Can a non-human POV even be theorised upon?

Can a non-human POV even be theorised upon?

  • Yes, it can be theorised upon, and produce decent results.

    Votes: 13 56.5%
  • Yes, it can be theorised upon, but the results will be very limited.

    Votes: 6 26.1%
  • No, it cannot be theorised upon, at all

    Votes: 4 17.4%
  • Don't know/i am not human or you aren't.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    23
  • Poll closed .
Logic is the same everywhere, that's just logical. Good things must be good everywhere beings have attained self awareness and intellect. One's young are always good, the mother if one has one is always special, even if alien young eat her right off. Flowers are pretty, the sun is warm, big slavering monsters are bad.

From these simple principles animosity can be founded in fear and greed and war be declared.

Then there's love and forgiveness, kindness and friendship which can be twisted by politicians of any species to gain advantage. Same/same. The usual stuff.
 
^If you were an ancient Getae Thracian, and you were deemed by the tribe as the best person/warrior/etc, you would likely be chosen as a messenger to their god, Zamolxis.
The messenger had the honor to be hurled at three spears and die, so that he would reach their god and bring him the message.

If he happened to not die, it was seen as likely being a sign from Zamolxis, naming that messenger as the actual (up to then unknown) cause of his anger that the message was supposed to calm ;)

(ie parameters can widely change, even in our human history and even current world. In a different entity they likely will be nothing alike, at least from their own sensory view).
 
I have to agree with Zamolxis on this. A guy is hurled at three spears and refuses to die is obviously out of control and needs to be punished. A death sentence is in order here.

So, maybe I better talk to the aliens.
 
POV can be theorized upon, but why is the question lacking the other half; "can be proven"? Are humans afraid to loose the advantage of seeing things from their own point of view?

If we learn that one day we were not the pinnacle of evolution, would that bother us? Sure it is easy to theorize about it, but would we actually be able to give up that POV?
 
If something is a theory, it has substantial factual information backing it. So much so that it is deemed fact itself, but it is still subject to scrutiny. The thing 90% of the people in this thread are missing is that imagining is not theorizing. You can imagine how it's like to be a dog all you want, but you're gonna face challenges trying to come up with a legitimate "dog theory."
 
I was just reading Sexual Personae by Camille Paglia and she mentioned that the word daemon meant in the original Greek a being of lesser divinity than the Olympian gods. Oedipus became a daemon at Colonus and the word could mean a man's guardian shadow. Later the word became demon, something evil, but originally it wasn't good or evil. Anyway, I was curious about the meaning of the word and if this was accurate.

I don't know how relevant it is to the thread.
 
It would be a different POV. The demon and angel would fall into the category between God and human. They are neither good nor evil. They do fight on different sides of the issue against each other. That is if there is a struggle and if they exist.
 
I was just reading Sexual Personae by Camille Paglia....

Oh I love that collection. I don't always agree w/ her re: feminism, but her views on art are fascinating.
 
Can a man write about the POV of a woman?
Can a Russian write about the POV of a Brazilian?
Can a person blind at birth write about the POV of those with sight?

This post is the essence of the thread, and the rhetorical answer to Varwnos' question.

Well-written.
 
If something is a theory, it has substantial factual information backing it. So much so that it is deemed fact itself, but it is still subject to scrutiny. The thing 90% of the people in this thread are missing is that imagining is not theorizing. You can imagine how it's like to be a dog all you want, but you're gonna face challenges trying to come up with a legitimate "dog theory."

Exactly :) Everyone can imagine anything. To 'theorise' refers to form a view which is argued to be tied to reality.

@Novakart: Yes, the term Daemon (which is the one still used here also for 'demon', cause it is the same term) did not mean something which had to be negative. Moreover it had a number of meanings, it is quite ambiguous, and appears to have been a quite popular word too (Socrates and Heraklitos also used it, for example).
I also think that it tends to mean some sort of shadowy destiny-type idea (one of its argued meanings is supposed to mean 'fate').
 
