Thomas Nagel, “What is it like to be a Bat?”

The Philosophical Review 83, 4 (1974): 435-50.

Synopsis:  The contemporary American philosopher Thomas Nagel, in a mid-1970’s essay, famously wondered, “What is it like to be a Bat?”  He argues that there is an irreducible subjective character of experience so that “there is something that it is like to be that organism—something it is like for the organism” (436).  There are, of course, similarities between bats and humans—they, too, are living and are mammals; they, too, have experience; and, yet, they are fundamentally alien to us: we talk, they shriek; we walk, they fly—and do so through echolocation, which is perception, but very unlike ours.  Bat sonar is so unlike any sense we possess it is unreasonable to presume it to be subjectively like anything we experience.  So, if we ask, “what is it like to be a bat?,” our experiences will only fuel imaginings that paint a picture of what it is like for a human to be bat-like—imagine having wings and catching bugs, having poor vision and hanging upside down—rather than offering the truly self-subjective feel of what it is like for a bat to be a bat.  We haven’t the capacity “to extrapolate to the inner life of the bat from our own case. …  without changing my fundamental structure, my experiences would not be anything like the experiences of those animals” (438-9).  All inner life experiences are distinctly subjective.  This tells us, then, that there is a vast realm of experience, and views of the world, that are off-limits to us. 

Textual Analysis:

Nagel identifies the consciousness as that which most problematizes the continual mind-body quandary.  (It might be helpful to first think of consciousness simply as an awareness of being a live being in the world.)  The problem with most approaches to the problem, he explains, is that people fall back to some explanation of materialism, psychophysical identification, or reductionism.  This means that people, essentially, explain the connection (differences or identity) between mind and body by resorting to an idea that all that is can be reduced to matter (hence, all that is real is material, so mind must be brain, and brain belongs to the body considered in full), which is a type of reductionism (an attempt to explain something complex by reducing it down to something deemed simple, fundamental), or by otherwise identifying (making the same) the psychical (mind) and physical (body).  Most of these attempts rely upon science, but often do not use very good science or a good, true scientific method.

Nagel then claims that conscious experience is a widespread phenomena—many forms of animal life have it, although we may doubt if the simplest organisms do.  “But no matter how the form may vary, the fact that an organism has conscious experience at all means, basically, that there is something it is like to be that organism” (436).  This is critical to Nagel’s argument and essay as a whole: consciousness designates what it is like to be the thing conscious—he then calls this the “subjective character of experience,” or, we could say, the “my own” or “ownness” of experience. 

This subjective character of experience, he argues, cannot be accounted for by any reductionist theory, by any that speaks of functions (what it is a thing does—because robots do what they are programmed to do, but they do not experience as humans do), nor can it be explained as some X causes Y experiences in human behavior.  (Sure, conscious mental states can cause behavior, and we can ascribe to them functions, but analyzing causation and functions will not illuminate consciousness).  Finally, physicalism cannot account for this either, for while reducing everything down to physical explanation, all phenomenological features must be converted to something physical (e.g., love is a bio-chemical reaction in your brain).

Nagel explicates this further by differentiating the subjective (pour-soi, the for-itself, consciousness) and objective (en-soi, in-itself, the simple, mere “are,” passive, inert) by speaking about bats.

Bats, we presume, have experience.  They, too, are mammals, but their activity and sensory capacities are so very alien from our own.  To say they have experience is to say that there is something that it is like to be a bat (438).

Bats use echolocation, sonar, to perceive the external world.  This echolocation information is processed by their brains so as to tell them precisely about things like distance, size, shape, and motion—that information that we primarily receive and determine through vision.  “But bat sonar, though clearly a form of perception, is not similar in its operation to any sense that we possess, and there is no reason to suppose that it is subjectively like anything we can experience or imagine” (438).  If we humans cannot experience or imagine what bat sonar is like—in the way I can imagine what it would be like to be a human who lived fifty years ago, etc.—how can we experience or imagine what it would be like to be a bat? 

Remark on imagination: “Our own experience provides the basic material for our imagination, whose range is therefore limited” (439).

Even if I use this limited imagination—imagine flying, hanging upside down, catching bugs in my mouth, having wings, etc.—this only tells me what it would be like for ME to BEHAVE as a bat.  What we truly want to know is what is it like TO BE a bat?

Even if we changed how we look and how we behave, so as to imitate the external appearances of bats, we would still not change the fundamental structure of being human, and thereby not be able to know any better how it is to be a bat.  Even if one could metamorphose into a bat, one would not know what it was like until that happened.

