In Nagel’s “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” the author explores the nature of consciousness and offers several arguments to support his ideas. Nagel criticizes the reductionist approach to viewing consciousness and argues that this phenomenon is more complex by using the comparison with bats. This paper will overview Nagel’s argument, two main points in support of this argument, and an objection to Nagel’s idea.
The main argument that Nagel presents in his paper is that the mind-body dilemma is insoluble because of the notion of consciousness. The author continues this reflection by stating that this is why current discussions on the issue either ignore this dilemma or provide incorrect explanations of it (Nagel, 435). The first idea that Nagel presents in support of his argument is that several interpretations of consciousness have emerged in response to the current wave of reductionist viewpoints (435). However, all of these approaches attempt to explain the feasibility of some type of materialism, psychophysical identification, or reduction. Still, the issues addressed are those that apply to this and other types of reductions, and what distinguishes the mind-body problem from others, such as the water-H20 problem, the Turing machine-IBM machine problem, and other technology-related problems, as noted by Nagel (436). Hence, Nagel provides an overview of the complexity of people’s consciousness and the issues with the existing approaches to understanding it.
The author’s paper discusses the potential insolubility of the mind-body problem due to factors that a human mind and comprehension cannot grasp and the limits of objectivity and reductionism. Moreover, the phenomenological characteristics of subjective experience, human imagination’s boundaries, and what it is to be a particular, aware thing are some of the issues Nage cites (436). If and only if there is anything, it is like to be that organism—an organism has conscious mental states. This means that an organism can be conscious only in case it has something similar to it.
Reductive materialism that Nagel refers to several times throughout his paper cannot explain the essential properties of conscious mental processes (436). The philosophical position that all statements about the mind and mental states can be translated, without any loss or change in meaning, into statements about the physical is the main idea of reductionists. Hence, a reductive physicalist answer to the mind-body issue, for example, believes that whatever consciousness is, it can be adequately represented by physical processes in the brain and body. However, as Nagel argues, this issue is more complex as more factors impact the mind-body experience, making the reductionist approach faulty.
The second argument that Nagel presents is that consciousness cannot be properly described if the subjective nature of experience is neglected. Moreover, consciousness cannot be entirely explained by a reductionist. It is a mental process that cannot be reduced to materialism. Thus, in order to understand consciousness from a reductionist perspective, the concept of the subjective nature of experience would have to be abandoned, which removes important properties from this experience. A physicalist viewpoint to consciousness cannot adequately explain this phenomenon either because each experience encountered by a conscious creature would have to be assigned a physical characteristic (Nagel, 437). This approach is difficult to illustrate to the subjectivity of conscious experience. According to Nagel, all subjective experience is linked to one viewpoint making it impossible to consider any conscious experience (437). Therefore, Nagel uses the idea of subjective experience as one as support for his idea of consciousness.
However, there are some objections to Nagel’s arguments. The main example Nagel uses is his assumption that consciousness is common in many creatures, especially mammals. As a result, Nagel regards consciousness as something shared by many, if not all, species rather than something unique to humans (437). However, due to objective facts and abundant evidence demonstrating that species with sensory organs have biological processes of sensory perception, it is difficult to support this idea with empirical evidence. The article by Nagel claims that any attempt to explain consciousness using objective, reductionist methods is undermined by the subjective nature of consciousness. A system of functional or purposeful states cannot explain the subjective nature of experience (Nagel, 437). If the subjective nature of experience is taken into account, consciousness cannot be fully described. Still, it is currently not possible to find evidence of the subjectivity of experiences for species other than humans.
In summary, this paper is an analysis of Nagel’s argument on consciousness, which the philosopher expressed in their paper “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” The main idea that the author presents is that the phenomenon of consciousness cannot be explained by a reductionist approach. Each experience is unique and subjective, and Nagel argues that this is true for all species. Moreover, the mind-body experience is complex, and therefore, simple explanations for it cannot address all the aspects of this issue. However, one counterargument to Nagel’s ideas is the lack of evidence to support the subjectivity of experiences for species other than humans.
Work Cited
Nagel, Thomas. “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”, The Philosophical Review, vol. 83, no. 4, 1974, pp. 435-450.