Brett Wood (bwood@students.uiuc.edu)
Thu, 30 Apr 1998 04:13:00 +0100
Tricia wrote:
>How can we be so sure that a bird doesn't know its a bird. It may not
>have the concept of "bird", as distinct from say, lizard, fish or cat -
>these are human concepts with which we categorize and describe the world
>around us, but how can we be so sure that these creatures are not aware
>of themselves in some way? I am not being flippant with this question,
>just genuinely curious as to how we can know this for certain...
>
This reminds me of an article by Thomas Nagel called "What is it like to
be a bat?", which has particular relevance to SOM. In this article
(which I read in a book called "The Mind's I", a collection of essays
about the nature of self compiled by Douglas Hofstadter; I highly
recommend it), the author wonders if there is an objective "thing" which
it is like to be a bat, an objective "bat-ness", if you will. When we
try to imagine such bat-ness, we can do no more than imagine,
subjectively, what it might be like for us to be a bat. We can imagine
having wings and flying out at night hunting for insects, but we are
always thinking about "what if _I_ was a bat?", not "what is it like for
a bat to be?". The distinction is subtle but profound. To me, this
issue calls into doubt the very idea of an objective observer, and thus
the fundamental validity
of SOM.
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