What Is It Like to Be a Bat?

Philosopher least likely to secretly be Batman: Thomas Nagel. "Our own experience provides the basic material for our imagination, whose range is therefore limited. It will not help to try to imagine that one has webbing on one's arms, which enables one to fly around at dusk and dawn catching insects......more

Mit etwa fünf Jahren erfuhr ich, dass ich farbenblind bin. Wir fuhren in unserem VW-Käfer zum Forellenfischen an den damals noch idyllisch unverbauten Inn, vorbei an einer im Sonnenlicht leuchtenden Wiese. Meine Mutter war entzückt und rief: schaut wie schön, die vielen Mohnblumen! Ich schaute aus d......more

Nagel demonstrates in this succinct gedankenexperiment that there are certain types of facts and other things it is impossible for humans to ever know. He uses the experience of being a bat to illustrate his argument - essentially: to know what it is like to be a bat, you have to be a bat. He goes on......more

Possibly the most famous 20th-century essay on Philosophy of mind If you're a neuroscientist, you are sure to be told by some of your colleagues that "consciousness [always spoken in a tone of awe] is the most important problem in neuroscience". Or perhaps "the only important problem". If you hear a......more

Empathy and What It's Like to Be a Bat You could make a meal of a moth, hang upside down and sleep, flap your arms and try to fly, and close your eyes and navigate by sound; but you will never, never really know what it’s like to be a bat. For starters, even if you were able to choke down a moth and f......more