The Bat Doesn't Know What It's Like to Be a Bat Either
The bat argument rests on a private inner core that can never be reached; Dennett says that core doesn't exist, and that a bat isn't even a "what it's like" to itself.
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The argument · tap a timestamp to hear it
A bat having an inner world is not the same as being conscious
Christopher summarises Dennett's response: he flatly denies Nagel — we can talk about what it's like to be a bat in all sorts of ways (by first ruling out the things bats don't do, for instance), and with enough information we eventually get there, because "what it's like to be a bat" just is the discriminative, dispositional states the bat has. Dylan supplies the step Dennett actually rejects: drawing on von Uexküll's Umwelt and Innenwelt (surrounding world and inner world), Dennett grants that the bat has an inner world, which is not crazy; what he won't accept is the inference straight from "has an inner world" to "therefore consciousness exists," and that is exactly the step Nagel uses to prove consciousness exists. Our mode of access is heterophenomenology: treat the bat's behaviour and physiology as a text in need of interpretation.
— Christopher、DylanConsciousness is not an all-or-nothing property
Christopher reads out a passage from Dennett: are language-less animals not conscious at all? Dennett says the question shouldn't be taken as a given challenge, because it presupposes something "we had to work very hard to get away from" — that consciousness is an all-or-nothing property that splits the universe into two utterly different categories: things that have it and things that don't. That binary is what Dennett wants to dismantle; what he wants is consciousness in degrees. Christopher then offers his own version: he doesn't want to accept property dualism, he wants to deny the hard problem, because subjectivity can perfectly well have a biological and evolutionary explanation — agency and subjectivity co-evolved; a physical process organised from the inside "feeling like something" is a real biological phenomenon.
— ChristopherThe bat doesn't know what it's like to be a bat either
Seth pushes the argument to its extreme: it isn't "we don't know what it's like to be a bat," it's that there is no "what it's like to be a bat as seen from the bat's side" at all; the bat itself doesn't know either, because it lacks the machinery to string experiences into a narrative and give them names. Dylan immediately marks out the cost of this inference: if anything with dynamic activity has its own experience, then atoms count too, and that's panpsychism. Christopher says you don't have to go as far as atoms, but concedes that the direction really does sound like panpsychism — he'd rather use a threshold: you need a feedback loop of sensing and acting before you can talk about a new way of being.
— Seth、Dylan、ChristopherEven plants have a perspective in some sense
Mark digs up a line from Dennett's book: the perspective of a conscious observer is a refined descendant of the primitive perspective of the first replicators, which "divided the world into good and bad" — on that account even plants have a perspective in this sense, and "perspective" becomes a metaphor. Christopher then offers gradualism: from sponges to mantis shrimp to humans, subjectivity accumulates layer by layer and gets thicker and thicker, with a fuzzy threshold in between. Dylan wants to nail the threshold down harder: you can't use "complex" as the criterion, since weather is a complex self-maintaining system too; the difference is that living things can replicate themselves and have a wholeness, so the only thing the Earth lacks is its own replication.
— Mark、Christopher、DylanYou are a bunch of things, not a soul
Mark finds Dennett's 1994 reply collection Get Real, which uses snakes as an example: a snake has no central representation of "mouse," it just responds to prey through three separate sensory systems. Dennett's point is that the perceptual system we take to be a single whole is really a pile of little homunculi each making its own discriminations; you are not an Aristotelian form, a soul, an organisation that runs you — we are all a bunch of things. Christopher objects: failure to integrate information processing doesn't mean there's no self — the two hemispheres of a split-brain patient are also separate, and we don't conclude from that that he has no self; the snake may still have a more ancient, minimal sense of boundary and evaluative experience.
— Mark、ChristopherReducing experience to discrimination looks a lot like behaviourism
Christopher says he agrees with Dennett 99%, and is stuck on the 1%: when Dennett wants to reduce a person to dispositional states, saying that experiencing red is nothing over and above being able to discriminate red from non-red and being in that discriminative state, it sounds like behaviourism. Seth offers a defence: even if the substrate is just discriminative states, subjective experience, the self, is a composite stitched together out of memory, imagination, representation and symbolic language — it weaves scattered discriminative states into a story with descriptions, meanings and colour, and that story is me. Christopher agrees about the narrative self, but points out that the bat has no metacognitive capacity to construct such a self.
