What is it Like to be a Bat? - the hard problem of consciousness

[@isaacroth5204]

This man is single handedly solving every existential crisis I've had since I was 10.

[@qazweriopkoilj]

So, you're saying you have finally accepted that you're a bat?

[@serpior]

Im batman

[@JJ-fr2ki]

it’s a pseudo problem.

[@haraldisdead]

Opposite for me. I'm out

[@lnAmberClad]

Who? Nagel or Kaplan?

[@apolloknights007]

I showed this video to my rock friends. They were angered. They told me you got the rock thing all wrong and were pissed that you said they had no consciousness.

[@mauriceforget7869]

HIhihihihahahahohoho!

[@schiacciatrollo]

well, might be a good start for getting some

[@braveheart4603]

I used to be a bat in a former life and can confirm it's exactly the same as portrayed on the daredevil series.

[@patmando1]

you must have gothic rock friends

[@FrankM-rg1gv]

Precisely. And I’m not being facetious. I think the point of failure is the assumption that it is not like anything to be a rock. I suspect it is like something to be a rock. It’s just a question of how much more different it is to be a rock than it is to be a bat. My layman’s take on dualism/physicalism is that subjective experience is the changing over time of particular patterns of information. Information must always be embodied in the physical world, in matter and/or energy. Therefore, experience IS patterns of information. The only way to have that experience is to BE that experience, that pattern. Yes, it does open the door to some form of panpsychism, but I don’t see that as a problem. Why should it be a problem that it is like something to be a rock? Generally speaking, the patterns of information that make up a rock change much more slowly and in less complex ways than the patterns of information in a human or a bat, so the experience is likely to be much more dissimilar between a human and a rock than a human and a bat. If it is like something to be a bat, is it like something to be a honeybee, a worm? How about a paramecium? A virus? A strand of RNA? a sucrose molecule? A carbon atom? An electron? A photon? A quark? Where is the line where it no longer is like something to be something? I don’t think there is any line.

[@MisterWillow]

Thanks Jeffrey! “If you can’t explain it to a 6-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself” (Albert Einstein) That is exactly what you do: No unneeded hiding behind jargon, no boring sidesteps, and repeating WHAT it is was again we are researching/studying. Thanks for your high quality lectures. You are a gift to humanity, Jeffrey, keep it up!

[@anestos2180]

Einstein said that regarding the science point of view though. but in consciousness level you can never explain to other what exactly you feel or understand because the other person is not you. i if tell you i am hungry you understand it as abstraction of your past memories of how "YOU" felt hunger. so you can understand things in life not even 1000 philosophers and scientists can even comprehend what you are talking about.

[@FlatKitten]

​@@anestos2180 well if I knew your eating habits and say I've talked with you enough to know how much hyperbole you use, then I could approximate how hungry you are and prove it by supplying an adequate meal. Perhaps that's not a conscious understanding of your hunger though. But I would be attempting to translate your expressions into how I feel about hunger and food and then presenting you with the amount of food I think I would want if I felt as hungry as I think you feel

[@Delectatio]

True. But I hope you won't deny 6-year-old's understanding of stuff lacks depth and is really far from full comprehension🙃

[@viljamtheninja]

@@Delectatio Well that's true when talking about pretty much anyone on any subject that they're not a specialist in. There's levels to knowledge and understanding.

[@capiven1]

1. Everything seems to be reductionist. 2. He is using reductionism to disprove reductionism; a circular argument. 3. He is using arguments from ignorance to prove his point. 4. In the end the problem is one of Linguistics. 5. The scientific approach is not about proving anything, that is for mathematics, it is about providing the best explanation about a phenomenon; that's all.

[@TicketAirline]

I’m in my late 40s and I didn’t study philosophy or anything related. but I have learnt so much from your videos and I’m planning to watch all of them and learn much more. You have a way and talent to teach and open new horizons. You made me search and rethink and look again at things from different perspectives. Thank you so much. 🙏🏼

[@nebwachamp]

2nd half of video is a guy that doesn't know what he's talking about.

[@DS-nv2ni]

@@nebwachamp Why?

[@BigRam2010]

​@@nebwachamp 💯

[@LeruLeru45]

​@@nebwachampwhy?

[@JosiahWarren]

Great i hope one day you get to learn algebraic topology instead of watching this clwn

[@idontwantahandlethough]

Now _this guy_ has a real phenomenal character. Thanks for the knowledge :)

[@joaoyamashita9275]

I’m just a ramdom Brazilian engineering student, why am I here? I don’t know… but I just can’t stop watching your videos! They’re amazing! I’m loving it!MORE VIDEOS !!!

[@profjeffreykaplan]

Glad you are enjoying them. I have organized the videos into playlists, if that is helpful. www.jeffreykaplan.org/youtube

[@theeskatelife]

you're here because philosophy is more interesting than engineering lol

[@Dizma_Music]

É nós! 😇🇧🇷

[@nicholascincotta3001]

Excellent video...and as a fellow philosophy teacher I can appreciate how hard it is to think-on-the-fly so you can be forgiven for calling Mt Everest a 'planet'. :)

[@geraldwilkerson5703]

And you could be forgiven for using the word "too" instead of the proper word "to". :)

[@isaacsleeman5937]

I was looking for this comment lol

[@Your_choise]

11:35

[@bobdillaber1195]

@Gerald Wilkerson And my father used to correct me to every time I didn't do something quite right neither. It was bad for my sole.

[@monkeybusiness673]

@@bobdillaber1195 😂

[@THE-X-Force]

I just want to join with the many others here in thanking you from my heart for this, and all of your excellent videos. Truly great work. I hope you know how very appreciated you are, and that you've really contributed something to the world through your incredibly talented teaching. ☮

[@tomaalexandru7104]

I totally agree!

[@Aelipse]

Hi! First off, hat's off to you for being able to digest and reinterpret a very long, abstract and apparently extremely difficult text for us philosophical laymen. I have never even heard of this argument, let along read the paper, so I'll just take your word that your interpretation is accurate. I'll add a few trivia before I chime in with my take on the argument itself. (1) Yes, bats are sensing the deflected sound with their ears, and what's more, the noise they let out is so loud and powerful that it would literally damage their ears. They have this membrane in their ears that opens and closes, thus allowing them to protect their ears when making the sound and then, by opening the membrane, to let the reflected sound in. This repeats more than fifty times per second and allows bats not only to navigate through their environment, but actually actively hunt for flying insects - that is creatures that are so small that we can barely see them with our eyes. (2) There are other fascinating animals Nagel could have picked to build his argument. Mantis Shrimps have eyes that can register 12 different wave lengths. We humans for comparison only register three. Since all the colours we can perceive are some combination of those three wavelengths, it means that the Mantis Shrimp can see colours that we cannot even imagine - and we obviously don't even have words for them. Cuttlefish on the other hand are able to sense polarisation of light - something we need machines to be able to detect, and since they can reflect light by their skin a a controlled way (they change colour like chameleons, only much quicker), they are able to communicate through that. Just try to imagine what it is like to be a Cuttlefish or a Mantis Shrimp! The argument, I think, could be even simplified to trying to imagine what a fellow human being experiences when they see the same colour. Is my pink the same as yours? To the argument itself. In order for science to work, the phenomena it studies have to be either repeatable or predictable in some way. For example, science is able to study electrons because all electrons are the same and they all behave in the same way. It can study mechanics of fluids, because it doesn't matter whether you watch this jar of water or that lake of water - water is water and it all behaves the same. This is an important requirement for the scientific method searching for objective truths to work, and it is not fulfilled when it comes to human (or any other) experience and consciousness. Human mind is an extremely complicated phenomenon, which is defined not only by genetics, but also by the sum of all the experience the individual has gone through, and since no two humans have gone through the same sum of experiences in their lives, not to even mention the non-identical genetics, it is impossible to apply the scientific method on thought, minds, feelings and consciousness in general - definitely not when you're comparing the feelings and experiences of two different individuals. Does that mean that there is something more than the physical foundation of the brain on which the mind is being run? To know for sure we will have to wait for either AI to become so sophisticated that its behaviour is indistinguishable from human behaviour, including the manifestation of feelings and thoughts, or for neuroscience to be able to "read" individual thoughts and feelings in the brain. Until then anything anyone says is a pure speculation. I would like to speculate against the argument made by Nagel: Imagine you have a machine that mass-produces little boxes that look all the same on the outside, but the machine, based on random chance (or an algorithm that is so complicated that it is practically impossible to understand, let alone predict), puts something in the box. You can open millions of those boxes, looking for a pattern to be able to objectively know what must be in the next box, but you will never find such a pattern, no matter how many boxes you study. It's the same with people. You cannot see "inside" them and know what they are feeling or experiencing just because of the sheer variability. Now, does that mean that those little boxes are outside of realm of the physical? Does that mean that they contain something more than particles and fields as described by physics? Definitely not. Our ability to "empathise", that is to put oneself in someone else's shoes, to imagine what they are experiencing and feeling, is basically a simulation that is taking place in our brain. The simulation is based on things that we have actually experienced. If I tell you "I've seen a beautiful woman", you will picture a woman in your own mind, beautiful by your own standards, and most importantly, even if you have never actually seen such a woman, she will be a collection of things you have seen in the past. If you were reading a science-fiction novel and the author was describing an alien species, you won't be able to portray those aliens in your mind in the same way as the author had in mind, until he compares the alien's traits to something you already know. "It had four arms like tentacles of an octopus, one huge compound eye like that of a fly and it slithered on the ground like a snail, leaving a slimey trail behind." That will give some mental picture, and that picture will consist of things you have already seen, experienced. And that is the reason why you can (sort of) imagine what it must be like to be 30 ft tall, but not what it is like to be a rock. Our brain simply lacks enough samples to build on. One last perspective to look at it from. It seems that consciousness is not a binary property. It's not true that something either has or doesn't have consciousness. Instead, it seems that there are many many stages of consciousness. We humans consider ourselves to have consciousness (of course, we are the ones that invented it!) and rocks lack consciousness in all meanings of that word. But what about chimpanzees, dolphins or elephants? Do they not have consciousness just because they are not human? What about dogs and cats and mice and fish? Do they have consciousness? What about snails and leeches? Are those conscious? Flies and ants? Fungi? Bacteria? Viruses? RNA and DNA molecules that are the foundation of life? I think we can all agree that a string of atoms that is a DNA molecule does NOT posses a consciousness. But at what point of the list I gave does it emerge then? Isn't it more like a continuous quality rather than an "on / off" property? (And by the way, do all humans have the same level of consciousness?) If that is true, what even IS consciousness, and shouldn't there be an infinite amount of alternatives to the "physicality" approach then? And aren't those "lower" kinds of consciousness (like that of a house fly or a bacterium) just as physical as the physicalism itself? A word of consolation at the end. Jeffrey says in the video that physicalism is reductive. That is true, but the way he says it leaves a negative aftertaste, almost a disappointment that lighting is "just an electric discharge". I don't think that reductivity should be hated or feared. We as humans have come a long way in terms of understanding the world we live in and I think the ability to explain the phenomena that take place around us is absolutely amazing, not disappointing. We are all collections of atoms that are capable of understanding and appreciating that fact, and that is beautiful.

