Comment by fsckboy
3 years ago
> phrases "what it is like to be a bat", or "there is something it is like to be a bat",
> are simply a linguistic sleight of hand masking a
> plain old dualistic standpoint
philosophers have differentiated these into three different questions
"What is it like to be?" has to do with the nature of consciousness.
"word games" has to do with any use of language, nothing to do with consciousness. You could make a word-game critique of any statement.
"dualism" comes in a number of forms, not clearly related to one another (physical body vs soul/spirit, earthly realm vs heaven; mind-body, consciousness vs quantum chemistry) but all having a similar problem. Any place there is posited a dualism, then what is the interaction between the two duals, how could one even perceive the other?
but declaring "there is no dualism", while eliminating that problem, does not eliminate the question as to why it was posited in the first place: why (or how) does it feel like anything to be conscious, feel pain, etc. Saying "that's what evolved" is just hand waving. What's the difference between being alive and dead? Do rocks have a little bit of consciousness?
My personal preference (lifelong atheist-science type) is that the "abstract" world is all that exists, there is no physical world. Everything we study in physics and chemistry we arrive at via abstract mathematical values, relationships and computation. I think that is the nature of the universe, and while it doesn't "solve" the consciousness problem, I feel like it moves the goalposts in the right direction.
>"word games" has to do with any use of language, nothing to do with consciousness.
I think philosophy of mind is especially prone to these issues because of how deeply the concept of "subjectivity" is embedded into language (not only at the level of semantics but also grammar). You can hardly say 2 words without pulling in a whole bunch of preconceived notions of what a subject is and how subjects relate to each other.