22

"What Is It Like to Be a Bat?"

Thomas Nagel

Philosophy is ... infected by a broader tendency of contemporary intellectual

life; scientism. Scientism is actually a special form of idealism, for it puts one
type of human understanding in charge of the universe and what can be said
about it. At its most myopic it assumes that everything there is must be
understandable by the employment of scientific theories like those we have
developed to datephysics and evolutionary biology are the current
paradigmsas if the present age were not just one in the series.Thomas
Nagel (1986)

My intuitions about what "cannot be adequately understood" and what is

"patently real" do not match Nagel's. Our tastes are very different. Nagel, for
instance, is oppressed by the desire to develop an evolutionary explanation of
the human intellect; I am exhilarated by the prospect. My sense that
philosophy is allied with, and indeed continuous with, the physical sciences
grounds both my modesty about philosophical method and my optimism about
philosophical progress. To Nagel, this is mere scientism.Daniel Dennett
(1984)

Thomas Nagel is a professor of philosophy and law at New York University. He has written
extensively on topics in ethics and the philosophy of mind. His book The View from Nowhere (1986), this
reading, and Reading 32 (also by Nagel) have been the focus of much discussion in the philosophy of
mind. Although this reading differs from Reading 32 in topic, they both (like Colin McGinn in Reading 26)
emphasize the limitations of anything like our current concepts and theories for understanding human
consciousness-In this reading Nagel will argue that there is something very fundamental about the
human mind and minds in general which scientifically inspired philosophy of mind inevitably and perhaps
wilfully ignores. He uses various words for That something"consciousness," "subjectivity," "point of
view," and "what it is like to be (this sort of subject)." The last expression is in the title of his paper and
seems to fit his argument most precisely- It refers to what most people have in mind when they line up
in amusement parks to get on wild and scary roller-coaster rides. Unless they're anthropologists or
reporters at work, they aren't trying to learn anything. Nor are they trying to accomplish anything
they're paying to let something intense happen to them. They want an experience, a thrill; they want what
it's like to be in that kind of motion. The meanings of the other expressions overlap with the last but
also include other things.
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PART VII CONSCIOUSNESS AND QUALIA

