves to sense the world, it is possible that I can share some of its experience.

Surely there are sensations we have no idea about. — Marchesk

I'm sure there are. How could we have any idea about what an organism is experiencing if we don't even know the experience exists?

I'm sure there are. How could we have any idea about what an organism is experiencing if we don't even know the experience exists? — T Clark

Isn't that a problem for physicalism?

Isn't that a problem for physicalism? — Marchesk

How so?

Isn't that a problem for physicalism? — Marchesk

Well, another organism with a different nervous system could well have different faculties which we lack and couldn't even imagine. The nervous system and the processed sense-data received from our interaction in the world would all be physical, the world and the brain's resulting mental process.

We just can't imagine how some of these sensations would be like. But I don't see the problem in principle, nor do I see how this is an attack on physicalism.

The mental part has always been a problem for reconciling the the material.

How so? — T Clark

There are sensations unknowable to science. We only know the human ones because we have them. Otherwise, humans would be like bats, to an alien or AI science lacking those sensations.

I'll have to quote Joseph Priestley again, who was working off of Locke's philosophy. He said this in 1777:

"It is said that we can have no conception how sensation or thought can arise from matter, they being things so very different from it, and bearing no sort of resemblance to anything like figure or motion ; which is all that can result from any modification of matter, or any operation upon it.…[T]his is an argument which derives all its force from our ignorance. Different as are the properties of sensation and thought, from such as are usually ascribed to matter, they may, nevertheless, inhere in the same substance, unless we can shew them to be absolutely incompatible with one another."

Bolds and italics mine.

With regards to mind:

"I... admit of no argument for the spirituality of the soul, from the consideration of the exquisiteness, subtlety, or complexness of the mental powers, on which much stress has been laid by some; there being in matter a capacity for affections as subtle and complex as any thing that we can affirm concerning those that have hitherto been called mental affections"

I think he was correct.