Kinds and Conscious Experience: Is There Anything That It Is Like to Be Something?

Evnine, Simon J.

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9973.2008.00533.x

Cited by 3 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…I do not have an apodictic argument to show that the privileged cannot attain generalized identification by this process, in part because it is unclear what exactly the target outcome is. But I will follow Simon Evnine (2008) by considering two ways to derive an account of ‘what it is like to be a K’ from individual experiences of K‐type beings, where ‘K’ ranges over types of being that have phenomenal consciousness 20 . Evnine is concerned with whether there is a way to derive such an account when Ks are kinds of creature, such as bats or humans.…”

Section: Against Generalized Identificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The candidate abstracta are too vague and insubstantial. Second, while it is fairly plausible that one could extrapolate from ‘what it is likes’ of all the sensory modalities a description of things that they have in common – say, that they are directed towards objects – such a description will not be an account of ‘what it is like’ in the relevant sense; it will not be a phenomenally rich thing that one must experience in order to grasp (Evnine, 2008, pp. 191–194).…”

Section: Against Generalized Identificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Then 'what it is like to be human' would just be the aggregate of what all of those things are like. As Evnine (2008) points out, this apparently has the disagreeable consequence that (say) someone blind all their life would not know what it was like to be human (p. 195). The most anyone could know would be what it is like to be a creature with the sensory capacities they happen to have.…”

Section: Against Generalized Identificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This account yields no substantive notion of ‘what it is like’. The ‘primitivist’ says that ‘what it is like to be a human’ is a sort of ‘ontological hum that accompanies existence’, presumably analysable via introspection (Evnine, 2008, p. 191). This, Evnine asserts, is not a hum that he hears.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Understanding What It's Like To Be (Dis)Privileged

Wiltsher

2021

Pacific Philosophical Qtr

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Can a person privileged in some respect understand what it is like to be disprivileged in that respect? Some say yes; some say no. I argue that both positions are correct, because ‘understand what it is like to be disprivileged’ is ambiguous. Sometimes, it means grasp of the character of particular experiences of disprivileged people. Privileged people can achieve this. Sometimes, it means grasp of the general character shared by experiences of disprivileged people. Privileged people cannot achieve this. However, there is a general kind of understanding that they can achieve: understanding of why individual experiences have their character, in relation to privilege and disprivilege. This understanding is a skill, not knowledge. It is difficult and discomforting for the privileged to acquire and is easily conflated with knowledge of general experiential character. Distinguishing and characterizing these kinds of understanding clarifies whether, and how, the privileged might understand what it is like to be disprivileged.

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Section: Against Generalized Identificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Against Generalized Identificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Against Generalized Identificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Understanding What It's Like To Be (Dis)Privileged

Wiltsher

2021

Pacific Philosophical Qtr

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“…However, Nagel's notion expressly has to do only with conscious experience (436). Some worry that no clear sense can be made of this notion—that there is nothing it is like to be a certain kind of creature (e.g., Tilghman 1991; Evnine 2008). Yet, even these critics sometimes allow (reluctantly) that an acceptably precise account might be given 6…”

Section: An Immodest Proposalmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Transcendental Argument of the Novel

Plumer

2017

J. of the Am. Philos. Assoc.

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ABSTRACT:Can fictional narration yield knowledge in a way that depends crucially on its being fictional? This is the hard question of literary cognitivism. It is unexceptional that knowledge can be gained from fictional literature in ways that are not dependent on its fictionality (e.g., the science in science fiction). Sometimes fictional narratives are taken to exhibit the structure of suppositional argument, sometimes analogical argument. Of course, neither structure is unique to narratives. The thesis of literary cognitivism would be supported if some novels exhibit a cogent and special argument structure restricted to fictional narratives. I contend that this is the case for a kind of transcendental argument. The reason is the inclusion and pattern of occurrence of the predicate ‘believable’ in the schema. Believability with respect to fictional stories is quite a different thing than it is with respect to nonfictional stories or anything else.

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From individual to general experience

Berninger

2023

Ratio

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There has been some debate recently about whether we can come to know what an experience is like that we have not been through ourselves. Mostly, this debate focuses on general phenomenal knowledge. It is asked, for instance, whether we can come to know what it is like to be a refugee generally speaking (as opposed to being some specific refugee). In this paper, I want to add to this debate by trying to come to know how and to what extent someone who has been through the experience in question acquires this sort of general knowledge. I suggest that this form of general phenomenal knowledge is only acquired if the experience one has undergone is typical for the group in question.

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Kinds and Conscious Experience: Is There Anything That It Is Like to Be Something?

Cited by 3 publications

References 5 publications

Understanding What It's Like To Be (Dis)Privileged

Understanding What It's Like To Be (Dis)Privileged

The Transcendental Argument of the Novel

From individual to general experience

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