[@nopasaran4685]

Thank you for your comment. It expressed perfectly what I started to consider as the video went on

[@shadowofthenamelessking]

Agreed.

[@J-YouTube324]

Wow! Great comment. The weather is very difficult to predict with precision. Is the weather on earth like the thoughts and feelings of a human being?

[@LunizIsGlacey]

There is a physical term which may be relevant to this discussion: emergence. The idea that things are more than just the "sum of their parts"; that due to interactions between those parts, they become a more complex thing. This is why things like Chemistry and Biology aren't just branches of physics: due to layers upon layers of emergence, there then exists new, more complicated stuff to study in an entirely new manner. A singular ant can't build an anthill, it can't do all the things we associate with an ant colony, but when a whole bunch of ants interact, they create a much more complicated new entity: an ant colony, capable of doing much more complex and impressive feats. But does the "ant colony" have physical existence? Arguably yes, arguably no, but it certainly does interact physically with the real world. A singular electron or quark or gluon or what-have-you similarly doesn't do that much stuff, but when a bunch of them interact with each other and with other particles, all of a sudden we have electromagnetism, then atoms, molecules, reactions and so on. A singular particle can't do much, but a bunch together can create all of chemistry. Is a "molecule" a physical entity? Does it have physical existence? Probably a lot more people would say 'yes' than with the ant colony, but it is once again just an emergent property of stuff interacting. So just like the ant colony, it also arguably has or doesn't have physical existence. Consciousness is very probably just another example of emergence, that interactions between neurons generate a new compound entity which is more than just the sum of its parts. What emergent entities do we deny physical existence? Which do we say have it? And why should this question even matter?

[@light8258]

You can think of emergent properties of systems as encapsulating more information than the physical system itself has. For example the rules of thermodynamics are not in the particles of a gas (the particles are just bouncing around), but if you look at the gas, these rules just emerge. Also, a computer doesn't physically have the information it stores and what I mean by that is, that the electrons sitting around in the transistors do not contain any information. Only their behavior, which depends on the mechanisms of transistors manifests some kind of abstract information that is contained in the computer, while it is not physical. Similarly the electric signals in our brain do not physically contain any information, but only in the context of the mechanisms of neurons and the firing rate of synapses, the abstract information behind the signals reveals itself. My point is, I think you're right, that emergence can explain the abstract information behind the physical world. But still, this doesn't solve the consciousness problem, because the abstract information could be there, even without us being conscious of it. Emergence is just another physical theory and can't reach through to the subjective experience. Consciousness is not the existence of abstract information behind physical systems, but the experience of this information.

[@LunizIsGlacey]

@@light8258 Thank you for the well thought-out and well-written response! I see what you mean, and that's indeed an interesting point. I wonder if this question even has an answer...

[@absta1995]

Couldn't have said it better myself. In the neuroscience circles I've been in, this is the prevailing view. Consciousness is an emergent property of the mammalian neocortex. The pain pathway is good example of this

[@absta1995]

​​@@light8258 This isn't a given. I agree that abstract information on its own would not be conscious, it would be dead. However, once the system starts to model and process the abstract information in complex ways, as the mammalian neocortex does, then you have consciousness. Also, consciousness can come in many different flavours depending on what brain regions are active. That's why there's a different feeling between dreaming and wakefulness when you look back at it. Mainly, your prefrontal cortex is significantly less active during sleep which leads to a reduced sense of self-awareness and planning. Eventually we will map every aspect consciousness for the human brain, and this will be a sufficient explanation of consciousness as we will eventually be able to build systems that can mimic it and pass all tests of consciousness that we can think of. Imo

[@light8258]

@@absta1995 You're right, that via the processes in our brain consciousness emerges, but I don't think I've denied that. Science will be able to close in on what makes us conscious and different conscious experiences and it will describe how consciousness arises. The problem I see though is, that it can describe how the processes in our brain create consciousness, but won't explain, why this is the case and what it is like from a subjective viewpoint. It's kind of obvious for us, that the electric signals inside our brain do actually contain the world and the qualia we perceive, but this isn't obvious from a scientific point of view. From a scientific point of view (and Occam's razor) an outside observer would probably be satisfied with the explanation that different types of activation pattern contain emergent information. We don't think, that the abstract information in a computer actually creates a whole other kind of layer of reality, like our neurons do for us and how would we even find out? I think, this kind of experience is just not something, that science can talk about, although it can describe the mechanisms. But hopefully I'm wrong. I mean 400 years ago Newton wanted to understand the inner clock work of the world and it was thought an unsolvable problem and 400 years later we are finally very close to the answers. Maybe if we understand the brain well enough, it will become possible to answer the question of why we are conscious and how to bridge the gap from objective to subjective reality.

[@50srefugee]

For a fictional treatment of this problem, read Roger Zelazny's short story, "For a Breath I Tarry", about a robot trying to understand the experience of the vanished humans who built his kind.

[@bosnbruce5837]

Are you suggesting this is A FACTUAL treatment

[@CamraMaan]

As this is two years old, I'm sure someone else has mentioned this, but humans can/do echo-locate, but they are typically blind and have trained themselves to do so. But it is possible for humans to do, we just don't normally train our brains to do it.

[@starfishsystems]

It's a phenomenon which I first noticed when ashore one night during a sailing exploration. I had to find my way back through dark woods, and I stumbled around a fair bit while trying to keep on the trail. There was an onshore wind which produced some noise of surf coming onto the beach. It's a form of "white noise" with many different waveforms and frequencies. I happened to notice, while stumbling around in the dark, that the apparent pitch of this noise would rise as I got closer to the ground or to some large solid object like a tree or rock outcrop. What I was hearing, it turns out, is some kind of phase effect between the incident and reflected signal from the surf. With a bit of conscious practice, I could begin to sense how far away things were, based on this pitch shift. It became quite evident when something was less than a metre away, even though I couldn't even see my hand against the sky. And of course the surf was also helpful in keeping me oriented with respect to the beach. Altogether it was a pleasant rather than alarming experience, and although I acquired a few scratches I think that I navigated pretty well. In an urban setting there's often more ambient light, and typically not a lot of surf, but the sound of distant traffic may serve as a source of white noise. A plane passing overhead does very well also. To demonstrate the effect, all you have to do is crouch down. You should hear a distinct rise in pitch. I'd estimate that it's about half a semitone: quite distinctive, in other words. As to the physics, I'm not entirely sure what's being perceived. There should certainly be a phase effect of some kind between the direct and reflected sound. If we were presented with a single clean waveform, we might hear a beat frequency as the phase difference. But this should be a low throbbing of a few dozen Hz that decreases in rate as the reflection becomes closer. What I hear with white noise is instead an increase in apparent pitch, and it's up near 7 to 10 kHz I'd guess. Not surprisingly, it sounds much like the shifting "phaser" effect in amplified music. At any rate, this should help to validate your comment about echo location. It's a crude effect, but anyone can experience it.

[@Georgia-Vic]

Yes but can those people you speak of fly around in the dark while practicing their "echo location?" It's impossible to know what anything is without actually being that of which you're speaking of!

[@gerardjayetileke4373]

@@Georgia-Vic Batman took that personally.

[@Georgia-Vic]

@@gerardjayetileke4373 did he tell you that? He's supposed to be a super role model,not be superficial,whine, get mad and show girly emotions,I used to look up to him! 😥

[@gerardjayetileke4373]

@@Georgia-Vic Probably shouldn't impose too much of our expectations on him ;)

[@PringlesOriginal445]

Your basically saving my life with all your videos!

[@profjeffreykaplan]

Glad I could help!

