Philosophical implications of COVID

Post Reply New Topic

During COVID I lost the sense of smell for three weeks. After I gained the sense of smell back, I noticed that some things smell a bit differently. Now, in some of those things it is just an extra "covid smell" that I know is a distortion. But in case of rubbing alcohol, it is a *complete* and *total* difference. As if it is a totally different chemical altogether.

And this made me wonder about the following idea. Imagine the world -- without COVID -- where no two people smell alcohol the same way. Whenever each person is born, a multi-side dice is being dropped that would determine how that particular individual would smell alcohol. But since none of the people have means of physically transporting their brain into the other persons brain, they are just assuming that others smell alcohol the same way they do, even though they are wrong.

But then COVID happens. And when someone loses the sense of smell and then gains it back, the dice will have to be dropped again when their smelling capacities are formed for the second time. And that is when that person notices that alcohol smells differently to them, because the dice was dropped on a different side. So they think this new type of smell is a "distortion" due to COVID. But actually its not a distortion at all. They were simply dealt a different side of a coin, and neither of these two sides of a coin is either more or less normal than the other.

In other words, maybe in pre-COVID times, there were just as many people that smelled alcohol the way I used to smell it pre-covid as there were people who smelled alcohol the way I am smelling it now. Both groups of people lived in pre-covid times hence both seen themselves as normal. Its only when I had to move from one group of people to the other that was when I noticed something unusual.

is that a revelation to you?
I mean, we do know about colourblindness and tetrachromates - people who have a fourth kind of cone receptor in their retina and can distinguish shades of yellow people without those cones are physically unable to tell apart.
Extrapolate that to the other senses, and the brain attached to it and you'll end up with a variety of ways to experience sensation as large as the number of people who ever lived.

and then there's other animals. read about the eyes of the mantis shrimp if you're interested...

there's a relatively new school of philosophy by the name of object oriented ontology. It proclaims that all things 'sense', in a way, only rocks have very few ways to react to what's happening. but if you heat them up quickly and in only one area they might burst.
You might say that's just physics - but when a molecule of rubbing alcohol hits your sensory cells in your nose, what happens is it's triggering a cascade of chemical (i.e., atomic-scale-physical reactions).
And then your brain does something which no one understands yet- it forms a thought.

Your experiences with covid are frankly...more interesting (and worrisome) to me than the philosophical question you're raising.

But to address your question... when I was a little kid I used to wonder about stuff like "does MY color red look like someone else's color blue, and vice versa". My seventh grade science teacher posed that same question as an aside once. A Utuber even did a vid about that. So I had the impression that EVERY one at some point in growing up asks themselves that question. The same could be applied to other senses. Including smell.

To dung beetles excrement probably smells like ...what freshly baked bread smells like to us!

By worrisome, are you saying that I might develop other symptoms later -- besides the ones I talk about now? If so, can you specify which are the possible ones?



Yes I was wondering about color blue and color red, in exact way you just described. I didn't realize that others wondered about the same thing. I thought those were solely my own thoughts.

But in any case, COVID makes those things a lot more tangible.

To spell out what I mean, consider the following thought experiment. Lets say that there was a way to restore sight of blind people. Then who knows maybe some of them will see red as blue, others as yellow, etc. If so, that would be a proof that, indeed, we all see red as all those different colors -- we just never get to discover it unless we lose our vision and then get it back.

Well, COVID is the same concept except that it is smell instead of sight.



Possibly. If so, that might be an explanation of why COVID people are saying that things smell to them like gasoline.

Maybe there is nothing "inherently" good about fresh bread smell or "inherently" bad about gasoline smell. We just get to "learn" which one is good and which one is bad based on Pavlovian reward/punishment thing. So whatever smell I used to associate with fresh bread I learned to perceive as good. And whatever smell you used to associate with fresh bread, you learned to perceive as good. But then if we decided to "trade" our smells, then I no longer have access to what I learned to perceive as good and you no longer have access to what you learned to perceive as good. Thus we both would be complaining about "foul smells" -- even if those very smells are something that some other individuals have learned to perceive as good.

I am not talking about some people perceiving smells to finer detail than others. Instead, I am talking about someone seeing as red something that someone else sees as blue and vice versa.



I thought about it too. One interesting thing about it is that it has two sides of a coin. One side of a coin is an abstract/philosophical question we were talking about so far. And the other side of a coin is the one about compassion. When vegetarians have more compassion towards animals than non-vegeterians, that relates to how much sense we attribute to animals. But then vegeterians are the ones that have less compassion for plants, since they claim its better to eat plants than animals. But then there are little kids that have compassion towards dolls. So they assume dolls have sense too. And then assuming that rocks have sense is just an extrapolation of this line of reasoning.

