Nagel on what it’s like to be a bat

Question 1

consciousness

Answer 1

Self-consciousness, sensory experience, bodily awareness, emoting, introspecting

Question 2

phenomenality

Answer 2

• Phenomenal consciousness
• The subjective and qualitative “what it’s like-ness” of many mental states and processes

Question 3

what is it like to be an echolocating bat?

Answer 3

• There is no reason to think that what it is like for them to have echolocatory experiences is anything like what it is like for us to have any of our perceptual experiences.
• Nagel says that we cannot know due to differences between our human perceptual apparatus and that of bats.

Question 4

argument X

Answer 4

• (P1) The facts about phenomenality for a being are knowable only by beings who share the same type of experiential point of view as the being.
• (P2) No physical fact is knowable only from one type of experiential point of view.
• (C) The facts about phenomenal character for a being are not physical facts.

Question 5

Nagel’s official argument

Answer 5

• The natural sciences seek explanations of observed phenomena that are as objective as possible
• An explanation is “objective” to the degree that it is understandable from more than one type of point of view.

Question 6

a problem with Nagel’s official argument

Answer 6

• In the case of lightning, we “pursue a more objective understanding” of it by “abandoning our initial subjective viewpoint toward it in favor of another that is more objective but concerns the same thing”
• Applying the same model to our phenomenally conscious experiences yields: we pursue a more objective understanding of experience by abandoning…

Question 7

why is no scientific account of consciousness possible

Answer 7

• Regarding experience as objective requires setting aside the subjective.
• But then since experience is subjective, we’re ignoring the very thing about phenomenality that made us wish to have a theory of it in the first place