[@mysfitmystic1900]

Right? I'm drowning in Philosophy and I appreciate this video SO MUCH!!!

[@paulie-g]

@@mysfitmystic1900 I love philosophy and, in general, learn much better when reading. However, Prof. Kaplan has something special where all this subject matter that I've read about suddenly clicks and makes sense on a deeper level. Truly unique.

[@Kineticboy2K1]

This is some good stuff. I'm torn between accepting this as a genuinely great argument or rejecting it out of a fear that my biases are being confirmed. This explains so many of my thoughts in recent years that I'm surprised I could be confronted with someone elegantly explaining it for me. Truly brilliant work dude. Subbed for life.

[@Dion_Mustard]

she is 100% wrong.

[@Kineticboy2K1]

@@Dion_Mustard Who?

[@Dion_Mustard]

blackmore@@Kineticboy2K1

[@wolfbenson]

You've made some very difficult concepts easy to understand and how to fully grasp the arguments. Really enjoyed this!

[@beautybearswitness]

Thanks so much for the video and the clear explanation of Nagel’s paper. Just at the end, to give dualism justice, it actually does not posit another objective immaterial substance; but on the opposite, it argues for a non-physical substance whose essential property is subjectiveness - allowing subjective experience!

[@iananthonyjames]

"Argues for" means what? Essential property must be in an objective sense.

[@jsinferno7134]

for something to exist it must be objective surely?

[@pardusardens]

What's really bothering me here (there are a few things but even MY pedantry has a limit) is that, in the framework of Dualism, why *can't* a rock or a pinkness-detector be conscious? If consciousness is really a distinct epiphenomenon purely causally dependent on the physical with no causal feedback, that makes it absolutely subjective, in which case it strikes me as being fundamentally solipsistic, i.e. it seems impossible to make any statement about any being's consciousness other than one's own. I can *choose* to believe that the person making this video had a conscious experience, on the grounds that we share certain physical characteristics of neurobiology, and motivated by the feeling that being the only consciousness would be very lonely, but that's not even a proper hypothesis, since there's no way I could ever (by any means we know of, at least) actually *test* it. So, I'm not clear on what basis a Dualist (or any anti-Physicalist, really) can actually argue that a camera *doesn't* experience the images it captures, and that a rock *doesn't* experience its rockness? Honestly this is kind of my biggest beef with Dualism--it's basically what Chalmers called Mysterianism (if i remember right from another video) with the added polish of declaring itself fundamental. Both are inherently antiscientific models (as rightly discussed); their suppositions are by their nature untestable, which means that in a scientific context at least, they're also unanswerable and outside the purview of science. One might as well try to develop a theory of what the best flavor of ice cream is. Then again, in the interest of full disclosure, as a physicist, I am by nature irritated by untestable notions being presented as facts, and feel (very broadly) that they represent ill-posed questions. I could develop my theory about what the best flavor of ice cream is, and it could be logically internally consistent, but what does "best" even mean? Does it account for everyone's experience, or only mine? If everyone's experience, then why not the experience of all things capable of experiencing flavor? My own experience and preferences vary from time to time--one day I might feel like mint cookies and cream, but another I might want green tea, or ginger--so do I average over time, then? Does "best" vary subjectively? If so, doesn't that mean I'm ultimately saying "the thing I will enjoy the most is the thing I would most enjoy at that moment," which reduces to a tautology? That strong correlation of untestable "facts" and ill-posed questions leaves me deeply suspicious all anti-Physicalist formulations I'm aware of. It also raises the question, then, of why anyone should bother even discussing the matter, which strikes me as somewhat self-defeating from an academic standpoint. Positing a question as unanswerable basically means there's no product to contemplating it besides the experience of contemplation itself, and I'm guessing that most Dualists would be reluctant to say that their work is merely an exercise in meditating aloud into a universe that may or may not contain any other conscious experience. All that said, now I need to go watch your videos on the Physicalist models to find out where I want to pick fights with THEM...

[@MugenTJ]

I agree with you. Dualism essentially presents a false dichotomy between reality and experience. They tend to isolate consciousness/experience as it’s own thing, namely because the mind is capable of dreaming, imagining , and all the insane things. They conveniently ignore the fact that the state of the brain is itself grounded in reality, despite the state of the mind isn’t. (Consider this analogy: There is only the paint on a canvas; the brain. The image can be whatever the viewer experience; the mind) The correct view should be that experience and thereby consciousness is a continuum from rockiness to being human (sane or insane, dream or reality). The main reason why human or animal consciousness are subjective is because for once it is an approximation of realistic experience, for another each individual by nature distinct from each other in many ways. Much like how each snow flake is slightly different .

[@davidallen6009]

Except that all right-thinking individuals acknowledge Mint Chocolate Chip is objectively the best ice cream flavor.

[@MugenTJ]

@@davidallen6009 lol. It’s objectively decent.

[@liamnewsom8583]

But there's utterly nothing scientific about physicalism, how do you know science can even awnser the question and that your "notions" of science are even correct? Through more of your own "science"?

[@MugenTJ]

@@liamnewsom8583 unfortunately to do science you assume physicalism is the better system. Because it deals with the physical world . If you want to deny the physical world then you be in a lot of problems . If anything Descartes was right about , is that there is a truth in and of itself, that should be the physical world. Everything is an abstract of it.

[@zrajm]

I find that the reductive view of the operations of the brain can teach us quite a lot about what it is to be a bat. Say that we do MRI scans and find that the brain of a bat processes the incoming echolocation signals using a part of the brain analogous to our visual system - we would then know that the bats "see" (rather than "hear") the echolocation signal. (And thus bringing us one step closer to understanding what it is like to be a bat.) It's not a complete insight into how the echolocation work, but it certainly tells us *something*. And it shows us that qualia indeed can be observed and analyzed from an objective point of view. Also, to anyone interested in this, I would like to recommend Daniel Dennett's book "Kinds of Minds".

[@thecarbdude4085]

I had to rewatch the first bit of the video because I couldn't fathom how good this man is at writing mirrored letters until realizing he probably just flips the video in the end.

[@HikaruHondaKerala]

The real question is "what is it like to be batman?"

[@Hebsparks]

Where is she

[@tomhodges1552]

Vengeance...its like vengeance

[@Robert_McGarry_Poems]

What is it like to be in Batman, Turkey? 😂

[@Henchman.24]

Alfred...Alfred!

[@thomasstanford80191]

I'm a huge Batman fan so I can't even be mad

[@iamjwashburn]

I am blown away by the quality of this video. Holy cow. Nicely done, Jeffrey!

[@profjeffreykaplan]

Wow, thanks!

[@ritimasahikiya]

This guy can real explain and entertain at the same time. 😯

[@NovicebutPassionate]

One of your best videos. Thank you! And while I have your attention, I also want to thank you for NOT adding unwanted, unnecessary, annoying, destructive, (and the list goes on) "background music" (or whatever those sound-wave-noisy-things are called) to your content. Please continue presenting your lectures as you've been, intended for mature, sophisticated, truth-seeking, adults who I assume are your audience. Thanks again!

[@Searchinmano]

"when it comes to consciousness it seems like there's stuff in the universe that just can never be explained objectivly" This to me seems like science scientifically coming to the conclusion that something is inherently beyond its reach, and it blows my mind

[@kevinpulliam3661]

It's not science doing this, rather philosophy, which is a branch of science. "Science" from its very outset by definition excludes phenomena so it can't explain it. It would be like if someone swept everything under a rug and then said let's get rid of the rug like how we got rid of everything else.

[@Drakhra]

This was both enjoyable and very useful, thank you so much. In essence, science explains how things are (neurones --> pain) but consciousness IS how things (pain) seem. Science can't explain how things seem because how things seem IS how things seem? Loved the examples at the beginning. I might name my band The Pink Experience. Thanks so much for this!

[@fernandoabascal6295]

Be the rock

[@lorraineogan9301]

Great professor! You really know how to break down difficult concepts so it makes difficult reading easier to understand. I think that's a big barrier to students enjoying philosophy. Excited to view more!!

[@thecarman3693]

The concept of consciousness is never questioned in this video other than it being a part of existence. There are a number of theories that examine this concept as being illusionary, meaning that it does not exist as something in and of itself, but rather is an extension of various physical reactions occurring within the brain that synergistically bring about this perception. Once one or more of these reactions or occurrences stops or is hindered, full consciousness ceases. The conclusion then strongly points to it being simply another part of physicalism.

[@eleaticeyes813]

To me, that only really hints at you yourself not being conscious; how else could you deny it?

[@xiyangyang1974]

I am totally on your side. I am really surprised that someone could propose something like this in the modern world. Comparing stones and living objects doesn’t make sense. Do you compare stone and an animal? Do you compare a stone and a bacterium? Do you compare stone and a virus? Do you compare stone and a gene? In Nagels’s opinion, at which level does physicalism fail for the first time?

[@christianpeters1148]

Does that seem correct to you - in your experience? You think in 200 years, science is going to be able to symbolically represent consciousness on paper?? Sorry, I do not believe that.

[@normangoldschmidt4018]

Simply want to express my appreciation for these lectures. The are accessible, interesting and engaging. If i have a minor criticism, its that the references to the physical sciences are amusingly naive; but I honestly find it charming. Kaplan is unabashedly uninterested in physics and engineering except as tools to expand on the concepts at hand. Truly a skilled lecturer!