One leap of logic that people tend to make is an assumption that "whoever acts more, that entity feels more". Thats where the vegeterian idea that "plants feel less than animals" is coming from, and that is also where non-vegeterian idea that "animals feel less than humans" is coming from too. The idea that "stone don't feel at all" is just an extension of that concept. And also that is where NT idea that "aspies don't have emotion" is coming from as well.

But I personally subscribe to a different viewpoint. I feel like "whoever acts less can feel more" because they can't defend themselves and are perpetual victims. Thats why I can lash out at humans but I would never lash out at dolls. Dolls are defensless and I don't want to hurt them. And then they say that "aspies associate with inanimate objects because they are robots". No they aren't robots. They associate with *defenseless* objects (not inanimate ones). It is just that defenseless objects are the ones that are "wrongly assumed" to be inanimate -- which contributes to their misery thus calls for aspie sympathy. At least thats the case with me.

With my ex-girlfriends I have always been all about me (poor me, I have Asperger) except for one case: one of my ex-s was really sick and she lost a lot of blood during her cycles. Thats when I had compassion towards her. When she was no longer as sick, I became selfish again. So she angrilly told me during our breakup "find yourself a girlfriend that is permanently sick".

But yeah, going back to the original topic. The amount of compassion directly relates to the assertion of what entity feels more than what. Since we can't prove which entity feels more, thats why we can't agree on whom to be compassionate towards more. And inability to prove which entity feels more is logically related to inability to prove that the other person sees red as red rather than blue. So, on the one hand, there is that abstract question: do we know that others see red as red rather than blue? And, on the other hand, there is a compassion question: do we know that entities that are unable to act actually feel? And in both cases it boils down to assumptions that we can't prove or disprove.

But then comes COVID that helps us prove/disprove SOME set of assumptions. Such as "do we know that others smell alcohol the same way I do". So maybe some other disease -- that causes temporary blindless -- would reveal to us whether others see red as blue or not. And then yet another disease -- that would put someone temporary in a toy-like state -- would enable us to question an assumption whether toys can feel or not. Or likewise another really weird disease that would make someone a temporary cow or a temporary vegetable, will put some light on how much cows feel and how much vegetables feel, and that would help with a debate between vegeterians or non-vegeterians.

Or if people were to come up with some way of remembering what we perceived as embryos, that would settle the question on whether embryos feel and thus solve abortion debate. Actually I remember my father saying how he remembered back as an infant that he used to assume he sees with his mouth rather than his eyes. Well, unlike my father, I don't have any infancy memories. My first memories are when I was 4: I remember how on my 4-th birthday they gave me koloboks to eat. But my father with his infancy memories came a lot closer to the target. Now, if someone even better than my father could remember his own embryonic state, that would be really helpful as far as abortion debate is concerned.

Now, as I mentioned earlier, all those "compassion questions" relate to the concept "whoever acts more, feels more". And then there is a different concept: "what I see as red, the other person sees as red". I think the two concepts are related in the following way. The reason I assume that "whatever I see as red the other person sees as red" is because the other person "acts as if they see it as red". Of course, they don't "act as if THEY see it as red" rather they "act the way I would act if I were to see it as red". So the idea is: "if the other person acts the way I would act if I felt X, then the other person feels X". And that idea has two implications. One is that the other person supposedly sees red as red. And the other implication is that stones don't feel -- since stones don't act the way I would have acted if I were to feel it. And the idea that aspies don't feel is the same concept too: aspies don't act the way NT-s were to act if they were to feel it. With aspies you will agree with me, I am sure. Well, with stoles it is the same concept, just a bit more abstract.



I totally agree with you, and this is exactly what I was thinking for a long time. Basically, physics CAN explain our behavior to every detail. This includes our discussion about feelings, our acknowledgement of our own feelings, our expression of emotion, etc. However, one thing it would *not* explain is our actually feeling the things we claim to feel. Now, we can never assert by looking at the other person that the other person feels anything. It doesn't matter how much facial expression they have, how passionate they sound, etc. Artificial intelligence can do those things too. In fact, we are only innately aware about our own feelings, but not about anyone else's feelings. I know that I feel the things that I claim to feel, because I am innately aware of myself. But you can't possibly know it, because you have innate awarenness of yourself but not of me. For all you know, I can be an artificial intelligence that is typing the very words I am typing right now about "innate awarenness". I know I am not an artificial intelligence, but you don't, and I can never prove it to you.

