Poetry Forum

revised version

It must be like something to be a bat,
sequestered from sunlight,
suspended till nightfall,
rustling with your fellows in the roost
like leaves withered on a winter tree,
scribbling across the sky at dusk,
wing-fingers probing for best angle of attack,
shrieking ultrasonic songs into the twilight,
sonar shuttles weaving tapestries
over your brain's synaptic warp;
tacking through the mists of insects,
taking out the moths and midges,
then, sated, home to your reeking vault
awaiting dayspring's call
to haunt the skies again,
until the rising tide of light
drifts you back to darkness and to sleep.

Piffling behaviourism, poor third person stuff,
not the real first person experience of a bat.
But how could it be otherwise?

By what quirks may a mist of qualityless wave-particles
within a seven-entranced cave spin and charm
qualityless flames of particle-waves flickering beyond the cave
into scenes, music, savours, feelings, intent
and all the good and ill of our experience?
What director creates this Cartesian shadow show of the mind?
What spectral audience attends?

We are a scattered archipelago in an oblivious sea;
there seems to be no continuing stuff for dreams to be made on,
nothing more solid than fleeting occasions of events and processes,
a ghostly surf beating on bleak shores,
under clouds of dark unknowing with a seafret threatening.
Bells seem to toll in phantom carillons
from which a smoke of bats appears to stream.
I, a mere atom of consciousness
who wonder at wondering, am myself perhaps the wonder-
whole universes die with me each night,
and, analogy infers, may do with you.

In that final night shall we find light enough
to discern the snark and tell it from a boojum?



original:
What is it like to be a bat?
(Question raised by Thomas Nagel, 1974, in Philosophical Review 83, 435-450, discussing the ineffability of consciousness)

It must be like something to be a bat,
sequestered from sunlight,
suspended till nightfall,
rustling with your fellows in the roost
like leaves withered on a winter tree,
scribbling across the sky at dusk,
wing-fingers probing for best angle of attack,
shrieking ultrasonic songs into the twilight,
sonar shuttles threading tapestries
over your brain's synaptic warp;
tacking through the mists of insects
taking out the moths and midges;
then, sated, back to your reeking vault
awaiting dayspring's call
to haunt the skies again
until the rising tide of light
drifts you back to darkness and to sleep.

Really?
Why must it be like anything at all?
What is it even like to be another human being
pondering what it is like to be a bat?
Some analytic philosophers claim
there are no sensed qualities in our heads-
qualia do not exist, that school says-
and nothing can exist corresponding to a state
of knowing what it is like to be a human being.
In other words there is no view from anywhere
to allow of argument to prove that this is true.
But somehow philosophers' cerebral glands continue
to secrete the polysyllables that fill recondite tomes,
just as their hepatic cells continue to make bile,
and bats appear to trace their crepuscular ways,
all without any knowledge of doing so.

Donne it seems was wrong. We are islands,
in unknown seas: here are phantasmagoria;
the main is hidden in a fog,
and no bells toll.

Perhaps of all philosophers it is Wittgenstein
who has it best:
Whereof one cannot speak,
thereof one must be silent.*


*In the original Tractatus- wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darueber muss man schweigen.

Enjoyed this - but the central section dissolves into textbook, not poetry. Take out the line breaks and it's solid prose:

"What is it even like to be another human being pondering what it is like to be a bat? Some analytic philosophers claim there are no sensed qualities in our heads- qualia do not exist, that school says- and nothing can exist corresponding to a state of knowing what it is like to be a human being. In other words there is no view from anywhere to allow of argument to prove that this is true."

I appreciate the problem, I've done it myself.

Ros

Hi C,

well this looked like it was going somewhere and then it rather deteriorated into a rant...here:


"What is it even like to be another human being
pondering what it is like to be a bat?
Some analytic philosophers claim
there are no sensed qualities in our heads-
qualia do not exist, that school says-
and nothing can exist corresponding to a state
of knowing what it is like to be a human being.
In other words there is no view from anywhere
to allow of argument to prove that this is true.
But somehow philosophers' cerebral glands continue
to secrete the polysyllables that fill recondite tomes,
just as their hepatic cells continue to make bile,
and bats appear to trace their crepuscular ways,
all without any knowledge of doing so."


Some indeed claim that there are no phenomenal qualities..in bats or humans. But it is a minority view in philosophy. Most are either functionalists, type identity theorists, or (rare) property dualists. But I won't bore you with "recondite tomes"...

"Perhaps of all philosophers it is Wittgenstein
who has it best:
Whereof one cannot speak,
thereof one must be silent.*

Eeek. And one would hardly have an option would one if one could not in fact speak of it? As the great Frank Ramsey famously said, commenting on this particularly babbling passage of Wittgenstein, "If you can't say it, you can't say it and you can't whistle it either".

I'm pleading for a re-write on that middle section, C.

Seth

Always something to provoke thought in a C. poem and this is no exception. My reading tastes prefer S1 and a lot less of the rest. Worth working on.

all the best

mac

Like others, I rather think your Nagel in S1 wins the argument!

S1 is a lovely interpretation of everyone's favourite philosophical essay, so much so that the dusty protest of S2 falls entirely flat.

The first six lines are splendid, especially

"like leaves withered on a winter tree,
Scribbling across the sky at dusk"

- wow, just wonderful.

This is what it's like to be a bat.

http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarch ... poemId=218

Never heard him read it before!

Hey C,

Liked S1. Although not too sure about sequestered - secluded? Cloistered? Mmmmm, some thought needed there.

Am loving the dialogue it's induced. David that link is fabulous, very entertaining.

Please please have another go at the middle section - i'm eagerly awaiting that.

Thanks for the thought provocation,

Nicky B.

Thank you all for your helpful comments. As a first, general response I am inclined to ditch everything after the first section, I accept the tenor of many of the comments, but pondering is needed.
Ros: you're obviously correct in your critique, clearly I am no Lucretius.

Seth: pedestrian, prosy definitely, but surely not impassioned enough to be a rant. Gilbert Ryle has a lot to answer for, especially the egregious Dennett- they may be in a minority but they make a lot of noise. Poor old Ludwig- a babbler!
I also have great admiration for Ramsey, a great loss, but feel his comment here is on a level with Johnson's 'refutation' of Berkeley, W's aphorism is perhaps a modal tautology rather than babble
Thanks for your input always stimulating.

Mac: thanks for the encouragement, but as I wrote above perhaps the later sections should disappear.

k-j: thank you for your appreciation, S2 on will likely go altogether.

David: a very interesting interpretation, rather makes one give up in the face of such skill.

Nicky B: you're right much thought needed, at present I don't think the middle section is viable.

Regardsto all, C.

some striking lines,

"like leaves withered on a winter tree"

caughr my eye.
but it seems too long and ranmbling a poem for the subject matter - especially given how ecah line is often composed as a single clause, which highlights this.

i often find myself writing quasi philosophical statements in my poems, so i don't mind the rhetorical questions you bring up, but i don't read it as meditative - more of a lecture?

thanks for yr comments Clem.
I have not enough syntactical ability to write in a sort of legato continuity, so I try for striking lines as compensation. Yes probably too rambling, but difficult to distil this topic. Sorry it seems to be a lecture -it was intended as a discursive reflection (not a meditn) with reference to the dematerialisation of matter by modern physics and its relation to what Chalmers calls 'the hard problem'. Probably best to abandon everything bar the first section and just leave it as a bit of nature verse.
regards, C.