[@aliaqarahimi5410]

Lovely video. By the way, since language is the final expressive frontier when it comes to issues of this nature, it works wonders if one tries excessive scrutiny when it comes to usage of certain terms. During your discussion, for instance, there was a part that I felt a mere distinction when using the terms like imagination and imagine helps open a path to avoid common linguistic dead-ends or u-turns of this kind. The distinction between "retentive imagination" and "reductive imagination", for example, (which is not a techincal term but something that came to my mind to fulfil the need for fruitfil clarification) is an instance of further disambiguating the linguistic maze which at times occupies us with itself more than the final goal towards which it leads.

[@timothyharris4708]

I wonder if Professor Nagel has ever spoken with a blind person. He might discover that at least some blind people use echolocation to move around, and that there are scientific studies of how they do it.

[@richardburns9693]

Could it be that the color detector is simply evaluating the color much more basically than my mind does? It detects a certain wavelength of light and "recognizes" it as what we have labeled "pink." My eyes and brain do something essentially similar -- the eyes receive the information and the brain decodes that wavelength as something it knows to be labeled "pink." But my brain processes a LOT more data related to pink -- a lifetime of associations with the color pink, of experiences related to pink things, and that, based upon this, it makes calculations unique to my particular accumulation of data, thereby giving me a unique "experience" of pink. It isn't that my brain has functioned distinctly differently from the machine, it's still just a physical experience like the machine's, it's just more complex. The subjectivity comes from the fact that all of the variables programmed into my brain are different from those of other people because our combinations of experiences are all unique. But just as I can never know what it's like to experience the world as a bat, I also can't REALLY know what it's like to experience the world as another human being, even one I know very well. The "seeming" arises from the fact that we experience things from different perspectives than everyone else and interpreted through a different matrix of previous experiences. Hence the fact that no two people will agree precisely on how any given thing "seems." Science also does not entirely abandon subjective points of view -- subjective points of view are central to the concept of relativity. Frame of reference isn't trivial there, it's vital.

[@inrisalvatore9520]

Your entire argument is flaw. The wave length interpreted by my brain is meaningless. The set of neurons activated by the wave length is also meaningless. Even if I consider the net of neuron patterns that are activated by different experiences that I had throught all my life and the correlation of these set of neurons with my current experience, we still can not explain the meaning. Were did the set of neurons get their menaing from? Therefore, if the set of neurons has no meaning, it doesn't matter if these set of neurons are interacting with the neurons related to my current experience, because the entire outcome is meaningless. The mind can not be explained throught physical process.

[@fieldrequired283]

​@@inrisalvatore9520 What is "meaning", and how can you tell it exists? Can you demonstrate that "meaning" is not, in fact, described, contained and/or performed by mere matter?

[@inrisalvatore9520]

@@fieldrequired283 the meaning is also called "intencionality", which is the capacity to be about anything else besides itself. The mind is intencional by standard. But the physical things are not about anything else besides themselves. An electron is just an electron. A neuron is just a neuron. A tree is just a tree. Even the words you are reading here are nothing but electrical signals on the screem of the smartphone. They have no meaning by themselves. Their meaning are derived from our minds. We, with our minds ascribe the menaing of the words. If was not for the english speakers all these letters would be nothing besides strange marks without any meaning. Therefore, either the things in the universe have intrinsic meaning or derived meaning or any meaning at all. The physical things can only, at the best, have derived meaning.

[@fieldrequired283]

@@inrisalvatore9520 How can you tell that intrinsic meaning exists? Would you be able to observe a difference in the world if it were only derived, contextual meaning that existed?

[@inrisalvatore9520]

@@fieldrequired283 if derived meaning does exist,then it is derived from what? It must have something with intrinsic meaning in order to ascribe meaning to other things.

[@daviddelaney363]

Interesting on the echo locate idea...after serving on submarines and standing a lot of time on sonar watch I believe it is possible to imagine what a bat is seeing through echo location.

[@GammaPunk]

Excellent point. You can't be sure that you're having the same qualitative experience as another person watching the sonar screen either, but have a conversation with them and you can still get a sense of whether your experiences contain similar information or concepts. With animals we can also test whether certain information is represented in their awareness by having them make decisions that they could only reliably make if they had access to that information. Just because we don't (yet) know how exactly that information is represented or "felt" does not mean that there is a fundamental barrier to doing so.

[@morpheus_uat]

21:42 Still, I can't get out of my head that those sensations, that pain, that burning sensation in my hand, are nothing more than who knows how many neurons connected, firing different connections with other neurons. They are nothing more than an incredibly complex system or circuit. It's true, that circuit is unique because no one else but me can define what I feel, but it remains just that, a tangible, physical circuit.

[@Pyronar]

That's not exactly what the argument is against. It's not necessarily saying that there is some special other component to pain that is non-physical like dualism. Think of it this way. Suppose you met a person who could not feel pain, and you were armed with the full explanation of all of the body's systems and how they interact to produce pain. And you explained all of that from start to finish, from the tissue damage to the nerves to hormone changes to neurons firing in the brain and many other things to this person. Would they now know what it feels like to feel pain? The argument is that no, they wouldn't. Because you are attempting to describe a subjective experience objectively. So, a scientific explanation of consciousness is (in this argument) similarly pointless. It is the mechanism of consciousness you would be describing not the process of consciousness itself.

[@luyuchen2544]

As a student of neuroscience, I am interesting to see how this argument is relevant. In fact, there are many research revealing the objective mechanism behind subjective experience like pain.

[@fabianmarin8514]

They may explain the mechanism behind pain but this will now allow us to feel the pain the way another species feels it. We'd still be studying it from the outside.

[@cliffordbohm]

Two different people feel pain. They talk and agree on some aspects and disagree on some other aspects. They seem to each have a subjective unique experience. Now we can ask what accounts for the difference. If we found the accounting factors, Chalmers would suggest that we have solved the easy problem of consciousness... We would know why the two peoples experiences were different, but would still not be able, it would seem to know how they were different. However, how could it be that, knowing this why, and having access to the two people for interviews and further testing that we could not deduce more about their differences? Ethical considerations aside, if we had an unlimited number of perfect copies of each person and could run whatever test we wanted is it true that we could not get to some understanding of what it is like to feel each of their types of pain. I think that Nagel's argument rests more on an epistemological limit than an ontological limit. Get me a talking bat and I can probably start to get a sense of what it's like to be a bat.

[@chriswang3448]

Thank you so much. Helped me a lot with this piece of reading

[@profjeffreykaplan]

Glad it was helpful!

[@OkoeJoe]

@@profjeffreykaplan you're the best 🎖🥇

[@rwex1]

When I first heard about this problem I was shocked, it was because I immediately related it to an experience of mine, when I was like 6 years old. I asked my self "why aren't I my brother?" And I stuck in that thought so deeply that my mind was about to collapse I thought about this problem a lot before even knowing it's actually a thing. The same thing with other problem like P VS NP problem in mathematics, I was like "I can't easily belive that we can't solve a maze as fast as we can check it's solution.".

[@Radicoly]

I also had that 'about to collapse' sensation for my mind. Where it feels as if something was about to happen, then it'd just dissipate.

[@mjkeith8748]

Great talk. Question: Science has the concept of reference frames. One example of this is special relativity where you are considering motion from two different references or "perspectives". Another example is robotics where such reference frames can build up sophistication such that they incorporate, say, a built in height and brightness default etc. of the observer, such that the building across the street is percieved to be small and dark for reference system A, but large and bright for reference system B (this later reference frame uses a smaller height and lower default brightness). Do such reference frames, while scientific, counter your argument that science is only objective and not subjective. Thoughts?

[@profjeffreykaplan]

Excellent question. I think the answer to you question is 'no' for the following reason. Those kinds of frames of reference are fully knowable even by those not in those frames of reference. In fact, you just did it. You described those frames of reference to me even though I am not in those frames of reference. It is an objective fact that from frame of reference A such-and-such appears to be such-and-such. Nagel would point out that that is not also true of subjective experience. Perhaps that is what the bat example shows.

[@GermanZorba]

The relativity example is very different and may give an idea what objectivity means for that field of science: there is a huge set of reference frames called inertial, and any acceptable theory must remain the same even if I change to anyone of these frames.

[@DG-lo]

16:16 I'm grateful for channels such as this, above all because such papers indeed do not disclose the point until page 221.

[@roberhow2441]

Electric universe Electric soul. We are the consciousness in a body. Planets and stars the Birkeland currents. We have awareness of awareness. A reflective conscience state. A feeling is nothing more than a quality assessment. An Electric impulse, a stored memory. We are organic computational entities all as one. As above same as below. Good work my friend

[@tomaspecl1082]

I agree that it may not be possible to explain objectively what you feel, or what is it like to be something, etc... But I still do not see the reason why that disproves physicalism. I would say that your feelings are just your internal state of the brain and so you may say to someone else that your particular neuron is firing when you feel strawberry taste, that is objective. But it does not tell anyone else what you feel as their brain is probably wired differently and if they would try to find the same neuron (if it even exists) in their brain and activate it they would most probably feel something different. But if they were your exact copy, then you could tell them which neuron to activate and they would feel the same thing.

[@de_michael1222]

I was thinking exactly the same (although a copy of a brain alone might not be enough, perhaps you'd need to copy a whole system with neuroreceptors and nerves, even safer to clone a whole person)! Why do so few people address this counterargument?

