In "Bats sabotage rivals' senses with sound in food race", Melissa Hogenboom (2014) reports that new technology with arrays of cameras and microphones recording the behaviour of a species of bat has made it possible to "produce a map of their flight trajectories" (para. 10). This has revealed that the bats use their sounds to fool other bats after the same insects to eat.
This fascinating article reminded me of how I first became interested in philosophy. It grew out of my love of mathematics and physics, which were natural evolutions of my keen interest in chemistry, which in turn had been stimulated by biology. Although the more abstract disciplines became my enduring academic interest, evolution has remained a passion, since it explains so much so simply. I don't mean that evolution is easy to understand, but that it explains in a few very basic principles the existence of all live and all products of live on this planet, showing how and why the simplest bacteria are related to us, but also encompassing such creations as art, music, literature and science. And bats.
The bats also reminded me of a famous essay by the philosopher Thomas Nagel which I read many years ago. In "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?", Nagel (1974) explores the nature of human consciousness and our subjective awareness of things like colours by asking us to imagine perceiving the world filtered through the senses and mind of another animal, mainly a bat. This is what brought the connection with artificial intelligence to mind, since for all our progress in understanding the world around us, we are still babies in understanding the nature of our own consciousness and how it arises from the physical processes taking part in our brain. Indeed, intelligence and thought are probably easier to understand than our conscious experience of the world around us and of ourselves. And this reminds me that in his latest book Nagel argues that a purely physicalist account of consciousness must be wrong. I don't agree with him, but he does present some solid arguments that need to be taken seriously and rebutted. I'm pretty sure that the ever increasing evidence suggests that everything about our mental life is fully determined by the chemistry and physics of the brain, and that the chemistry is itself fully determined by the laws of physics, however poorly we understand them.
But our intellectual evolution is young. We have plenty of time to make spectacular progress, unless our machines step in and replace us in the business of understanding. And feeling? And being moral?
__________
References
Nagel, T. (1974). What is it like to be a bat? Philosophical Review, 83 (4), 435 - 450). Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2183914?uid=3739136&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21105182090683
(There is a free version available at the University of Helsinki website, here, although it includes notes and comments, which I found distracting. I also have it in a book version if anyone is seriously interested in something more challenging to read.)
No comments:
Post a Comment
Before you click the blue "Publish" button for your first comment on a post, check ✔ the "Notify me" box. You want to know when your classmates contribute to a discussion you have joined.
A thoughtful response should normally mean writing for five to ten minutes. After you state your main idea, some details, explanation, examples or other follow up will help your readers.
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.