— Christopher、SethYou can club an iguana, but not a rabbit
Mark says "everyone is a world" is a good moral fiction, but he doesn't know how to apply it to animals: Florida has too many iguanas, and he encourages people to go out and club them, which he says is completely fine and humane; swap in a rabbit and he won't accept it. Seth offers an evolutionary explanation: our feelings about animals domesticated over tens of thousands of years, wild animals and reptiles were never the same to begin with, and this doesn't conflict with the self being a narrative centre of gravity. Christopher anchors it in valence: animals are not reflex machines, they are situated perspectives that evaluate, and that is the reason they enter moral consideration — he says that after reading Lars Chittka's The Mind of a Bee, the way he deals with bees changed.
— Mark、ChristopherTake away caring and nothing is left of pain
Mark turns to where Dennett talks specifically about pain: what is the functional relation of pain? If you take away "caring about it, wanting to get away from it," take away everything else, and leave only the sensation of pain, then nothing is left — your not liking pain is itself part of the pain. Mark says this is exactly Dennett's attitude to philosophical zombies: imagine someone whose biological makeup, reactions and even internal relations are exactly like yours, but the light of consciousness never came on — Dennett thinks this is so absurd that it's hard even to explain to scientists.
— MarkIn their own words · checked verbatim
I think, on the contrary, that if a lion could talk, that lion would have a mind so different from the general run of lions minds that although we could understand him just fine, we would learn very little about ordinary lions.
Dylan (reading Dennett's original text)4:47
As it stands, notice that it presupposes something we have worked hard to escape. The assumption that consciousness is a special all or nothing property that sunders the universe into two vastly different categories.
Christopher (reading Dennett's original text)5:37
But the reality is the bat doesn't know what it's like to be a bat either. Because from the bat's perspective, there is no what it's like to be a bat.
Seth12:57
the point of view of a conscious observer is not identical to, but a sophisticated descendant of the primordial points of view of the first replicators who divided their world into good and bad
Mark (reading Dennett's original text)14:35
So you're not one single, there's not one single Aristotelian form, one soul, one organization that is running you. We are all a legion of things.
Mark21:21
But sometimes when he talks about when he wants to reduce everything to dispositional properties or dispositional states, it sounds a lot like behaviorism.
Christopher27:39
I think that whole like Florida has too many iguanas and we encourage you to go out and brain them. I think that is totally fine and humane. Whereas with bunnies I would not like that.
Mark38:54
So if you took the caring and wanting to avoid pain away and you took everything out and you were only left with the feel of pain, there's nothing left. Like the fact that you don't like pain is part of what makes it pain.
Mark46:10
Figures
| Year Consciousness Explained was published | 1991 | 19:47 |
| Year Dennett's reply to critics, Get Real, was published | 1994 | 19:47 |
| Number of authors Get Real responds to | 28 | 19:47 |
| Number of sensory systems the snake uses to track prey | 3 | 19:47 |
| Page in Dennett's book where "perspective" is discussed | 176 | 14:35 |
Glossary
- qualia
- The "what it's like" side of subjective experience, the central object of dispute in this episode.
- heterophenomenology
- Dennett's method: treat another's self-report and behaviour as a text to be interpreted, not as direct fact.
- Cartesian theater
- The intuitive picture on which there is a central stage in the brain where consciousness is watched.
- Umwelt / Innenwelt
- von Uexküll's terms for each animal's own experiential world and its internal counterpart.
- panpsychism
- The view that consciousness or consciousness-like properties are present throughout everything, atoms included.
- philosophical zombie
- A being identical to a normal person in behaviour, physiology and even internal relations, but without consciousness.
How to listen
People who can tolerate philosophers going around in circles and who care about the problem of consciousness; readers interested in the basis for animal ethics will get something out of the second half.
The sighing over the book's historical status at [11:01], which has nothing to do with the argument.