[@theconiferoust9598]

until we can observe the physical properties of a thought or a feeling, there is no way to prove or disprove physicalism or dualism. the "fact" that thoughts, internal images, feelings, etc. occupy no physical space nor have any measurable physical representation (other than electrical signals that appear to generate them) means that they are currently anomalies to physicalism, leaving the door open. now the rub is that, in your «exact copy» scenario, the two copies will still have no confirmation that they are experiencing colors or any sensory input the same, and moreover it is almost impossible, even then, that they would, occupying different «moments» of space time.

[@gabriellachaviva]

I was thinking the same… What if neuroscientists did discover some sort of physical phenomenon in the brain that could be coded into a machine and that exact experience could be induced in another subject via the machine - would consciousness still not be physical/reducible? Like we would scan the bat’s brain into a machine and then plug in a human brain into the machine and the human would be able to fully experience the bat’s subjective experience. It’s possible there is some physical foundation to consciousness that could be detected and coded up somehow, no?

[@semi-mojo]

Youre bringing up the easy problem of conciousness: "how do objects produce conciousness".... the hard problem is how/why does conciousness have a feeling? How can you directly derive the subjective from the objective? The hardness of the hard problem can be illustrated with the clone you mentioned. If a perfect clone of you existed, would that clone be you or your clone? If physicalism can account for everything, it follows that your feeling of *personal self* (what youre feeling right now as you read this) is fundmentally material , that means that you can replicate this feeling anywhere else in the universe by means of arranging matter in the correct structure. So, is this clone you? If you died, we can surely bring you back by replicating the matter that constituted your former living self, right? Physically, it makes no difference... personally, it does and that's strange, beyond strange, it seems impossible. The only thing preventing this problem from being completely incoherent is your own existence.

[@tomaspecl1082]

@@semi-mojo can you explain what exactly you mean by "personally, it does"?

[@bwatson77]

For as ingenious as Nagel was in deconstructing reductive physicalism, a weakness in his philosophy is that he didn't do enough to propose what metaphysics would be a good candidate to supplant reductive physicalism. I recall him making a vague reference to teleology in some of his work, but to my knowledge he never articulated a viable alternative metaphysics in a systematic way. To this end it might have been to his benefit to turn towards Eastern philosophy and to the 19th century German Idealists for possible workable alternatives.

[@juanausensi499]

That's not a weakness of him, but of the whole idea. No matter how do you feel about "reductive" physicalism (in quotes because dualism is also reductive), or even if physicalism is right of wrong, there is no better alternative today. It's not that physicalism doesn't have problems (it does), it's that all proposed alternatives have still more problems.

[@bwatson77]

@@juanausensi499 Well the rub is that any metaphysical system is at the end of the day a construct that's abstracted from our direct experience, and there are better or worse ways to create and use constructs. For studying how things like atoms, galaxies, and DNA work, physicalism is perfectly adequate. The problem comes from trying to use physicalism to understand domains like consciousness, for which it's not well suited. Which leads to wasting time on pseudo problems that are a result of bad framing (the infamous 'mind body problem'). Cartesian dualism is a bad attempt to try and deal with this problem, because it shares with physicalism bad Enlightenment era assumptions that the mind can exist in a disembodied State. Paradigms which have done a better job of integrating consciousness into their schema are precisely the ones that question Enlightenment era assumptions. Nagel himself doesn't seem to spend much time acknowledging approaches taken by people like Fransisco Varella, who emphasize the need to build a bridge between cognitive science and phenomenology. And also by people like Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty who emphasize how minds disclose worlds.

[@juanausensi499]

@@bwatson77 Yes, i agree physicalism is not very well suited to understand consciousness. The question still is: are there better alternatives? And for 'better' i mean explanatory and predictive power.

[@bwatson77]

@@juanausensi499 As far as better alternatives, I would suggest the Enactive paradigm within cognitive science. 'The Embodied Mind' by Fransisco Varella, Evan Thompson, and Elanour Rosch is a good overview of this paradigm, which explores how science can be enriched by including methodologies that examine subjective, first person experience in a rigorous way.

[@kevinpulliam3661]

Idealism has too many problems and makes science a miracle. The real answer is teleology and hylomorphism.

[@MisterWillow]

After listening to Nagels argument: It sounds pretty good on first inspection. Of course: consciousness is hard to understand/grasp, even mysterious, and physics/physicalism is dealing with a more fact-like description of reality. BUT: why schould a physical approach to consciousness be doomed? We have 'emerging properties' in all kind of places (eg: temperature is huge simplification of what is actually going on with speed/energy of particles), and I wouldn't be surprised to eventually see a decent physical approach to consciousness. It is just hard to grasp the concept consciousness. That doesn't mean it isn't possible to get there from a physical startingpoint.

[@frankjspencejr]

Thank you for a clear explanation of the hard problem. There is an explanation that “solves” it though (please bear with me). Here is a brief summary: 1) First person subjective consciousness is the one irrefutable fact of reality. Remember, illusions are also 1st person subjective experiences. 2) Objective phenomena (world, others, even self) are appearances within consciousness. They may or may not have reality outside of consciousness, outside of appearance. 3) Objective (physical) reality is a closed system, and thus has no apparent use and no apparent explanation for subjective consciousness. 4) Therefore, the most logical explanation for reality is a form of idealism in which the stuff of realty is experience, and objective phenomena are law-governed appearances or illusions. There are definitely esthetic concerns with this explanation ( for example, it’s not obvious how more than one actual subject is involved. “Others” in this scenario are “just “ appearances also. So much more to discuss, but that’s the basic idea, and I’d love to hear logical objections to it.

[@mitrabuddhi]

NAVOMITTO: A New Approach to the Hard Problem The "hard problem" of consciousness refers to the mystery of subjective experience: how something physical like the brain can give rise to interior, conscious qualities like the redness of red or the painfulness of pain. Philosophers have struggled for centuries to solve this puzzle. The NAVOMITTO framework offers a novel approach to solving the hard problem. At its core, NAVOMITTO sees reality as composed of illusory dimensions and perspectives that differentiate across clarions. It's this process of differentiation across clarions that gives rise to consciousness and qualia. Clarions are the key to the solution. Lower clarions contain relatively undifferentiated perspectives that likely correspond to primitive forms of awareness. As perspectives differentiate into more parallel perspectives across higher clarions, richer conscious experiences emerge. Consciousness "scales up" as clarions increase. Subclarions within each clarion also play an important role. Subclarionic dynamics contain the finely differentiated information processing that grounds our qualia. Though embedded within a given clarion of consciousness, subclarions may bridge the gap to neural processes. The vocabulary of NAVOMITTO - illusion, dimensions, perspectives, clarions, subclarions - provides new conceptual tools for understanding how consciousness arises. Traditionally, philosophers framed the problem in terms of physical substances - like neurons - that seemed fundamentally separate from subjective experience. But clarions reframe the debate in a more fertile way. While NAVOMITTO presents only a high-level solution at this point, it points to a promising new direction for tackling the hard problem. Consciousness may emerge as an inevitable byproduct of the differentiation and integration of perspectives across clarions and subclarions - a product of the illusory structure of reality itself. In this way, NAVOMITTO offers a potential answer to the hard problem: consciousness arises through the process of differentiation across clarions, grounded and textured by subclarionic dynamics, and made possible by the illusory nature of reality. With further development and refinement, NAVOMITTO's novel conceptual tools may finally help philosophers crack the mystery of consciousness. NAVOMITTO: A Multi-Dimensional Framework for Understanding Reality Nothingness and existence are two sides of the same coin Illusion 1-there is Illusion. Reality is made of Illusion. Illusion is the whole coin of nothingness-existence. Illusion is all aspects of reality from zero (nothingness) to infinity (existence at its most actualized form). Illusion is the paradox itself. Illusion can be seen in different clarion through the process of differentiation. Dimension (Universal) 2-there is Dimension. each Dimension describe a concept or property or quality or quantity or relations or changes or process or anything else‌. each Dimension is unique in its own way but it can be seen as an interaction of infinite other Dimensions. in other way each Dimension is entangled with Illusion and All Dimensions are emergent from Illusion. Dimension exists in different Clarions and different Perspective. Illusion can be seen as infinite Dimentions. Perspective (Particular) 3-There is perspective. The set of perspectives in different clarions makes the dimension. Any conscious or unconscious entity can only pass through successive perspectives in different clarions. It is not possible for an entity to pass to parallel perspectives. Each perspective contains unique information that describes the dimension in that clarion. Each perspective manifests its own unique qualia. Clarion 4-there is Clarion. Clarion determines how many Perspective exist in that particular Clarion (in a specific Dimension). Clarion can be any number from Zero to Maxima. Differentiation (enamation) 5-There is Differentiation. Differentiation is the process of enamation that involves separation of superimposed information (at previous lower clarion) into more clear information (at next higher clarion) that leads to increase in clarity, But losing of information's. Differentiation creates Reciprocal Hierarchy Structure of Dimentions. (For example: At a lower Clarion , you may have a Perspective that contains information about red and green (Particular red-green). There is no green or red in this lower Clarion Perspective but there is only red-green. Through the process of differentiation, the information in this Perspective (Perspective red-green) can be separated into 2 simpler, more clear Perspectives at next clarion (Perspective red + Perspective green). red Perspective is the parallel Perspective of green and red-green is the parent Perspective at lower Clarion. So if you move from red-green Perspective to red Perspective you will gain clarity but at the same time you lose information of green Perspective) Nothingness 6-there is Clarion 0. Clarion Zero contains no Perspective. Clarion 0 is nothingness. Clarion 0 contains all of illusion as potential. Nothingness is the result of superimposition of all Dimentions. All Dimensions are common in Clarion Zero. Clarion 0 is the only simple. Existence 7-there is Clarion 1. At Clarion one, there is one Perspective in Dimention. The information in Clarion 1 includes the superimposition of all Perspectives in Clarion 2. Clarion One contains all information found in Dimention, but in an undifferentiated form and looks simple because it is viewed from the perspective of Clarion One. Clarion One means Dimention in the most uncertain state. Inflectia 8-Between Clarion Zero and Clarion Maxima, there is an intermediate Clarion that has the largest amount of Parallel Perspectives. From clarion zero to inflectia, the number of Parallel Perspectives for each clarion increases, and from inflectia to clarion maxima, the number of Parallel Perspectives for each clarion decreases. Perspectives at Inflectia has the most complexity while Perspectives at Clarion 1 and Platonica has the minimum Complexity. Platonica 9-there is Clarion (Maxima-1). In Clarion (Maxima-1), Dimention needs another Differentiation to reach Clarion Maxima. Platonica means Dimention in the most certain state. each perspective at Platonica contains the last bit of information in that Dimention. In Platonica, with One differentiation, existence is destroyed and nothingness remains. Platonica is formed from the superimposition of Nothingness in clarion Maxima. Maxima (Infinity) 10-there is Clarion Maxima. In Clarion Maxima, there is no superimposition, and all causes have already occurred, with no change left to be made. In Clarion Maxima, there can be no further differentiation, and there is nothing left to differentiate. Therefore, paradoxically, Clarion Maxima, represent Clarion 0. Maxima can be any number from zero to infinity. Formulas: 11-The number of Parallel Perspectives in Clarion C is calculated through the binomial coefficient with the following formula: N=P!/(C!(P-C)!) In this formula: N=number of Parallel Perspectives in Clarion C P=Platonica Clarion 12-Despite the existence of multiple perspectives in the upper clarions, for a perspective in the lower clarion it is only possible to enter P-C+1 number of perspectives from the upper clarions (for 0