This post is the essence of the thread, and the rhetorical answer to Varwnos' question.

Well-written.

It always fascinates me to think about how qualia could radically differ, even from person to person. If someone's consciousness were imposed on my brain, would they even be able to grasp my perceptions of space or value or limits?

There's also a historical barrier. Just how alien were the thoughts of ancient humans? Paleolithic humans, or Sumerians or Greeks? What about the Aztecs and Spaniards? Two peoples from the most distant evolutionary trees imaginable, and yet they displayed the common human instincts that I would today. Call me nuts, but I can't bear to think of how something so separated in time and space could really be the same thing as me- that is, having an identical consciousness and memory. The idea of any two things being physically related to each other in any way somehow seems ludicrous.
 
It always fascinates me to think about how qualia could radically differ, even from person to person. If someone's consciousness were imposed on my brain, would they even be able to grasp my perceptions of space or value or limits?

Well, according to Wittgenstein (and I honestly wouldn't know myself), the answer has to be yes.

I believe he says something like: if you can meaningfully talk about something to someone else and they give the impression of understanding you, then they do.
 
What about the Aztecs and Spaniards? Two peoples from the most distant evolutionary trees imaginable, and yet they displayed the common human instincts that I would today.

Uhhhhhhh........wut?

Moderator Action: Please put more effort/content into posts in an RD thread.
 
It always fascinates me to think about how qualia could radically differ, even from person to person. If someone's consciousness were imposed on my brain, would they even be able to grasp my perceptions of space or value or limits?

There's also a historical barrier. Just how alien were the thoughts of ancient humans? Paleolithic humans, or Sumerians or Greeks? What about the Aztecs and Spaniards? Two peoples from the most distant evolutionary trees imaginable, and yet they displayed the common human instincts that I would today. Call me nuts, but I can't bear to think of how something so separated in time and space could really be the same thing as me- that is, having an identical consciousness and memory. The idea of any two things being physically related to each other in any way somehow seems ludicrous.

Uhh. They are both human beings. As in the same species. Like, about as evolutionarily different as an Indian to a Turk.

This post is the essence of the thread, and the rhetorical answer to Varwnos' question.

Well-written.

Attempting to capture a point of view is not the same thing as building a theory about how that point of view actually is. People writing these books could easily be dead wrong, but that says nothing about how entertaining or interesting the books are. But they shouldn't be mistaken for fact.
 
Well, according to Wittgenstein (and I honestly wouldn't know myself), the answer has to be yes.

I believe he says something like: if you can meaningfully talk about something to someone else and they give the impression of understanding you, then they do.

That doesn't really affect qualia, does it? Perhaps information can be communicated in some sense, but not perceptions. For instance, read about qualia inversion.

Uhhhhhhh........wut?

I was tired last night. :hammer2: I meant two peoples from the most distant ends of human evolution. Iberia is the westernmost point of the old world, and Native Americans came from Siberia. So it's hard to think of two peoples who should be more different from each other, and it serves as a wonderful experiment in historical contingency.
 
I can remember things from when I had a different mindset.

If a chimpanzee and mentally handicapped person could be compared in some aspects, I'd be willing to bet that we in the future, hypothetically, will be able to temporarily disable different brain functions in healthy individuals and thereafter make them describe their experience.

I'd go with - it's possible. ..and easier if the non-human POV is mentally inferior to the human POV
 
That doesn't really affect qualia, does it? Perhaps information can be communicated in some sense, but not perceptions. For instance, read about qualia inversion.

Who knows? If I thought I was going to live to 300 years old, I'd probably bother to read that link.

Does it matter? Am I missing something? Tell me quick.
 
Who knows? If I thought I was going to live to 300 years old, I'd probably bother to read that link.

Does it matter? Am I missing something? Tell me quick.

tl;dr: You could be seeing purple as green, and tasting sound with your ears.
 
Well, I am. So there. And it makes absolutely no difference to me.

If I point to something which looks purple and I call it green, and someone else sees green and calls it green, Wittgenstein says that we both "see" green. That's his point.
 
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