tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post3695893341607072123..comments2024-02-20T12:26:24.682-05:00Comments on language goes on holiday: An immense world of delightDuncan Richterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-6881720684072347732012-03-18T09:23:38.386-04:002012-03-18T09:23:38.386-04:00I thought you had written about Balcombe--thanks f...I thought you had written about Balcombe--thanks for the link.<br /><br />I'm not sure exactly what I want to say about knowing what it's like to be a bird, but I think you're at least close to it. There are two things I want to bring together: knowledge about birds based on the kind of observation that Balcombe goes in for, plus knowledge from my own life of sensations, emotions, etc. that birds have. I haven't observed birds very much, in fact, but let's say I watch one and see clearly that it is afraid. In that case, although I have never known bird-fear, I do know what it is like to be afraid, so if the bird is afraid then I know to some extent what it is like to be that bird. The imagination is involved both in seeing the bird as afraid and in recalling my own previous experiences of fear. But I don't mean that I would be imagining the bird's feelings in an arbitrary way. Perhaps I cannot see the bird as anything but afraid in the circumstances. (And if that example isn't convincing, I could talk about the bird being in pain, or hungry, or something else.) <br /><br />The main point I think I want to make is that the problem of other minds (as standardly conceived) is a sort of fiction, and that this applies to animals as well as people.Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-2755720093998259512012-03-18T00:33:03.662-04:002012-03-18T00:33:03.662-04:00Balcombe is an interesting character. I haven'...Balcombe is an interesting character. I haven't read his book (though I did skim Coetzee's intro and was intrigued that he wrote an intro), but I did hear him speak at EKU a couple years ago. I discuss this <a href="http://mpianalto.blogspot.com/2010/10/jonathan-balcombe-popular-science.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>. The short is that philosophically, he's rather quick and dirty, but his descriptions of the lives of animals (as it were) are compelling, and presumably premised on the idea that familiarity will breed interest and concern, rather than contempt. Certainly, getting others to see continuity between our lives and the lives of animals (the to-a-degree-ness of our differences from them) is one way of making the recognition that there is--or could be, in a sense stronger than mere logical possibility--a "world of delight" in the lives of other animals.<br /><br />Is saying "to some extent I know what it's like to be a bird" related to the idea that you can <i>imagine</i> (to some extent) what it's like to be a bird, and that that exercise of imagination is grounded in <i>something</i> you know about birds? (That is, you know things about birds through observing them, so whatever you imagine it might be like is not simply produced <i>ex nihilo</i>?)Matthew Pianaltohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.com