[@karelvorster7414]

Zhuangzi and Huishi were crossing a bridge. Zhuangzi notices some fish swimming in the river: -See, Huishi, how gracefully those fish swim in the water. What a joy to be a fish! -You are not a fish, how do you know that fish are happy? -Man and fish are both animals... -Yes, but the joy of a fish is not the same as that of a human being. Besides, I doubt that animals have such feelings to begin with. -Aren't apples and peaches the same with respect to sweetness? -A peach is a peach; an apple, an apple. We all know that. -It would be sad if apples stopped being what they are... -So you agree with me? -No, I don't. I am talking about grasping shades of difference and identity. I for example noticed a certain likeness between the playful movements of children or the grace of young maids dancing and the movements of those fish and... -A likeness?! Is a portrait the same as the model? -Don't my words bear a certain resemblance with myself? -Who wants fuzzy resemblance instead of pure identity? You are the victim of your imagination, Zhuangzi! -We are not talking about the same thing. -How could we? Everything is different! -Your idea of knowledge is that it is a feeling. And since feelings are subjective by nature, you think you can only know your own feelings. You only are like yourself, after all. My idea of knowledge is very different. It is the spiritual result of engaging in a relationship with the known. . -Listen, Zhuangzi, if I were you, I wouldn't say anything of which I am not absolutely sure... -Otherwise? -You may look and sound like a fool. I for one hate sounding like a fool as much as I hate being a fool. -Life has a higher goal than avoiding ridicule. -It is shameful to commit error when you can avoid it. -Only a fool is afraid to err. The wise man can take advantage of his mistakes, just as the hero can take advantage of death to give a higher meaning to his life. But let me ask you a question. Can you hear those birds singing in the trees? -Yes, so what? -Do birds sing because they are happy or unhappy? -Birds don't sing. This is another example of your anthropocentric worldview! Birds make sounds and that's that! -You don't understand music, Huishi. You are tone-deaf. I can hear the music, just as I can se the grace. And they all make my heart glad. But you are disgruntled and know only to prevaricate. You may sound smarter than I, but in the end I win because the universe is my home, a home I care for and care about even if it should make me look foolish or weak, whereas you don't have a home except, maybe, in your little chattering mind.

[@vorpal22]

As a philosophical Taoist, I love that you posted this from the 莊子. Do you remember offhand what passage it is?

[@dmitrychirkov4206]

Such a pleasnat explanation! It almost feels like your mind being treated the right way. Even being in a disagreement with the argument doesn't feel frustrating. It just felt like learning a new perspective. Bravo! To me there is nothing special about having a different comprehension of an objective phenomena between observers. All the observers are different and it's only natural for them to have different matrix of "comprehending", let' say, pinkness. All of them "pinknesses" are the same at their core and different in their specifics depending on any individual observer's priorities and experiences. To not being able to completely share one's perspective on pinkness with all it's individual specifics is just a natural limitation of the observers. These different feelings are like snowflakes. They are all unique, yet the same at their core qualities and also material.

[@kevinpulliam3661]

But they can't be material because material isn't experiential

[@dmitrychirkov4206]

@@kevinpulliam3661 experience is as material thing as any other - we just yet to capture it properly

[@kevinpulliam3661]

@@dmitrychirkov4206 ​ but the reason we haven't captured it yet is because by the very definition of matter to which science is committed and which materialists follow is a matter that exists without any experiential qualities meaning that the matter itself can never form experience. It would be like if you swept all the dirt in a room under the rug and said all the dirt was gone and someone said what about the dirt under the rug and you said oh we will keep using the same method and it will work. Or if you had a bunch of white blocks (mathematical matter without any sort of experience) and then someone asked you to build a black tower (human beings with consciousness) out of them. It simply wouldn't be possible by definition no matter how much time you had

[@hopefulfailure7175]

But humans can echo locate, well at least very basically. Many blind individuals have learned to echo locate to help them move about in the world. Actually if you train at it and have decent hearing even you can learn the skill. Really comes in handy at night when you don't have a light on hand.

[@mcneilohara1463]

Thats not the point of the paper.

[@sumitraghani]

I think I believe I sensed the qualia of the conscious subjective experience inside the phenomenology that you said tallest planet instead of tallest mountain.

[@NvRDeadNed]

freudian slip. kzbin.info/www/bejne/f4XPo3uKjdV3rsk

[@GabyGómez-b9u]

Great video, only one question. What about phenomenology of Hegel that define by "the science of the experience of consciousness¨ Or maybe Husserl? It's opposite of Nagel position for denied the science of consciousness?

[@jonathanoren7258]

I find the 2022 paper titled "A Relativistic Theory of Consciousness" by Nir Lahav and Zachariah A. Neemeh to be a coherent exploration that resolves the contradictions that physicalism encounters when addressing consciousness. The paper highlights the parallels between physics and consciousness by emphasizing the relativistic nature of reality, as established by the special theory of relativity. It proposes that consciousness can be understood through a similar lens. It might be fascinating if you considered creating a video discussing this thought-provoking paper!

[@Samuel-tr9rj]

I've read it, and it is mediocre. It is redundant and doesn't solve any important issues on this topic. Although it tries to say otherwise, it is just physicalism with other words.

[@supralogical]

Thanks for a great video. I believe that scientists would say that the color pink, for example, is not out in the world, but is normally produced in the human brain when light waves of a certain wave length from outside of the body stimulate certain photoreceptor cells in the retina, which send signals to the ventral occipital lobe area of the brain, which in turn produces the sensation we call "pink." The brain itself normally experiences no pain when it is injured because it has no nociceptors (pain receptors) itself. These examples and others seem to indicate that while what we call "consciousness" may or may not be solely reducible to the physical, it may depend on the physical to exist. However, the doctrine that the "real" world consists simply of the physical world would appear to be another matter, given that we see many physical things in the world, such as cars, airplanes, computers, etc., that would not exist without our higher-order abstractions, which do not appear to be physically identifiable.

[@duffypratt]

Wouldn’t it be more consistent to say that we know nothing about the experience of a stone. We can’t imagine what it’s like, just like we can’t imagine what it’s like to be a bat. Take this to the extreme, and it’s just as true that we can’t imagine what it’s like to be another person. To me, this means there’s something wrong with the argument (probably in the conception of consciousness as a thing).

[@alecskinner8807]

I have to agree

[@justthink124]

Last month I finished "A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins. He's a neuroscientist (formerly computer scientist) developing a theory of mind based on a mechanism in the neocortex that processes "things" as reference frames, which recurse and layer and model the world interacting with the "old brain" which maps our body and deals with pain and emotions (I am not a neuroscientist so these are the broadest strokes that I can't defend). I don't find this argument persuasive at all against physicalism. All of the "appears unlikely" and difficulty of imagination speaks more, in my view, to the nascent state of our understanding of neuroscience rather than something that can't be objectified. I believe a bat's experience can be *reduced* to the spikes of impulses in a bat's brain, a brain that has evolved a model of the world deeply tied to its senses. That model, and the general family of bat brains that manifest the model is the experience of 'bat-ness'. Of course, every bat's brain will be tuned slightly differently, but the common elements (the super structures) *are* encoded in its genetic code. A code that produces bat-entities and experience of bat-ness reliably. A model that I believe could be copied into code, equipped with bat-like sensors, and essentially be a bat (although the dissonance between our provided bat-sensors and the real biomechanical system could be a real issue of ethical consequence). I'm inclined to believe consciousness is just an emergent property of sensors producing electrical impulses within a model (or complex adapative general learning algorithm) in our heads. I don't think this reduces (haha) its awe-someness. There are many math equations with emergent properties, think fractals generated by a simple equation. Think weather systems. Think of the complex behaviors created by Conway's cellular automata The Game of Life. These are objective things, reducible to equations and computer systems, but we barely can predict them or explain the why. Consiousness is like that. That doesn't imply the reduction does not exist. If anything, I think it only implies math exists, but the why our universe obeys mathy-ness will remain a mystery.

