You seem to be talking about some third thing that gets to choose which of the two it wants to identify as; I’m skeptical.
I’m not talking about a third thing, although I agree that something is off about my framing and I didn’t quite ask the question I meant to ask. In your framing, I’m talking about something like recognizing that the monkey is the one actually doing things, and using the word “I” to refer to the monkey accordingly.
I think people are more skeptical when the claim is that the rider can’t even understand the nature of what is to be communicated, since they have the (I believe correct) view that the rider is a universal understander-of-things in some strong sense.
Can you at least consider the weaker hypothesis that there are things some people know how to communicate elephant-to-elephant but don’t know how to explain to anyone’s riders? (In the same way that for most of human history nobody understood the mechanics of color vision, but everyone could show each other red objects.)
I do think that understanding the mechanics of color vision is not necessary to explain red to the rider. The rider is totally capable of undertanding things like “these things are distinguishable by an attribute that you are not directly aware of, but that is a lot like the difference between green and blue objects to you, and similar to how an eagle is able to see much farther than you can, and similar to how a dog can smell things you cannot” and many similar sentences. I do not think the concept of red has become qualitatively easier to describe with the onset of modern neuroscience (though it has definitely gotten quantitatively easier).
Sorry, I wasn’t clear, the analogy I have in mind for color vision is trying to explain red to someone who lives in a black-and-white-world and doesn’t have any experience of color at all.
I don’t know how much it matters, but I think you’re generalizing from fictional evidence here, in the following sense: If someone truly had no experience of colour, I do not expect that showing them red objects would likely give them much idea of what the experience of seeing red things is like for people who have lived with colour vision all their lives. (Compare those experiments in which cats were raised with no horizontal lines in their environment and grew up insensitive to horizontal features.)
I’m not talking about a third thing, although I agree that something is off about my framing and I didn’t quite ask the question I meant to ask. In your framing, I’m talking about something like recognizing that the monkey is the one actually doing things, and using the word “I” to refer to the monkey accordingly.
Can you at least consider the weaker hypothesis that there are things some people know how to communicate elephant-to-elephant but don’t know how to explain to anyone’s riders? (In the same way that for most of human history nobody understood the mechanics of color vision, but everyone could show each other red objects.)
I do think that understanding the mechanics of color vision is not necessary to explain red to the rider. The rider is totally capable of undertanding things like “these things are distinguishable by an attribute that you are not directly aware of, but that is a lot like the difference between green and blue objects to you, and similar to how an eagle is able to see much farther than you can, and similar to how a dog can smell things you cannot” and many similar sentences. I do not think the concept of red has become qualitatively easier to describe with the onset of modern neuroscience (though it has definitely gotten quantitatively easier).
Sorry, I wasn’t clear, the analogy I have in mind for color vision is trying to explain red to someone who lives in a black-and-white-world and doesn’t have any experience of color at all.
I don’t know how much it matters, but I think you’re generalizing from fictional evidence here, in the following sense: If someone truly had no experience of colour, I do not expect that showing them red objects would likely give them much idea of what the experience of seeing red things is like for people who have lived with colour vision all their lives. (Compare those experiments in which cats were raised with no horizontal lines in their environment and grew up insensitive to horizontal features.)