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Not sure why this ended up on HN today, but this is a classic text read in many introductory courses focused on philosophy of mind and consciousness. I quite l

Not sure why this ended up on HN today, but this is a classic text read in many introductory courses focused on philosophy of mind and consciousness. I quite like the paper. I once wrote a follow-up paper about how one might interpret it now that we know about neuroplasticity. That was fun to ponder. I looked at a specific experiment where researchers managed to map visual impulses from a camera to an electrode "pixel grid" physically placed on the tongue, such that the visual inputs were "mapped" to corresponding locations on your tongue. It was shown, in the research, that people could catch balls thrown at them blindfolded using this setup, and after a relatively short period of sensory adjustment. They would actually "see with their tongue". You can read about that research in this 2003 article from Discover Magazine: http://discovermagazine.com/2003/jun/feattongue http://discovermagazine.com/2003/jun/feattongue The Nagel question then, is the fact that I experience vision a certain way really an essential aspect of "what it's like to be me?" Or is my consciousness a "further fact"... something running in the background of all my senses, no matter how they are wired (or rewired) over time? This is sometimes referred to as the "hard problem" of consciousness, summarized nicely in Wikipedia here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

miobrien 10y ago
Cool, thanks for the links. It ended up on HN because philosophy is what I studied in college/grad school, and I like the fact that HN seems to be a very intellectually omnivorous community -- sans the annoying dilettantism you find elsewhere.
larsiusprime 10y ago
Interestingly, Nagel actually seems to acknowledge/anticipate this point on page 9, see reply to sibling: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13999907 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13999907
danbruc 10y ago
Now I would be interested in the following experiment. Teach someone blind from birth to see with this tongue device, then restore eyesight with a surgery and test if they can recognize shapes. Why? I once read about an experiment where they restored eyesight of a person blind from birth and the person was unable to identify shapes by looking at them. The subject could easily identify the shapes by touching them, knew how a round ball or the corners of a cube felt, but that was obviously not enough to figure out what a corner looks like. I wonder if the tongue device would be sufficient to provide such an understanding.
- kaybe 10y ago
  How long did they wait for the person to learn?
  - danbruc 10y ago
    They did this immediately after the surgery, I am pretty sure the person soon learned what different shapes look like. They just wanted to test whether an understanding of shapes by touching them transfers to an understanding of what they look like. I will try to find the experiment in case you are interested in the details. EDIT: Did not find the specific study I was thinking of but this is known as Molyneux's problem [1] and there are several sources mentioned in the article. [1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/molyneux-problem/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/molyneux-problem/
SamBam 10y ago
I think that's an interesting offshoot of the discussion, but I'm not sure that it really affects the argument that much. Let's say you undergo a process to slowly use your brain's plasticity to get closer and closer to perceiving as a bat. Well, does that help me? Am I able to imagine what it is like to be a bat? Of course not. Well, what if you could talk to me and describe it, then would I have a true understanding of the experience of being a bat? Still no! Nagel's point isn't about whether we could do anything to make ourselves into bats, it's rather that, when we don't have that qualitative experience, we cannot truly understand what it is like to have that experience. If anything, the argument works even better now that you've gone and given yourself sonar: you can talk to me, unlike that dumb bat, so you can describe your experiences to me, and yet I will still have no true understanding of the experience itself. That is (a part of) the Hard Problem of consciousness: that my studying and examining and learning about your conscious experience still does not allow me to understand it.
- danbruc 10y ago
  If anything, the argument works even better now that you've gone and given yourself sonar: you can talk to me, unlike that dumb bat, so you can describe your experiences to me, and yet I will still have no true understanding of the experience itself. This underlines the suggestion at the very end, we are lacking tools to properly talk about experiences and maybe we could actually develop them. My inability to describe to you, or probably even better to a blind person, what it is like to see a red object may after all not be fundamental. Maybe there is a way to communicate and in turn truly understand what using the tongue device is like, we just have not yet discovered it.
  - zukzuk 10y ago
    One of the more interesting proposals I was faced with as part of my Cog Sci & AI undergrad was that we do indeed have ways of communicating that subjective/experiential knowledge — knowledge which is otherwise ineffable. Art is one obvious example of this. At its best, art is able to communicate things that a purely propositional language cannot. The same could be said of rituals — participation in a ritual is a formalized way of forcing you to take on specific states of being that convey a kind of knowledge that can only be acquired by embodying it. This might all sound a little floofy, but it's really not. Think about the deep knowledge conveyed through game simulations. I've never been to space, but thanks to hours and hours of playing Kerbal Space Program, I really do have some sense of what it's like to navigate through space — a knowledge that goes far deeper than if I had only learned all of Kepler's and Newton's laws and equations.
ykler 10y ago
'''The Nagel question then, is the fact that I experience vision a certain way really an essential aspect of "what it's like to be me?"''' It is an essential aspect of what it is like to be you. (However, there is an ambiguity here about temporal scope. What it is precisely like to be me now is to have precisely the experience I am having now, and what it is like to be me these days is to have the kinds of experiences I have these days, and what it is like to be me over my whole life is to have a similar pattern of experience to me over a whole life.) And it isn't an essential aspect of what it is to be you. (No one would claim that Mary becomes a different person when she sees red for the first time. This is compatible with the claim that, because of the nature of personal identity, it is impossible for a person to undergo certain very radical changes in the nature of their conscious experience.) '''Or is my consciousness a "further fact"... something running in the background of all my senses, no matter how they are wired (or rewired) over time?''' Your senses are the very faculties that allow the world to world to produce your conscious experience, so it is odd to frame the "hard problem" of consciousness in this way. In general, neuroplasticity is sort of interesting for the understanding of consciousness, but it seems arguable that in the tongue experiment you are just experiencing the same qualia you have always experienced; it isn't like seeing colors for the first time.

