thomas nagel what is it like to be a bat pdf

1974 paper by American philosopher Thomas Nagel

Thomas Nagel argues that while a human might be able to imagine what information technology is like to be a bat by taking "the bat's bespeak of view", it would still exist incommunicable "to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat." (Townsend'due south big-eared bat pictured).

"What Is It Similar to Be a Bat?" is a paper by American philosopher Thomas Nagel, get-go published in The Philosophical Review in October 1974, and afterward in Nagel's Mortal Questions (1979). The paper presents several difficulties posed past consciousness, including the possible insolubility of the heed-body problem owing to "facts beyond the reach of human concepts", the limits of objectivity and reductionism, the "phenomenological features" of subjective feel, the limits of human being imagination, and what it ways to be a particular, conscious thing.^[1]

Nagel famously asserts that "an organism has witting mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism—something it is like for the organism."^[2] This assertion has achieved special status in consciousness studies as "the standard 'what it's like' locution."^[iii] Daniel Dennett, while sharply disagreeing on some points, acknowledged Nagel'due south newspaper as "the nigh widely cited and influential thought experiment nearly consciousness."^{[four] : 441}

Thesis [edit]

Nagel challenges the possibility of explaining "the near important and characteristic characteristic of conscious mental phenomena" by reductive materialism (the philosophical position that all statements nigh the listen and mental states tin be translated, without whatever loss or alter in meaning, into statements about the physical). For example, a reductive physicalist's solution to the listen–body problem holds that any "consciousness" is, it can be fully described via physical processes in the encephalon and torso.^[five]

Nagel begins by bold that "conscious experience is a widespread phenomenon" nowadays in many animals (specially mammals), fifty-fifty though it is "difficult to say [...] what provides evidence of it." Thus, Nagel sees consciousness not as something exclusively man, but as something shared by many, if not all, organisms. Nagel must exist speaking of something other than sensory perception, since objective facts and widespread show evidence that organisms with sensory organs have biological processes of sensory perception. In fact, what all organisms share, according to Nagel, is what he calls the "subjective character of experience" divers as follows: "An organism has witting mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to exist that organism – something that it is like for the organism."^[ane]

The paper argues that the subjective nature of consciousness undermines whatever endeavor to explain consciousness via objective, reductionist means. The subjective character of feel cannot be explained by a system of functional or intentional states. Consciousness cannot be fully explained if the subjective character of experience is ignored, and the subjective character of experience cannot exist explained by a reductionist; information technology is a mental phenomenon that cannot be reduced to materialism.^[six] Thus, for consciousness to be explained from a reductionist stance, the idea of the subjective character of feel would have to be discarded, which is absurd. Neither can a physicalist view, because in such a globe each phenomenal experience had by a conscious being would take to have a physical holding attributed to information technology, which is impossible to evidence due to the subjectivity of conscious experience. Nagel argues that each and every subjective experience is connected with a "single point of view", making it infeasible to consider any conscious feel equally "objective".

Nagel uses the metaphor of bats to clarify the stardom betwixt subjective and objective concepts. Because bats are mammals, they are causeless to have conscious experience. Nagel was inspired to employ a bat for his statement afterwards living in a domicile where the animals were frequent visitors. Nagel ultimately used bats for his argument because of their highly evolved and active use of a biological sensory apparatus that is significantly dissimilar from that of many other organisms. Bats use echolocation to navigate and perceive objects. This method of perception is similar to the human sense of vision. Both sonar and vision are regarded as perceptual experiences. While it is possible to imagine what it would be like to fly, navigate by sonar, hang upside down and eat insects like a bat, that is not the same every bit a bat'south perspective. Nagel claims that fifty-fifty if humans were able to metamorphose gradually into bats, their brains would not have been wired as a bat'southward from nascence; therefore, they would simply exist able to experience the life and behaviors of a bat, rather than the mindset.^[vii]

Such is the difference between subjective and objective points of view. Co-ordinate to Nagel, "our own mental activity is the just unquestionable fact of our experience", meaning that each individual only knows what it is like to be them (subjectivism). Objectivity requires an unbiased, non-subjective state of perception. For Nagel, the objective perspective is not feasible, because humans are express to subjective experience.

Nagel concludes with the contention that it would be wrong to assume that physicalism is incorrect, since that position is also imperfectly understood. Physicalism claims that states and events are physical, but those concrete states and events are simply imperfectly characterized. Nevertheless, he holds that physicalism cannot be understood without characterizing objective and subjective experience. That is a necessary precondition for understanding the heed-body problem.