[@ilyas_elouchihi]

Excellent explanation Mr. Jeffrey! Thank you

[@saeedsh65]

Listening to this course "before" and "after" working with the most recent and advanced AI tools are two very different experiences. Beforehand, I used to understand and agree with the statement that our brains function fundamentally differently from a "color detector computer". Now, however, I do not see a clear line anymore between the two.

[@planetary-rendez-vous]

They kinda does because AI doesn't have a brain, it is fundamentally code. But the issue is, AI isn't conscious. Or if it is, we couldn't explain it.

[@robertferraro236]

I think this still does always point back to physicalism. When objective reality is understood - a new theory of everything will be revealing that in late 2023, you will see that it still ultimately boils down to the structure of the brain, genetically driven for a certain species to experience their version of reality. A bat feels like a bat because its necessity for echolocation is encoded in its genes.

[@Hacktheplanet_]

Yeah there is not a credible attack on physicalism here. Physicalism is the obvious logical theory and its up to other ones to have some proof otherwise

[@filippomaranitassinari2529]

You kind of missed the problem. Hardly any modern philosopher doubts that mind is produced by the brain which is physical. Point is that in the mind exists a class of objects that does not exist in the physical world.

[@mattlawyer3245]

This is quite interesting. I've been thinking about this same problem for such a very long time. I found that Nagel's ideas share some commonalities with my own, but I'm not sure what to make of his definition of consciousness. In my own thinking I have a hard time separating the capacity for perception from the capacity for action, and so it seems to me that a definition of consciousness that does not have some inherent connection to free will does not properly capture the idea of consciousness. In addition to the fact that it has influenced my thinking on all topics, including this one, I was reminded of Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" from several of your comments. I think it leads to a view of what science is and does which disagrees with the way you have characterized it in your video. Of course, the nature of science was not your main point, so you were simply speaking simply to attempt to communicate what WAS your main point, but I bring it up simply because I thought it would be interesting to hear you do a video on Kuhn's theory (if it comes near enough to your expertise).

[@aleperception3626]

Fantastic video. Amazing. I particularly appreciated the references to the actual pages of the paper 🙏

[@drpaul-dentist]

First of all, let me say you are doing a magnificent job. I listen often. Second, I did not study philosophy in school, but started reading it voraciously after graduation. Also listened many times to lectures from The Teaching Company before the Net. Thus I am an amateur at best. When listening or reading philosophical arguments, I return to Wittgenstein’s statement: “the bewitchment of the Intellect by language”. All we have to communicate and argue ideas are words. And these words may not be up to the task, or as Ludwig claimed, we use words in a sloppy fashion. Consider the word mind and/ or consciousness. We use these labels to represent something a sufficiently developed biological nervous system is capable of doing. That is why your rock has no consciousness. Most importantly, absent a material nervous system, no Mind. Should anyone doubt this, we can discuss it after consuming many shots of vodka to reveal the physicality of intoxicated brain function on mind. The vast array of mood altering pharmaceuticals is also persuasive. This, the result of scientific study. Just because we fail to know the exact mechanism by which the brain represents itself to itself, is not to confused that it does not do this unendingly from conception to death. I may not know precisely what it is like to be a bat, but I have guesses. As rudimentary as it may be, humans can discern distances and locations of objects with hearing. We do this daily “ looking” for a ringing phone. Evolution has fine tuned this ability in bats. Tom Nagel is wrong. Science has every right to study how the brain produces mind. It is the only path to knowledge. Otherwise we are left with imaginative fables courtesy of bewitching philosophical prose. Please consider doing a post on Wittgenstein. His work is so confusing to me. Sorry for typos. Texting by phone ain’t easy for me.

[@hushenmedia]

I didn't know that Mount Everest was the worlds tallest planet? 11:36

[@profjeffreykaplan]

You got me!

[@jmoney4695]

A counter argument would be that the brain is an incredibly complex structure. And if the brain were described by physics, there may be some level of “subjective” interpretability i.e. decoding the “algorithm” of every neuron and studying them all simultaneously. But we do not yet fully understand that brain. There have been many seemingly magical or inexplicable phenomena that have been explained by science. I personally believe consciousness is a “emergent” property of the neural architecture of biological brains.

[@bosnbruce5837]

You fail to use those constructs that which we know nothing about. You even refuse to acknowledge things that we don't know if they exist. Instead you explanations are based only on everything that has ever existed, anywhere in between quarks and galaxies. You are material reductionist.

[@dragonflyradio127]

"I don't know, and I'm not willing to look it up." It's the impression I had of this man the entire time he spoke, then he said it explicitly.

[@bztube888]

I think is the typical case of: "I didn't see this trashy movie but I know exactly what was going on in it".

[@FiguraMolenMedia]

I really don't understand argument of hard problem of consciousness. Is it a question of how or where? Lots of people say consciousness is not sensory, brain cannot perceive itself etc... Why not ?

[@Sorg22]

Yeah, that was truly excellent. Thank you so much for that episode.

[@GrumpyCat-mw5xl]

Being a rock is like being something. It’s like being dead.

[@LaRosi0114]

How in the hell do you write so well backwards? My husband said your backwards handwriting puts his normal handwriting to shame. 🤣

[@profjeffreykaplan]

I get this question a lot. I am not actually writing backwards. Here is a video I made explaining it: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bJDHZWeYocaSfaM

[@LaRosi0114]

@@profjeffreykaplan Thank you!

[@chrismcknight7164]

Never mind what's it like to be a bat, I can't even imagine what it's like to be another person! Like seriously, anytime I try to imagine it, all I'm really doing is putting my consciousness into another body.

[@RobbieHatley]

The trick there is to imagine having that person's memories instead of your own. Memories are what drive personalities. And since people mostly remember only the bad things in life, personalities are defined primarily by what traumas people have lived through. In many cases, you'd be better off _not_ knowing.

[@Robert_McGarry_Poems]

​@@RobbieHatley Gene expression plays a huge part too, but yeah I agree. It is still useful, for the self, to recognize and empathetically associate with others through this type of thought experiment.

[@wayneyadams]

8:00 The pink "experience" also leads to a plethora of emotions and memories. Maybe pink brings back memories of a tropical vacation where you saw a pink hibiscus, or maybe the color of the lipstick your wife wore on some special occasion.

[@tedjohnson8762]

How did you became so adept at mirror image writing? More importantly, I enjoy your lectures.

[@Hacktheplanet_]

Maybe just reversed the videos image

[@mentalitydesignvideo]

This clearly demonstrates that philosophy attracts the brightest minds.

[@knight_lautrec_of_carim]

We can get a glimpse of echolocation: When it's pitch black and you're at home and you're moving through your house in the dark, you usually can still tell if door infront of you are open or not by the way sound bounces off of them. We have a very limited capactiy for it but even with our eyes closed we can tell if we're standing with our face one inch from a surface or if there's open space in front of us so maybe that's a hint on how what it's like to be a bat.

[@DontWatchAdsJustRefresh]

I *am* a bat. Why didn't you guys just ask me?

[@hicri9739]

Ok, what is it like to be you?

[@Smedis]

When Nagel wrote his paper, he should have first read up on networks of neurons, memory and associations, which was all explored much earlier. There will be no “seeming” without being able to associate it with a past memory. A baby with no memory of something even remotely similar will have a hard time making a relevant association and won’t be able to make this new thing “seem” like anything. Will not know how to react. Nature and nurture show babies how to react - whether it’s a good thing, a bad thing, a fun thing, etc. This builds their memory so that it will be able to make better associations in the future, and things will start to “seem” like something to that person’s “consciousness” in the future.

[@chrisvanhorne2285]

Thank you for smartning us up!

[@efegokselkisioglu8218]

This channel has been great so far 👍

[@tamirlyn]

I'd say it's premature to say that pain can't actually be something else [21:50], in the same way as lightning and the other examples. Imagine we figured out that 'pain' is the "emission of substance X between Y and Z". Let's imagine we could increase or decrease this substance, and the pain intensifies or subsides, and that we can emit it between different points in the brain, causing the sensation of pain from different areas of the body (completely untouched by fire). We would then "understand" what pain "really" (physically, objectively) was. The lightning still "seems" a certain way, and the pain would still "seem" a certain way to us, even after knowing the truth.