miobrien 10y ago

Cool, thanks for the links. It ended up on HN because philosophy is what I studied in college/grad school, and I like the fact that HN seems to be a very intellectually omnivorous community -- sans the annoying dilettantism you find elsewhere.

larsiusprime 10y ago

Interestingly, Nagel actually seems to acknowledge/anticipate this point on page 9, see reply to sibling: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13999907 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13999907

danbruc 10y ago

Now I would be interested in the following experiment. Teach someone blind from birth to see with this tongue device, then restore eyesight with a surgery and test if they can recognize shapes. Why? I once read about an experiment where they restored eyesight of a person blind from birth and the person was unable to identify shapes by looking at them. The subject could easily identify the shapes by touching them, knew how a round ball or the corners of a cube felt, but that was obviously not enough to figure out what a corner looks like. I wonder if the tongue device would be sufficient to provide such an understanding.

kaybe 10y ago
How long did they wait for the person to learn?
- danbruc 10y ago
  They did this immediately after the surgery, I am pretty sure the person soon learned what different shapes look like. They just wanted to test whether an understanding of shapes by touching them transfers to an understanding of what they look like. I will try to find the experiment in case you are interested in the details. EDIT: Did not find the specific study I was thinking of but this is known as Molyneux's problem [1] and there are several sources mentioned in the article. [1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/molyneux-problem/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/molyneux-problem/

SamBam 10y ago

I think that's an interesting offshoot of the discussion, but I'm not sure that it really affects the argument that much. Let's say you undergo a process to slowly use your brain's plasticity to get closer and closer to perceiving as a bat. Well, does that help me? Am I able to imagine what it is like to be a bat? Of course not. Well, what if you could talk to me and describe it, then would I have a true understanding of the experience of being a bat? Still no! Nagel's point isn't about whether we could do anything to make ourselves into bats, it's rather that, when we don't have that qualitative experience, we cannot truly understand what it is like to have that experience. If anything, the argument works even better now that you've gone and given yourself sonar: you can talk to me, unlike that dumb bat, so you can describe your experiences to me, and yet I will still have no true understanding of the experience itself. That is (a part of) the Hard Problem of consciousness: that my studying and examining and learning about your conscious experience still does not allow me to understand it.

danbruc 10y ago
If anything, the argument works even better now that you've gone and given yourself sonar: you can talk to me, unlike that dumb bat, so you can describe your experiences to me, and yet I will still have no true understanding of the experience itself. This underlines the suggestion at the very end, we are lacking tools to properly talk about experiences and maybe we could actually develop them. My inability to describe to you, or probably even better to a blind person, what it is like to see a red object may after all not be fundamental. Maybe there is a way to communicate and in turn truly understand what using the tongue device is like, we just have not yet discovered it.
- zukzuk 10y ago
  One of the more interesting proposals I was faced with as part of my Cog Sci & AI undergrad was that we do indeed have ways of communicating that subjective/experiential knowledge — knowledge which is otherwise ineffable. Art is one obvious example of this. At its best, art is able to communicate things that a purely propositional language cannot. The same could be said of rituals — participation in a ritual is a formalized way of forcing you to take on specific states of being that convey a kind of knowledge that can only be acquired by embodying it. This might all sound a little floofy, but it's really not. Think about the deep knowledge conveyed through game simulations. I've never been to space, but thanks to hours and hours of playing Kerbal Space Program, I really do have some sense of what it's like to navigate through space — a knowledge that goes far deeper than if I had only learned all of Kepler's and Newton's laws and equations.

ykler 10y ago

'''The Nagel question then, is the fact that I experience vision a certain way really an essential aspect of "what it's like to be me?"''' It is an essential aspect of what it is like to be you. (However, there is an ambiguity here about temporal scope. What it is precisely like to be me now is to have precisely the experience I am having now, and what it is like to be me these days is to have the kinds of experiences I have these days, and what it is like to be me over my whole life is to have a similar pattern of experience to me over a whole life.) And it isn't an essential aspect of what it is to be you. (No one would claim that Mary becomes a different person when she sees red for the first time. This is compatible with the claim that, because of the nature of personal identity, it is impossible for a person to undergo certain very radical changes in the nature of their conscious experience.) '''Or is my consciousness a "further fact"... something running in the background of all my senses, no matter how they are wired (or rewired) over time?''' Your senses are the very faculties that allow the world to world to produce your conscious experience, so it is odd to frame the "hard problem" of consciousness in this way. In general, neuroplasticity is sort of interesting for the understanding of consciousness, but it seems arguable that in the tongue experiment you are just experiencing the same qualia you have always experienced; it isn't like seeing colors for the first time.