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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/exp

by 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.

cassowary 10y ago
There may be some relationship between that and subjective experience, but it's not really the same thing. You're describing essentially "know how" instead of "know that". But here we're talking about something that doesn't actually seem to be representable in terms of physical Why is it that there's something it's like to be zukzuk? zukzuk could simply be like a computer program, simply responding to inputs. Or you could simply have an erroneous memory of actually experiencing things (instead, you simply just responded to inputs, one of which was to record an apparently subjective experience). That doesn't seem to solve the problem to me; it's just kicking the can down the road a little.
- zukzuk 10y ago
  The distinction between "know how" (aka procedural knowledge) and "know that" (declarative knowledge) is a favourite in cognitive science, but I think it is a bit shallow. I guess the point I'm making here is that "knowing how" is a major part of knowing "what it is like" to be something. For example, I know how to ride a bike, and that gives me some idea of _what it is like_ to be someone who knows how to ride a bike — an insight I certainly wouldn't have if I only understood the mechanics of bike riding in declarative terms. The fact that I will probably never know what it is like to be a bat has a lot to do with my inability to have the know-how that a bat has (it's very hard to know how to fly and echolocate when you don't have wings nor the appropriate sensory organs). However, I'd argue that an active, deep VR simulation of bat flight might bring you just a little bit closer to having that embodied, subjective knowledge, in a way that studying bat behaviour or anatomy from a purely objective perspective never would.

by zukzuk 10y ago

cassowary 10y ago

There may be some relationship between that and subjective experience, but it's not really the same thing. You're describing essentially "know how" instead of "know that". But here we're talking about something that doesn't actually seem to be representable in terms of physical Why is it that there's something it's like to be zukzuk? zukzuk could simply be like a computer program, simply responding to inputs. Or you could simply have an erroneous memory of actually experiencing things (instead, you simply just responded to inputs, one of which was to record an apparently subjective experience). That doesn't seem to solve the problem to me; it's just kicking the can down the road a little.

zukzuk 10y ago
The distinction between "know how" (aka procedural knowledge) and "know that" (declarative knowledge) is a favourite in cognitive science, but I think it is a bit shallow. I guess the point I'm making here is that "knowing how" is a major part of knowing "what it is like" to be something. For example, I know how to ride a bike, and that gives me some idea of _what it is like_ to be someone who knows how to ride a bike — an insight I certainly wouldn't have if I only understood the mechanics of bike riding in declarative terms. The fact that I will probably never know what it is like to be a bat has a lot to do with my inability to have the know-how that a bat has (it's very hard to know how to fly and echolocate when you don't have wings nor the appropriate sensory organs). However, I'd argue that an active, deep VR simulation of bat flight might bring you just a little bit closer to having that embodied, subjective knowledge, in a way that studying bat behaviour or anatomy from a purely objective perspective never would.