Criticisms [edit]

Daniel Dennett denies Nagel's claim that the bat'due south consciousness is inaccessible, contending that any "interesting or theoretically important" features of a bat's consciousness would exist amenable to tertiary-person ascertainment.^{[four] : 442} For instance, information technology is clear that bats cannot discover objects more than a few meters away because echolocation has a limited range. Dennett holds that any similar aspects of its experiences could be gleaned by farther scientific experiments.^{[4] : 443} Kathleen Akins similarly argued that many questions nearly a bat's subjective feel hinge on unanswered questions nigh the neuroscientific details of a bat's encephalon (such as the function of cortical activity profiles), and Nagel is too quick in ruling these out as answers to his central question.^{[viii] [9]}

Peter Hacker analyzes Nagel's statement as not only "malconstructed" but philosophically "misconceived" as a definition of consciousness,^[10] and he asserts that Nagel'south paper "laid the background for…forty years of fresh confusion about consciousness."^{[11] : 13}

Eric Schwitzgebel and Michael Southward. Gordon have argued that, contrary to Nagel, normal sighted humans do use echolocation much like bats - it is just that it is generally done without one'south awareness. They employ this to argue that normal people in normal circumstances can be grossly and systematically mistaken about their witting experience.^[12]

See likewise [edit]

• Creature consciousness
• Intersubjectivity
• Qualia
• Umwelt

References [edit]

1. ^ ^{a b} Nagel, Thomas (10 March 2005). Honderich, Ted (ed.). The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford Academy Press. p. 637. ISBN978-0-nineteen-103747-4.
2. ^ Nagel, Thomas (1974). "What Is It Like to Exist a Bat?". The Philosophical Review. 83 (4): 435–450. doi:ten.2307/2183914. JSTOR 2183914.
3. ^ Levine, Joseph (2010). Review of Uriah Kriegel, Subjective Consciousness: A Cocky-Representational Theory. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2010 (3).
4. ^ ^{a b c} Dennett, Daniel C. (1991). Consciousness Explained. Boston: Picayune, Brown and Company.
5. ^ Wimsatt, William C (1976). Reductionism, Levels of Organization, and the Mind-Torso Trouble. Springer US. pp. 205–267. ISBN978-1-4684-2198-9.
6. ^ "Qualia | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy". world wide web.iep.utm.edu . Retrieved 2015-06-01 .
7. ^ De Preester, Helena (2007). "The deep bodily origins of the subjective perspective: Models and their bug". Consciousness and Noesis. 16 (3): 604–618. doi:ten.1016/j.concog.2007.05.002.
8. ^ Bickle, John; Mandik, Peter; Landreth, Anthony. "The Philosophy of Neuroscience". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford. Retrieved two September 2020. Kathleen Akins (1993a) delved deeper into existing knowledge of bat physiology and reports much that is pertinent to Nagel's question. She argued that many of the questions about bat subjective feel that we nevertheless consider open hinge on questions that remain unanswered about neuroscientific details. I example of the latter is the function of various cortical activeness profiles in the active bat.
9. ^ Akins, Kathleen (1993). "What is it Like to exist Boring and Myopic". In Dahlbom, Bo (ed.). Dennett and His Critics: Demystifying Listen (PDF). Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell. p. 125-160. ISBN0-631-18549-6.
10. ^ Hacker, P.M.South. (2002). "Is there annihilation information technology is like to exist a bat?" (pdf). Philosophy. 77: 157–174. doi:10.1017/s0031819102000220.
11. ^ Hacker, P.M.S. (2012). "The Sad and Sorry History of Consciousness: beingness, among other things, a claiming to the "consciousness-studies community"" (pdf). Royal Institute of Philosophy. supplementary volume 70.
12. ^ Schwitzgebel, Eric; Gordon, Michael South. (2000). "How Well Do Nosotros Know Our Own Witting Experience?: The Example of Human Echolocation". Philosophical Topics. 28 (ii): 235–246.

Further reading [edit]

• "What is information technology like to be a bat?". Philosophical Review. LXXXIII (4): 435–450. October 1974. doi:10.2307/2183914.
• Hacker, P.K.Due south. (2002). "Is in that location anything it is like to be a bat?" (pdf). Philosophy. 77: 157–174. doi:10.1017/s0031819102000220.
• Schwitzgebel, Eric (2020-12-23). "Is There Something It'south Similar to Exist a Garden Snail?" (PDF). {{cite spider web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_It_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%3F

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