Thomas Nagel What Is It Like to be a Bat HW Summary PDF

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Zoe Green PHIL1010-01 Thomas Nagel: What Is It Like to Be a Bat? 10/7/19

In Thomas Nagel’s article “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”, Nagel argues that there are certain important facts and ideas about the conscious experience that are purely subjective and can only be known and understood from one’s own subjective perspective. In his article, Nagel uses bats as an example to demonstrate his thinking. Nagel poses the question “what is it like to be a bat?” as an exemplary demonstration to make the audience wonder if you were to be this animal, what would you do? How would you act? How would you feel? The point Nagel is trying to make is that while we are able to ponder this question forever and have a multitude of ideas or assumptions as to how we would be if we were bats, we never actually know what it is like to be a bat because we simply aren’t one. Even if we know all the objective facts about bats, we may not actually know what it would really be like to be a bat because we don’t have that subjective experience of living your everyday life as a bat, just as no one can ever truly know what it is like to be yourself, since only you can truly understand and experience what it is like to live as you. Nagel uses this example to explain his idea that we need a subjective experience in order to truly understand or know something; nothing is purely objective from facts that can’t or don’t need to be experienced. Nagel deepens this argument in saying that if we don’t know what it’s like to be a bat, how do we know anything is for sure if we can’t experience it and if it’s subjective? The overall argument of Nagel’s article is to discuss and wonder how much we can understand about a subjective experience if we don’t actually get to experience it ourselves....