Now, back to your "physics" question. The part that physics takes care of is how the particles move. Which includes our talking about feelings, typing about them, expressing them, etc. But physics will never explain why we actually feel those things we claim to feel. And this missing gap is where the soul comes in. And that is the answer to the question "what is the role of God". God is the one that gave us that soul. So the physics would make us behave as if we feel something, and the soul would actually makes us feel the things that our behavior shows we feel. And we are lucky that what our soul feels actually matches the way our body behaves. It didn't have to be the case. Imagine a horrible situation where our body behaves as if it wants one thing while soul actually wants the opposite. The soul has no control over the body because the body is governed by physics. And then the soul would be trapped into the body that does exact opposite to what it wants -- and it has no control over it. This would be a horrible situation indeed. So we have to thank God that God created our soul in a way that its wants match the physics.

And this brings us to the question about the rocks. Since feelings is based on a soul while behavior is based on physics, those are totally separate things. Therefore, we can have a human without soul that would -- thanks to physics -- deceptively act as if they feel something when they don't. And, on a flip side, we can have a stone with the soul that -- due to physics -- won't be able to act on what it feels.

In any case, a decade ago I wrote a paper about science and religion. And if you look at chapters 2 and 3 of that paper I contemplated about this physics/soul thing a lot. Here is the paper: https://vixra.org/pdf/1607.0195v1.pdf

I did understand you - what I meant to point out was that a sensation differs in the way it is experienced due to variations in sensory organs, and then comes the brain on top.


how? you still can't extrapolate to other people, in the same way you can't be certain if your nasal epithelium has changed, your individual experience, and whether you are now the only person to whom rubbing alcohol smells the way it does.
A disease that turned someone temporarily into a toy would give you no clues about what toys that have always been toys experience. You only ever get a sample size of one.
And since the names of colors are convention, it's impossible to say whether people with the red-blue disease experienced the same way, the only thing you can say is that patients experience a change in color vision -



it's called the God of the gaps, yes, he is an old acquaintance of science: whenever something is unexplained, someone says: that's where god lives!
he's shrunk to the size of particle fluctuations, grown to the size of alternate universes or turned into qualia - the individual experience of reality, depending on who you ask and what unexplained phenomenon they are occupied with.
Religious thought however has been located in the temporal lobe, in the meantime.

There are two different questions. One question is: how nuanced can we distinguish between shades of the same color? The other question is: do we see one color as a different color altogether? The first question can be answered a lot more easily than the second one. In case of the first the answer is yes: some people see two different shades of red and other people say its the same shade of red. But as far as the second question, that is a lot harder to answer: if someone always seen red as blue they will call it red not realizing they see it as blue. So we can test how nuanced they see it, yet we can't test whether it is "nuances of red" or "nuances of blue".



Because instead of restoring their old vision they have a new vision built from scratch. So they see colors as if it is a brand new person.

At least that is my theory with regards to smells in case of covid.



There are four different possibilities:

Possibility 1: Everyone smells rubbing alcohol the way I used to smell it pre-covid

Possibility 2: Everyone smells rubbing alcohol the way I am smelling it post-covid. In other words, pre-covid I was that weird person that smelled it differently than most people (perhaps due to my Asperger) but then post-covid when my smell developed from scratch I ended up smelling it the way most people smell it

Possibility 3: Maybe there are two groups of people, one group smells it the way I used to smell it pre-covid, the other group smells it the way I am smelling it now. I simply moved from one group of people to the other since my smell developed from scratch

Possibility 4: Maybe nobody smells it the way I either smelled it before nor now. Maybe everyone smells it in their own unique way.



Thats a good point. So you can't actually "prove" anything about other people's feelings no matter what. But you can still come up with "a strong motivation to consider" one theory or other. Just like with smells. Pre-covid I was still philosophizing on whether other people smell things the way I do. But post-covid I have a stronger reasons to take those philosophies seriously. Similar concept can apply to toys and other things. And in the world where no proofs or disproofs exist, "how seriously to take something" might be the ultimate decider. And so, one-point data in regards to toys, might just be enough to stop people from throwing the old toys in the middle of a cold.



Change in color vision is the only thing I can "say for sure". Yet it can "strongly suggest" a bunch of other things -- such as the philosophies about red and blue discussed above.



Notice, however, that I didn't cite "God as a watchmaker" argument. I cited God as a consciousness-maker. While the "watch" can create itself out of random processes (highly unlikely but still) a consciousness is something you can't possibly conceive of in this manner. No matter how perfectly particles can combine themselves into perfectly-acting artificial intelligence, there can't be "feelings" out of nothing. Either we have to assume that each particle feels (which is what you were getting at) or we have to say that God breathed feelings into this system (which is what I am getting at).



That doesn't disprove the existence of God. Just like saying that vision is being processed by a certain part of the brain doesn't disprove that vision reflects reality, either.

