L3 - What Is It Like to Be a Bat? by Thomas Nagel

Question 1

How does Nagel refer to Place?

Answer 1

As a reductionist.

Question 2

“The fact that an organism has conscious experience at all means…

Answer 2

that there is something it is like to be that organism.”

Question 3

What is the “being” of an organism called?

Answer 3

The subjective character of experience.

Question 4

What must happen for physicalism to be defended?

Answer 4

The phenomenological features must themselves be given a physical account.

Question 5

What is the problem with trying to imagine yourself as a bat?

Answer 5

You are restricted to the resources of you own mind. You have no ability to even imagine what echolocation might be like.

Question 6

Reflection on what it would be like to be a bat leads to what conclusion about human language?

Answer 6

There are facts that cannot be expressed by human language.

Question 7

Is a point of view unique to a species, an individual, or objective no matter what species?

Answer 7

Unique to a species (Nagel calls this point of view a type)

Question 8

If the subjective character of experience is to be seen only from one point of view, then a shift towards greater objectivity…

Answer 8

takes us farther away from the real nature of the phenomenon.

Question 9

Neobehaviorism results from…

Answer 9

Substituting an objective concept of mind for the real thing in order to have nothing left that cannot be reduced.

Question 10

What is the current status of physicalism?

Answer 10

It may still be true, but we don’t have the beginnings of a conception of how it may be true.

Question 11

We cannot understand how the character of experience is captured in a physical description until we…

Answer 11

understand the more fundamental idea that they have an objective nature.