Consciousness as inherently representational?: Akins on Nagel's Bat

[@P_fromTheValley]

This was really helpful. I decided to watch your video first before diving into the reading. :)

[@falguni.the.phooll]

You are so articulate

[@LDProductionsClass]

Here's an objection: the bat's experience relies on the bat's ability to perceive things we do not perceive. It has organs that allow it to detect sonar and a section of its brain that enables it to build a 3d map of the world internally. But those differences rely on the fact that a bat has a bat's physical brain and body. However, we have a way around this. Under materialism, your own experience is the product of electrical impulses in your brain, created by external stimuli. The part of your brain that creates this experience is different than the bat's brain, so obviously, because of physical realities, you will never have the bat's experience (unless we surgically replaced part of your brain with a bat brain or something, but then I'd question whether "you" are still there....). One could imagine an advanced recording device that we could put into the bat's brain to record all the inputs that the "conscious" part of the bat is experiencing; and we could then create a set of outputs, delivered directly to a HUMAN brain, that stimulates the human brain into having an experience identical to the bat's. This process may be so complicated that we are never able to accomplish it in reality; but philosophically I think this solves our problem.