A browser game inspired by Thomas Nagle's Essay “What is it like to be a bat?”

http://jrmgriffith.itch.io/what-is-it-like-to-be-a-bat

by Snail_Commando • 12 years ago

2 3 12 years ago

jrmgriffith.itch.io

Snail_Commando2• 12 years ago

This is not my creation, but I've read the essay before and I was intrigued by the game. It's pretty cool.

Here is the essay if anyone is interested:

http://organizations.utep.edu/portals/1475/nagel_bat.pdf

duckingtest• 12 years ago

Original idea, though I don't think that's how it is to be a bat... it's an unfiltered output from echolocation. Human brain does ton of processing with visual stimuli. I think a view in which detected objects fade very slowly (several seconds at least) would be a better translation of bat's experience.

Snail_Commando2• 12 years ago

This actually kind of reinforces (or at least points to) one of the central ideas of the essay, that we cannot know what it is to be a bat--we would always contextualize or speculate about the bat experience in human terms of experience.

If you accept this, no matter how great We make this simulation (of objective physical phenomena and our best theorized non-human perceptions of these phenomena), this game is always false.

(For what it's worth, I'm not sure yet if I hold any firm viewpoints on this. The essay (at least partially) is an argument against reductionism, but I'm no philosopher; to be honest I'm still wrapping my head around the entire argument. I just think it's interesting to think about.)

A browser game inspired by Thomas Nagle's Essay “What is it like to be a bat?”

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