As a matter of fact, I can construct the opposite argument. Without God, we have evolution. So the only thing we would develop via evolution is what would promote our survival. That part of the brain that processes religious feelings does not help our survival, at least not directly (well, temporal lobe does, but not that very specific part of it that does this very specific function). So it can't be explained by means of evolution. And, therefore, it can, instead, be explined as God purposely leaving His footprint so that people will seek Him.

Well...its worrisome because its a permanent debilitation. I had the impression that if you didnt die you would kick covid and its effects. But from you and others I am now realizing that the effects can go on and on and on. And if messes up your smell that could be serious. Like you might not recognize foods as being spoiled. Spoiled chicken might ...start smelling like Calvin Klein's Obsession instead of having the familiar spoiled meat stench. You wouldnt know what to make of the unexpected smell, and go ahead and cook it with fatal results.
==========================================================

When I was a kid I actually liked the smell of gasoline. But knew gasoline fumes were not healthful to inhale. So there is SOME social conditioning in our reaction to smells. But even if you dont dislike the smell of gasoline you wouldnt want everything to smell like gasoline. "Tasting" involves smell more than taste on your tongue. So no food would taste right. And like I said above it could be dangerous. You wouldnt know when you were really breathing actual gasoline fumes. Or you might not know when you were smelling something ELSE bad like the aforementioned spoilage in food.

Frequently, people do recover from "long COVID."

Vaccines have proven effective, at times, in alleviating "long COVID."

It's certainly not nice for the people who have "long COVID."

First of all, I chose not to take covid vaccines period. Because some Christians say its the mark of the beast. I am not saying I agree with them. Rather I am saying "I better be safe than sorry". So even if its only 10% probability it is the mark and 90% probability that it isn't, I would be cautious to avoid those 10%.

However, even though I know I won't take the vaccine, I would like to ask a question just out of curiosity. How can vaccine help "long covid" if "long covid" is no longer infectious? Vaccine is supposed to help fight infection. So it might help someone who is still in the infectious stage of covid. But how can it really reverse after-effects of an invection that is no longer there?

there is no such thing as "seeing red as blue".
as a child a person has a sensory impression and is being told to call that impression "red".

If the child is a bit colorblind, the impression called red and the impression called green doesn't differ much, and it can be traced to a defect in the retina. But we have no idea what those impressions are doing in the brain of the child. Probably not triggering certain areas as much as they would for other people.

But that's about all we can say: with colorblind people we know *why* the brain doesn't get stimulated in the same amount, but for non-colorblind people, we don't know why a certain color would stimulate the brain in a certain way or intensity, and another won't.
Here, the difference is not the retina, but the brain.
Maybe my brain gets way more triggered by red than yours. We'll never know.
And that is all before we get to how it is individually experienced, which we can't say anything about.

That would be like building a rocket and a pumping up a ballon with helium and trying to figure out how they experiencing flying up into the air - they differ, a lot, and so do brains - yet, just as rockets and helium filled ballons fly, our brains can do similar things, using different neural paths.
There is no reason to assume that there are such things as souls that are somehow comparable among people, but are made from completely different brains.

although, not that completely different, actually. A large part of brain development is rather genetically predetermined, speech acquisition being one example. - but the language learned then goes on to influence the structure, making some associations easier than others, etc.
a completely different brain would be that of an octopus.
I'm sure they experience colour in some way, after all, rhey use it to communicate. They seem to have quite distinct personalities, too, and they can use tools and such. Do they need souls for that?
Is the octopus soul comparable to the human soul? or is that brain too different from a human beain, and the resulting soul too different from a human soul?

"souls" and the God of the gaps don't actually answer any questions definitively, they just produce questions that can no longer be investigated except maybe by scholastics.

Well…the whole red as blue problem isn’t a matter of whether we perceive things the same way. It’s a matter of identity. Can we all agree that a thing is a thing—do you perceive this color as distinct from another and use that in the way of describing your world? And are anomalies in perception enough to actually cause problems? For example, I’m nearsighted. The way things appear for me are problematic on a number of levels—certainly it’s an epistemic issue, and not a lot of fun when driving a car requires a leap of faith. Whether you actually see the right color is only a problem when you can’t distinguish colors, same as how brake lights, red reflectors, and red traffic lights all appear identical, or how headlights and street lights all look the same. Depth perception can also be a problem. That all goes away with corrective lenses. The discussion of whether red is red or blue is blue is meaningless until someone is unable to identify the color.

The argument is also based on the premises that human beings aren’t able to perceive anything reliably and that there is no firm reality. If I choose to leave my glasses off when I drive, that doesn’t change the fact that there are other vehicles, nor will it change the consequences if I crash into one.

Vaccines have been known to lessen or totally alleviate symptoms of Long COVID. There could be a "placebo" effect somewhere in this.