[@coletibbs6559]

I am curious to see the arguments for and against the idea that you believe things while unconscious. I think there is a compelling argument against this notion presented in the lecture

[@bbyghostie1044]

Maybe an example could be having a weird dream where you work at the "tallest mountain in the world" gift shop and that mountain is a completely different one than what you believe when awake. Dream you knows that this dream mountain is absolutely the tallest mountain in the world. Would that belief of Mount Everest being the tallest mountain still be there during this dream where you believe something different? I've had dreams where my dream self had beliefs and thoughts that contradict what I believe in waking life. So maybe something like that is a counter example? And the belief that mount everest being the tallest mountain is more like stored data in your memory that you can pull up when certain cues make you think of it? Idk

[@craftycri]

1) Physicalism postulates all physical things share a common description; describing one (ultimately) describes them all. 2) In theory, we could "incarnate" into a bat (long story) but where physicalism might be able to describe the function of the bat in every respect, it cannot describe that state of "being". 3) Which necessarily means, "being" is transcendent of physicalism, beyond physical description, one which can occupy physical states independent of physicality. What is it like to have never heard any sound or sight or any external input, no words, how does thought proceed? What kind of language is used, or would language be an incoherent concept? To even imagine that state of being would require the use externally based language; syntax, simile, metaphor, logic, which nullifies, even in principle, a physicalistic description of that state BUT it clearly could exist.

[@Informative1]

Excellent discourse Jeffrey. But I am just wondering if we humans do not mistakenly equate consciousness with movement. Just because a rock does not move, how do we assume it lacks consciousness. Of course, I agree with you but technically speaking a rock can be conscious, even if at an extremely rudimentary level, like one in a locked-in state, a medical condition where patient is totally immobilized but fully conscious of what is happening around.

[@REDPUMPERNICKEL]

I do not have a mysterious something called 'consciousness'. I am a self who is conscious. It's clear to me that only a self is or can be conscious. A rock exists but is not a self and so cannot be conscious. A rock may react to the heat of the sun or a hammer blow but 'react' and 'conscious' are different words with different meanings. A mouse may behave in very complex ways according to its instincts but 'instinct' and 'conscious' are different words with different meanings. Cheers!

[@Dimimuso]

As a teacher, I am simply blown away by how you use the glass pane as a board… and write backwards?! That is an admirable skill in and of itself. Aside from that, your teaching style is fantastic! Thanks for the video.

[@jojoolagues5371]

Fun fact is that this question actually has made me a different person! I will never recover from hearing this question and I will not stop until I know the answer 😊

[@AzazialVerdantia]

@Sincronot If you're implying that bats have no free will there's quite a lot of discussion on whether or not humans have free will either!

[@Dizma_Music]

I’m half rock and half bat, just ask me. 😅

[@KaBastian]

i just watched this video 3 times in a row and i love it!

[@nmbr1ctrman]

Perhaps consciousness is the perception of something deeper than our senses. Each of our senses combine together to paint a mental image of our world. That combination of sensory information overlaps in many parts of the brain, triggering memories and all sorts of chemical pathways. In the same way some people have synesthesia, maybe those sensory overlaps construct what we precieve as conscienceness.

[@marc.lepage]

Good breakdown of the paper, thank you.

[@tomaalexandru7104]

Thank you for doing this. It really helps other people. It really does ! You are helping me in my work !

[@taopagan]

A person asks a fish, “what is it like to breathe water?“ The fish says, “I imagine it is a lot like breathing air-we don’t really ever think about it much, unless we can’t do it!“ Conscious beings who can communicate, can describe their experiences using comparisons. Partial understanding is possible, even if an utterly identical subjective experience is not.

[@patinho5589]

This is a good argument towards doing true meditation: where the perceived and object become one. A good argument towards experience based spiritual practices.

[@ego443]

I appreciate the analysis of the paper in question. But I don't get the point of the paper itself. "Subjective experience is subjective." Big surprise. But how does that even challenge physicalism at all? The subjective experience as well as consciousness can still be just a product of the physical thing that is our brain and body with all its physically stored memories and experiences. Just like software isn't exactly hardware, but it's still "physical" in the sense that it's just a manifestation of physically stored bits, run on a physical computer. Yes, the subjective experience + consciousness itself is then kind of recursively interpreting and trying to construct a (more or less precise) model of the world around it and even of itself. But that doesn't necessarily change anything about the physical world or about the true (physical?) nature of the interpreting consciousness. Or did I miss something? Maybe I didn't use the correct definition of "physicalism" in my initial question?

[@jarisrogers-wright3270]

Thanksssss, really needed to watch this for my assignment. ❤

[@matkosmat8890]

Thanks for a capturing lecture! I've embraced the view that consciousness emerges, and that physics is just too immature to explain it yet, but will do at some point in the future.

[@Dion_Mustard]

I used to think consciousness emerges, but then i started having out of body experiences and now i realise i was TOTALLY wrong.

[@esingh4668]

as someone who has trouble reading due to ADHD, thank you so much for this video, it helped me understand his paper so clearly!!

[@redjammie8342]

As a fellow ADHD-er, I second this!

[@orwellianreptilian2914]

oh stfu neither of you have it

[@redjammie8342]

@@orwellianreptilian2914 Random unknown KZbinr > My psychiatrist who assessed me for a year before diagnosing me. Thank you Reptilian

[@orwellianreptilian2914]

@@redjammie8342 oh, well, thats settles it, ig lmao how old are you

[@orwellianreptilian2914]

@@redjammie8342 did you know that in some places its now illegal to challenge a child on their gender dysphoria?

[@dlevi67]

What a mixture of argument from personal disbelief/incredulity, circular reasoning and lack of understanding of what scientific reasoning is, or how science could approach certain issues. From Nagel, I mean.

[@edwardj3070]

from comments here it's clear that this argument is pretty damn subtle. what a great lecture. Science can never give an account of what it's like to experience something. Other people's consciousness is the most palpable fact of life, and you can't find it by dissecting their brain, any more than you can find the beauty in the overture to Parsifal by acoustic or even the most detailed musical analysis. The most real things are not reducible by analysis. obviously.

[@REDPUMPERNICKEL]

There is a relationship between this rock and the one over there. The rocks exist materially but the relationship does not. I think our bodies are akin to the rocks and our being conscious is akin to their relationship.

[@flamencoprof]

23:08 We are axiomatically incapable of understanding ourselves. It "seems" to me that the limitations of any science of consciousness are akin to the concept from computer science that a capable computer can run an emulation of a simpler one, but a simple computer cannot emulate a more complex one. (And neither can solve the Halting Problem, before you go there.)

[@SoulfulMole]

"I'm not really sure... and I'm not willing to look it up." Yes. That is the right attitude.

[@siondafydd]

Related to this and maybe a simpler scenario: If someone has a truly different belief to you, there is no way for you to be able to experience that. You could imagine how certain conditions and facts could change your view. But there is no way for you in your current condition to actually truly believe what the other person believes. You cannot chose what persuades you, you either are or are not persuaded. And there’s no way for you to truly understand how someone else is persuaded.

[@1SpudderR]

14:00 We don’t have echo location like a bat!? .... Question.... Would the bat have echo location in a vacuum one wonders!

[@sehrgut42]

This is just a category error, same as the Mary's Room "paradox": claiming that knowledge is equivalent to first-person experience, and then stating that you can never have first-person experience of someone else's particular mental state does not make that mental state non-physical: it just makes you bad at definitions.

[@DontWatchAdsJustRefresh]

Very cool take on the stuff of Nagel by the way!

[@jsdutky]

The insistence that human experience is somehow indescribable but also personally comprehensible suggests an unseemly amount of trust in one's own subjective experience. Could it be that Nagel had no personal experience with altered states of consciousness, or was he simply making an argument that he knew did not correspond to the fullness of human experience because it seemed to be a good way to deliver a blow to a point of view that he disagreed with?

[@johnkoch1888]

All kinds of living creatures use perceptions to find food, avoid danger, or reproduce. Insects see, in their own way, but it qualifies as consciousness in only a very dim and practical way. A bee does not see flowers, but only receives an optical signal: here's food. Inborn behavioral algorithms dictate the whole honey-making process. It will be very difficult to decode the organic process that drives bee or bat behavior, but none of it originated because a bee or bat thought-out a good way to make honey or fly without sight. Humans are different, but not entirely. No human consciousness, as a raw POV, can exist all by itself. It derives from interaction with a physical body and world, plus a lengthy process of evolution--biological, social, and technical. It is simply that which incites people to survive, behave, or innovate. Pain is subjective, but functions mainly as a signal to avoid trauma, illness, or misbehavior. Hunger triggers a search for food. Whether or not two people see green or red the same, or the reverse, is not knowable or important. What matters is that the two people have learned to respond correctly to traffic lights lit with such colors. The composite of interactions with the world, education, and social experiences should eventually build mere consciousness into conscience, measured in terms of intelligent and moral conduct. This assumes, of course, that people don't go batty or let their brains become rocks. It is a tribute to science (physicalism and reduction) that humans learned that bats navigate by sound. Humans have built all sorts of devices that "see" by means that transcend what we perceive by our ordinary senses. Some autonomous drones now do things that bats cannot, although the latter are still better at catching small bugs in flight. Humans could imitate the bat POV by wearing devices that use a blend of sonic and electromagnetic wavelengths to emit audio signals whose echoes to enable a blind person to cross busy streets without getting run over or bump into things. Of course, the skill would have to be learned. It would not be the same as a bat's inborn instinct. But bats' ancestors relied on eyes until their sonic skills evolved enough, over millions of generations, to confer a nocturnal feeding advantage. Bats' wings are not abstract at all, but were the adaptation that preceded any possible use of aerial sonar.

[@joanakoch5754]

love you dad