DRFseven

How would we ever know? We don't even know if our perceptions are the same as other people's in matters of color, pain, etc., much less bats or other species. We can't know what it's like to be a bat.

tronvillain

Well, there may not even be anything like it is to be a bat in the same sense that there is something like it is to be human. Regardless, we can still learn quite a lot about bats.

excreationist

I think we can kind of do what bats can do - by that I mean we can locate where sounds are coming from. (Well I can do this pretty good at least... if I'm "toad hunting" in the night I can sometimes track them down by trying to hear the location of their croaking)
I think the ability of bats sensing where their echos are coming from is similar to our ability to sense where sounds are coming from. (BTW, for some reason I think I can determine the position of sounds better if I move my eyes into different positions...)

Ierrellus

tronvillian,

Your arguments still smack of vestiges of Cartesian dualism--this human world of being on the one hand and this animal world of being on the other. From that vantage point, one questions, do I really know what another human being thinks or whether or not a rock in my hand actually exists beyond my conceptions of it. That is a much more confusing and anthropomorhic sense of denial than to simply say, "If your dog licks your face, it does not mean that he likes you." It is saying that there are two worlds, mine and the dog's; and "never the twain shall meet".

Sonic pictures of what a human fetus looks like in the womb is an example of using echolocation the the same way as a bat does. If we say that this cannot be, simply because a bat's sense of reality is based on sensory perceptions in which one or more of its senses differ from ours {in intensity, not in kind}, we are back to the two worlds theory.

I'll dicuss genomes and their evolutionary effects later. You might wish to read Carruthers' and Dennet's agreements with Nagel.


Ierrellus

PAX

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Ierrellus

Laurentius, DRFseven,

In another thread I paraphrased an idea from N. Humphrey, A History of the Mind. The idea is that if there were no bodily feedback to the brain, there would be no concept of a self or an "I".

Rid yourself of all sensory data received from the "outside" world, and there would be no concept of anything but self or "I". {MO}.

So why are we referring to either anthropomorphism or solypsism as accurately defining limits of our knowing anything?

Ierrellus

PAX

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[ June 29, 2002: Message edited by: Ierrellus ]</p>

snatchbalance

Rid yourself of all sensory data; you are dead.

SB

DRFseven

Why are we mixing up differences in internal and external stimuli with differences in species?

For sure we can learn things about bats (we have a bat cave here that streams thousands of bats at dusk in July and last night we made a date to visit it with friends who have never seen it). But we simply can only know what it's like to be a human thinking about what it's like to be a bat.

Mu

Correct me if I'm wrong (as if you needed any invitation), but surely there is no way of verifying that my own internal experience of sensory data bears any resemblance to yours ?

Because we can point to a specific wavelength in the visible spectrum, and verify that we label our experience of that wavelength with the same arbitrary symbol(s), this in no way indicates that the experience is similar or the same. Only that we have learned to label that experience the same.

Thus, we all know that the sky "is" 'blue'. But your experience of that wavelength and mine could be completely different.

We can suppose, but verification is impossible. Isn't it ?

This being the case, how can one hope to understand the experience of a bat, iguana, or chimpanzee ? <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

Ierrellus

Mu,

Welcome aboard. It is not my place to correct you because that would be assuming that I know more about the topic than you do. I do not. But in our common quest your intellegnt opposition could be helpful indeed.

So, I object to the unknowability of what is other than ourselves outright. I object to the Cartesian theater of two worlds. Why, because in the teeth of such naysaying, science has gone ahead and proved many things. One day one of these proofs may be what it's like to be a bat.

Again, welcome.

Ierrellus

PAX

Ierrellus

snatchbalance,

Last midcentury John Lilly developed a sensory isolation tank and put himself in it. What happened was that his mind became totally "subjective". He experienced moods, images and thoughts that would be comparable to someone on LSD.

Ierrellus

PAX