Philosophy Now Forum

How does it feel like to be a human being? Is it possible to narrow the vast expanse of diversity to a few factors?

The question must mean "what is it like to be a conscious human being?", because there isn't anything it is like to be an unconscious human being.

So the question is "what is it like to have conscious experiences?"

What do we mean by "what is it like?" We mean "what conscious experiences does it resemble?"

So if I say "what is it like to eat hot peppers?" you might say "it is like your mouth is burning".

So the question is now "what conscious experiences resemble other conscious experiences?", which is not a very sensible or productive line of questioning.

So let's talk about something else. For example, how do you say "what is it like to be a human being?" in different languages?

Hvordan føles det å være et menneske. (literal translation word by word: How...feels...it..to be...a human) Taken from my own language Norwegian.

The Voice of Time wrote:Hvordan føles det å være et menneske. (literal translation word by word: How...feels...it..to be...a human) Taken from my own language Norwegian.

I had assumed you were referring to Nagel's phrase, but he said "what is it like to be a bat?", not "what does it feel like to be a bat?" How do you say that in Norwegian?

Now you're going off-topic. I'd prefer more serious replies.

The Voice of Time wrote:Now you're going off-topic. I'd prefer more serious replies.

Oh no, I'm quite serious. Well, mostly serious.

We need to be clear about what you are asking.

Have you read Nagel's paper?

http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/ahyvarin/te ... BeABat.pdf

There's an interesting discussion of the issue here:

http://info.sjc.ox.ac.uk/scr/hacker/doc ... %20bat.pdf

Toadny wrote:Have you read Nagel's paper?

http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/ahyvarin/te ... BeABat.pdf

There's an interesting discussion of the issue here:

http://info.sjc.ox.ac.uk/scr/hacker/doc ... %20bat.pdf

That is what is called a play on words. They are not actually related topics.

The answer to the question "how does it feel like to be a human being?" can be answered (rather absurdly blunt) by saying "it's like consciousness", or "it's like awareness" or it's like this or that (probably not very correct, but it would be answer directly answering the question at least). The papers you linked however deal with consciousness in general and talk about qualia, a bit of dabbling into logic and stuff like it, it doesn't say anything about "how does it feel like to be a human being?" (nor, for that matter, how it feels like to be a bat, though that wouldn't be something they could know anyway as they are not bats themselves).

Toadny wrote:The question must mean "what is it like to be a conscious human being?", because there isn't anything it is like to be an unconscious human being.

So the question is "what is it like to have conscious experiences?"

No, because your identity is tied with your unconscious life, and as such you are not separable from it. Also, the conscious part of having consciousness is not necessarily a significant part of how it feels like to be a human being, as, and that is another debate I'd stay out of, but given that other things other than humans have consciousness, like animals, insects, maybe even "dead things" like rock, it would not be a particularly human to feel conscious, not to say that I'm asking what makes a human feel like a human and not something else, but we would not feel human if conscious is what it was like to feel like a human being, as then our identity would very easily tie up with anything else that is conscious and we would not be able to separate between ourselves and others.

If how it feels like to be a human being for me, is merely that I have conscious experience, am I not then only a duplicate of every other human being? It feels abstract, impersonal, taken out of context with the real world. No, the answer I would be looking for would be more along the lines of context with the real world, with real things we experience, what goes through our stream of consciousness as we experience life as human beings, if this can be narrowed down to only a few factors...

3eing human is to be a creature of a species that is evolving to become physically weaker, because of reliance upon technology.

The Voice of Time wrote:How does it feel like to be a human being? Is it possible to narrow the vast expanse of diversity to a few factors?

I agree with Thoreau that there are different qualities of humanity. So from this perspective to be fully human requires being fully awake. We cannot know what this means until we are awake. Until then we can only react in accordance with our quality of sleep.

The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face? - Thoreau, Walden

Nick_A, that's just old-fashioned "spiritual" propaganda rhetoric, and the very simple answer to it is that there is no answer to what it means to be metaphorically "awake", as any tilt on the perspective means you are "sleeping" somewhere else, and you can't know or be aware of everything, and believing any specific thing (as is often required by spiritual teachings) is not an argument of any kind but a claim.

The Voice of Time wrote:Nick_A, that's just old-fashioned "spiritual" propaganda rhetoric, and the very simple answer to it is that there is no answer to what it means to be metaphorically "awake", as any tilt on the perspective means you are "sleeping" somewhere else, and you can't know or be aware of everything, and believing any specific thing (as is often required by spiritual teachings) is not an argument of any kind but a claim.

Do you believe in the distinction between conscious attention and reactive attention? For those who do, the first step towards awakening is practicing conscious attention in order to become capable of it. Most do not make this distinction which is why we react as we've become conditioned to do and everything repeats in the World in accordance with natural laws including the cycles of war. Since we are as we are, a slave to reactive attention, everything is as it is.

Nick_A wrote:Do you believe in the distinction between conscious attention and reactive attention? For those who do, the first step towards awakening is practicing conscious attention in order to become capable of it. Most do not make this distinction which is why we react as we've become conditioned to do and everything repeats in the World in accordance with natural laws including the cycles of war. Since we are as we are, a slave to reactive attention, everything is as it is.

Why don't just call it creativity? Open-mindedness? Transcendental study? Why make up a term like "conscious attention"?

I can see these ideas are new to you so naturally they are not easy to open to. Simone Weil wrote:

"Attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty and ready to be penetrated by the object. It means holding in our minds, within reach of this thought, but on a lower level and not in contact with it, the diverse knowledge we have acquired which we are forced to make use of. Our thought should be, in relation to all particular and already formulated thoughts, as a man on a mountain who, as he Iooks forward, sees also below him, without actually looking at them, a great many forests and plains. Above all, our thought should be empty, waiting, not seeking anything, but ready to receive in its naked truth the object which is to penetrate it."

Is she making any sense? How can we know? How can we distinguish between what is happening and the conscious awareness of happenings?

You may say it is meaningless but how do you explain someone like Julia Haslett. During a dark time of her life she was touched by a simple sentence from Simone Weil:

"Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity"

Is it the same as creativity or open-mindedness? Why so rare?

Julia was touched by it and in her efforts to understand it, created a documentary. Something in her sensed its importance. This isn't creativity but the search for "meaning."

You can watch the trailer to the documentary here. She raises the question of conscious attention known since the beginning. Only a relative few IMO will profit from being aware of it. It requires the need to be more than just a creature of reaction and psychologically opening to this vertical direction connecting above and below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOCE_d2R5lw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOCE_d2R5lw