We cannot extrapolate what it is like to be a bat from our own case.  While one can suspect various types of experiences given a bat’s physicality and behavior, deduce other types of conscious sensations like fear, hunger, lust, etc., imagine that there are more features unknown, etc., but we believe each of these types of experiences to have a very specific subjective character beyond our ability to conceive (439).

Nagel then notes the extremes—if we cannot know what it is like to be a bat, how could we even possibly conceive what it might be like to be a form of extra-terrestrial life, and, on the other hand, even amongst humans, not being deaf and blind myself, how could I know what it feels like to be such (440)?

Just because we are unable to conceive of what it is like to be something other than what we are, this does not mean that we could claim others to have any less rich or full or meaningful subjective experiences.

“My realism about the subjective domain in all its forms implies a belief in the existence of facts beyond the reach of human concepts” (441). 

1. Remember—Descartes was an idealist (as are all of you who believe those trees that fall when no one is around make no sound), hence, all meaning is dependent upon the “I” cooperatively perceiving it.  So, Nagel is the opposite (tress fall, no one there, still sound), hence, there is meaning that is independent of the “I.”  Further, he is saying that his realism is positing the subjective domains as that which is so independent of the “I,” that this points to there being truths inaccessible to humans.
   

2. [Phenomenon: that which appears; Noumena: that which doesn’t appear, hence cannot be known.]
   

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This claim leads Nagel to a claim about the limits of language: “Reflection on what it is like to be a bat seems to lead us, therefore, to the conclusion that there are facts that do not consist in the truth of propositions expressible in a human language.  We can be compelled to recognize the existence of such facts without being able to state or comprehend them” (441).

Nagel returns to the mind-body problem, insisting that this is not making a claim about the privacy of experience by its possessor—that is, each person’s subjective experience is personal, private, unknowable.  Instead, Nagel is talking about types—what we can think of as per species or, better, ‘like kinds’ (441).  We CAN, of course, adopt another person’s point of view, look at the world through his or her eyes … but, we can only do this where there is a basis of similarity between us (442).  Given this fact that we can adopt similar kinds’ points of views shows how baffling a physicalist argument about the mind-body problem truly is—that is, cut up bat brains all you like … that knowledge will not ever let you be able to ‘see the world through its eyes.’  Physiology can tell you that it is sonar, how it works, but not how it feels to be a creature who is a creature with sonar.

Nagel continues his complaint about physicalism by speaking of what objective natures of things might be (e.g., electrical properties of lightning, etc.), and then clinches the complaint that if one reduces all experience to the physical, one entirely removes the subjective dimension of points of view.  That is, we cannot strip away the “subjective,” away “appearance,” in trying to move to the “objective,” to “reality,” and still have anything about experience left  (443-4).

For example, by saying that sound is a wave is to move to another viewpoint and leave the human one behind.  Talking about waves, then, says nothing at all about the subjective human experience of sound (445).  Nagel then says that we cannot simply say physicalism is false, just that it is a position that we cannot currently conceive to be true (446).

Nagel continues this idea’s path to discuss how “is” can confuse us … for example, when science tells us that “all matter is really energy”—we understand the formula that X is Y, but we really don’t form a true concept of what it means for X to be Y. 

While Nagel doesn’t propose this, consider this idea to be a descriptive statement about so much of our education—we learn ‘facts’ without actually coming to know anything!

In regards to physicalism, Nagel is saying, that perhaps there is a truth therein … but, we only knw a few hints about it, and do not yet actually know if or how it could be true (he illustrates this through the analogy of seeing a caterpillar and then a butterfly, but not knowing if and how the one is the other or not) (448).

Likewise: “Does it make any sense, in other words, to ask what my experiences are really like, as opposed to how they appear to me?”  (Note: this is a very idealist question—proposing that the meaning of experience is dependent upon the ‘I,’ even as Nagel is maintaining his realism.)

Nagel then moves to close with a “speculative proposal” (449):

He wants us to form an objective phenomenology that is not dependent on empathy or the imagination so as to describe the subjective character of experience in such a way so that it could be understood by beings incapable of those experiences.  Right now, we cannot describe subjectivity without relying on the imagination.  So, we need new concepts by which to describe it.

“loose intermodal analogies,” like “red is like the sound of a trumpet” are of little use, he says, relying on us to just consider red and trumpet to agree.  But, he gives us two leads:

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2. 1) if we can deduce the structural features of perception, these might lend themselves to objective description—even if they still leave something out;
   

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4. 2) and, considering what we learn not in the first person, hence concepts we do not personally deduce or experience, may help (449).