![[a hypothetical fish]](fishpic.jpg)
Chyang Tzu and Hui Tzu were taking a leisurely walk along the dam of the Hao River. Chuang Tzu said, "The white fish are swimming at ease. This is the happiness of the fish."
"You are not a fish," said Hui Tzu. "How can you know its happiness?"
"You are not I," said Chuang Tzu. "How do you know that I do not know the happiness of the fish?"
Hui Tzu said, "Of course I do not know, since I am not you. But you are not the fish, and it is perfectly clear that you do not know the happiness of the fish."
"Let us get to the bottom of the matter," said Chuang Tzu. "when you asked how I knew the happiness of the fish, you already knew that I knew the happiness of the fish but asked how. I knew it along the river."
-The Chuang Tzu ch. 27, from A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy by Wing-Tsit Chan
A journey by sailboat is a source of the sort of quiet, uncommitted time in which the schedule of the outside world becomes irrelevant and thinking can be done. Perhaps if you are like me, one thing you often think about is the nature of mind. Perhaps when you see a fish swim under the boat you also think to ask what it is like to be a fish.
This question, along with its friends, questions about the nature of consciousness, are very difficult. To talk about such questions, I must speak in a language (here something approximating English), and language is an imperfect tool.
Sometimes, questions of consciousness are phrased this way: is it like anything to be a fish? The idea being that the essence of consciousness is that it is like something to be a conscious thing, and it isn't really like anything to be a non-conscious thing. There are problems with this approach. Some relate to problems of language -- what exactly does the word like mean here? The statement of the question is basically a simile, and I do not have a propositional calculus for analyzing the correctness of arguments which use similes and metaphors. But I'm inclined to leave those problems alone for the moment. There is a more fundamental issue: I believe it is like something to be anything. Being a rock is a lot like being another rock, and maybe a bit like being a mountain, and in other ways like being a brick in a building. Being an electron is probably a lot like being a proton. This doesn't mean that protons and electrons and bricks and rocks and mountains are all conscious. There is some specific kind of likeness involved is consciousness.
Another try: does a fish know what it's like to be a fish? Suppose that conscious things know what it's like to be themselves, and unconscious things do not know. From here the question basically becomes one of knowledge representation; how do you tell what a thing knows?
For the fish, it clearly knows some things. It knows how to be a fish. It knows how to swim (in a limited way, like I know how to walk but I can't explain how to walk). It has some ability to decide how to react to other fish. It doesn't know other things, though. I don't think a fish ever has any concept of what it did in the past, or what it would do if things were different. A fish never asks itself "if this water were colder would I be doing things differently?" or "what would I do if that sailboat were a shark?" The fish knows only a little about what being a fish is about, so it is only a little bit conscious. I know a little more about what being me is about, so I'm a little more conscious. I suspect it is possible for a thing to know more about what it's like to be itself than I do. I suspect it's possible to be more conscious than I am, just as I'm more conscious than the fish.