If you become the bat, you become the bat. There is nothing permanent that is being transferred. When you think of "being the bat", you have this image of thinking "oh shit, i am a bat now!? I can echolocate and shit". Its more like, ...what? The imagination of being another person is simply an imagination that arises within this body, spirit, soul, or whatever it is.

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fsckboy 6 days ago | parent [-]

"what does it feel like to be a bat" means what you think you are telling me. it does not mean "what would it feel like to become a bat"

"what does it feel like to be blind from birth?" can you, a sighted person near-sighted though you may be for this example, even/ever comprehend it no matter how extensively described. can someone who has never seen actually describe it to you?

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anon-3988 6 days ago | parent [-]

> "what does it feel like to be blind from birth?" can you, a sighted person near-sighted though you may be for this example, even/ever comprehend it no matter how extensively described

I am saying that it is not possible. It is entirely possible that you can "see" but not comprehend anything, hence effectively being blind. Is my red your red? Is my hotness your hotness? Is the universe upside down? Is your 3d the same as my 3d? Even all of this imaginations and hypothesis is coming purely from my sense of experience.

I don't even know that you exist, you might simply be a figment of reality, there could be nothing behind this post. I wouldn't know.

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QuiDortDine 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

I can't believe all these qualia questions have not evolved in centuries (or at least, the common discourse arond them hasn't). We all have similar rods and cones in our eyes. We have common kinds of color blindness. What other reasonable conclusion is there but that my red is your red? All the machinery is similar enough.

I suppose it's because people associate so much of who they are to the subjectivity of their experience. If I'm not the only one to see and taste the world as I do, am I even special? (The answer is no, and that there are more important things in life than being special.)

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fsckboy 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

sounds like you are grappling with the question as intended. you are not answering the question. keep going. consider what it would feel like to be Boltzmann's bat DesCartes in Plato's cave. Ask yourself, "Flappito ergo quod?"

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anon-3988 6 days ago | parent [-]

Imagining yourself flapping your hands in the air is not "what its like to be a bat". People are fooling themselves when they can honestly imagine being a bat. Even the question "I think therefore I am" does not mean that "I" exist. "I" here implies a center of thinking. There is no center. There is only reality and its content. And thinking is apparently one of its content.

	▲	fsckboy 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		if you don't accept a>b and b>c, you have nothing to say about "therefore a>c"; you can say nothing about it. if you did accept a>b and b>c then you would agree "therefore a>c" >"I" here implies a center of thinking. There is no center. "I think", according to you, implies that I implies a center of thinking, and you don't believe that there is a center, so you don't believe "I think" even more than you don't believe "therefore I am". You don't have an opinion about therefore I am. it doesn't matter about the "existence" in the predicate, because you don't accept the "I" in the subject.