Copernicus
Industrial Grade Linguist
In 1974, Philosopher Thomas Nagel published his classic 17-page explanation of why it is so difficult to understand the physical basis of consciousness: What is it Like to Be a Bat?
In internet discussion forums, people love to argue over the nature of consciousness. Most people seem to believe that brains cause consciousness, and I will not try to argue otherwise. That goes without saying. But how? How can there be an objective explanation of subjective experience? People believe that there must be some explanation that reduces to physical activity, but reductionism never seems to get us anywhere. People who wish to discuss this question intelligently really need to start by reading Nagel's brilliant essay, because Nagel nails it. And, no, the paper is not mostly about bats. That is just the intuition pump that Nagel uses to make his argument about why reductionist claims are so unsatisfying.
One can come away from Nagel's essay with the rather unsatisfying answer that What it is Like to Be a Bat is just What it Feels Like to be a Bat. But that is just as unsatisfying as saying that the bat's consciousness is some kind of physical phenomenon. Sure, the bat has a brain, but it doesn't experience reality in the same way a human brain does. So what is consciousness in a bat? You can come up with all sorts of thoughts on what you imagine it to be like, but you don't sense reality in the same way that a bat does. You don't use echolocation to paint a 3D picture of reality (although some blind folks do develop a more limited ability to detect objects and distances through sound and other senses). And bats are more like us than snakes or worms or plants. At what point does consciousness of our sort go away? Worms have very rudimentary nervous systems. Are they conscious at all? We like to say that robots are not conscious, yet they behave in ways that give the illusion of conscious behavior. Is it possible for a robot to be conscious? In my opinion, it is. And robots quite often rely on echolocation to map out their local space.
The answer to the mind-body problem is grounded in the nature of experience. Brains have experiences, but what is an experience from a physical perspective? That's all I want to say for now--to point people at Nagel's explanation, if they have not already read this seminal paper. I will give my thoughts later on the way to think about the objective side of subjective experience.
In internet discussion forums, people love to argue over the nature of consciousness. Most people seem to believe that brains cause consciousness, and I will not try to argue otherwise. That goes without saying. But how? How can there be an objective explanation of subjective experience? People believe that there must be some explanation that reduces to physical activity, but reductionism never seems to get us anywhere. People who wish to discuss this question intelligently really need to start by reading Nagel's brilliant essay, because Nagel nails it. And, no, the paper is not mostly about bats. That is just the intuition pump that Nagel uses to make his argument about why reductionist claims are so unsatisfying.
One can come away from Nagel's essay with the rather unsatisfying answer that What it is Like to Be a Bat is just What it Feels Like to be a Bat. But that is just as unsatisfying as saying that the bat's consciousness is some kind of physical phenomenon. Sure, the bat has a brain, but it doesn't experience reality in the same way a human brain does. So what is consciousness in a bat? You can come up with all sorts of thoughts on what you imagine it to be like, but you don't sense reality in the same way that a bat does. You don't use echolocation to paint a 3D picture of reality (although some blind folks do develop a more limited ability to detect objects and distances through sound and other senses). And bats are more like us than snakes or worms or plants. At what point does consciousness of our sort go away? Worms have very rudimentary nervous systems. Are they conscious at all? We like to say that robots are not conscious, yet they behave in ways that give the illusion of conscious behavior. Is it possible for a robot to be conscious? In my opinion, it is. And robots quite often rely on echolocation to map out their local space.
The answer to the mind-body problem is grounded in the nature of experience. Brains have experiences, but what is an experience from a physical perspective? That's all I want to say for now--to point people at Nagel's explanation, if they have not already read this seminal paper. I will give my thoughts later on the way to think about the objective side of subjective experience.