For instance, "conscious(ness)" can signify simple perception or attention ("She became
conscious of a noise In the room"), awareness in general ("He regained consciousness"),
and self-awareness or voluntariness ("Did you do it consciously?"). "Point of view" has a
more cognitive overtone. We think of points of view as shaped by values, beliefs,
education, and other social and psychological factors. These factors may possibly play a
role in what it's like to be on a roller-coaster, but they have little bearing on what we mean
when we say a blind person doesn't know what it's like to see, and when we wonder what
it's like to be a bat. "Subjectivity" is fairly close in meaning, but it can also signify
something you can and should avoida stance that gets in the way of objectivity and
fairness; yet you can't stop being a human subject with a human type of subjectivity.
You're stuck with the experience of what it's like to be a human being.
Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem
really intractable. Perhaps that is why current discussions suited for what is familiar and well understood, though
of the problem give it little attention or get it obviously entirely different. This has led to the acceptance of
wrong. The recent wave of reductionist euphoria has implausible accounts of the mental largely because they
produced several analyses of mental phenomena and would permit familiar kinds of reduction. 1 shall try to
mental concepts designed to explain the possibility of explain why the usual examples do not help us to
some variety of materialism, psychophysical understand the relation between the mind and body
identification, or reduction.1 But the problems dealt with why, indeed, we have at present no conception of what
arc those common to this type of reduction and other an explanation of the physical nature of a mental
types, and what makes the mind-body problem unique, phenomenon would be. Without consciousness the
and unlike the water-H20 problem or the Turing machine- mind-body problem would be much less interesting.
IBM machine problem or the lightning-electrical With consciousness it seems hopeless. The most
discharge problem or the gene-DNA problem or the oak important and characteristic feature of conscious mental
tree-hydrocarbon problem, is ignored.2 phenomena is very poorly understood. Most reductionist
Every reductionist has his favorite analogy from theories do not even try to explain it. And careful
modern science. It is most unlikely that any of these examination will show that no currently available
unrelated examples of successful reduction will shed concept of reduction is applicable to it. Perhaps a new
light on the relation of mind to brain. But philosophers theoretical form can be devised for the purpose, but such
share the general human weakness for explanations of a solution, if it exists, lies in the distant intellectual
what is incomprehensible in terms future.
Conscious experience is a widespread phenomenon.
Reprinted from The Philosophical Review 83 (1974); 435-50. 0 It occurs at many levels of animal life, though we cannot
1974 Cornell University. Reprinted by permission. be sure of its presence in the simpler organisms, and it is
1
Examples are J.J. C. Smart, Philosophy and Scientific
very difficult to say in general what provides evidence
Realism (London, 1963); David K. Lewis, "An Argument for the
of it. (Some extremists have been prepared to deny it
Identity Theory." Journal of Philosophy LXIll (1966 reprinted with
even of mammals other than man.)3 No doubt it occurs
addenda in David M. Rosenthal. Materialism & the Mind-Body
in countless forms
Problem (Englewood Cliffs. N. J., 1971);
Hilary Putnam, "Psychological Predicates," in Capitan and
3
Merril An, Mind, & Religion (Pittsburgh. 1967). reprinted in Tissues, organs,. and organ systems of a multicellular
Rosenthal, op. cit., as "The Nature of Mental States"; D. M. organism are successively higher Ievels of functional organization
Armstrong, A Materialist Theory of (Ac Mind (London, 1968); D, among cells. The various organ systems consist of large
C, Dennett, Content and Consciousness (London, 1969). I have populations of cells that have evolved to specialize in one or
expressed earlier doubts in "Armstrong on the Mind." other of the vital functions carried out by unicellular organisms as
Philosophical Review LXXIX (1970). 394-403; "Brain Bisection they maintain and replicate themselves. For instance, the
and [he Unity of Consciousness," Synthese 22 (1971); and a digestive system specializes in what a bacterium does when IT
review of Dennett. Journal of Philosophy LXIX (1972). See also selectively permits various molecules to cross its membrane
Saul Kripke, "Naming and Necessity" in Davidson and Harman, and uses them as reactants in metabolic processes. Similarly,
Semantics of Natural Language (Dordrecht, 1972), esp. pp. 334 - the central nervous system specializes in generically the lame
342: and M. T. Thomson, "Ostensive Terms and Materialism," adaptive control function exercised by bacterial DNA as it
The Monist 56 (1972). regulates the cell's metabolic activity- There is a fairly
i
This list contains two very different types of relations: (3) Of smooth progression of" nervous systems from the very
the macro-perceptible to the micro-imperceptible (water, lightning, primitive BO them great complexity or the mammalian and
oak) and (2) of function to embodiment (Turing machine and human systems Unless we take
gene). ED.
 READING 22 "WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE A BAT?" 323
totally unimaginable to us, on other planets in other solar
systems throughout the universe. But no matter how the ter of experience is, we cannot know what is required of
form may vary, the fact that an organism has conscious a physicalist theory.
experience at all means, basically, that there is While an account of the physical basis of mind must
something it is like to be that organism. There may be explain many things, this appears to be the most
further implications about the form of the experience; difficult. It is impossible to exclude the
there may even (though I doubt it) be implications about phenomenological7 features of experience from a re-
the behavior of the organism. But fundamentally an duction in the same way that one excludes the phe-
organism has conscious mental states if and only if there nomenal features of an ordinary substance from a
is something chat it is like to be that organism physical or chemical reduction of itnamely, by
something it is like for the organism. explaining them as effects on the minds8 of human
We may call this the subjective character of ex- observers.9 If physicalism is to be defended, the
perience. It is not captured by any of the familiar. phenomenological features must themselves be given a
recently devised reductive analyses of the mental, for all physical account.10 But when we examine their
of them are logically compatible with its absence. It is
4
subjective character it seems that such a result is
not analyzable in terms of any explanatory system of impossible. The reason is that every subjective
functional states, or intentional states, since these could phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point
be ascribed to robots or automata that behaved like of view, and it seems inevitable that an objective,
people though they experienced nothing-5 It is not physical theory will abandon that point of view.
analyzable in terms of Ac causal role of experiences in Let me first try to state the issue somewhat more
relation to typical human behaviorfor similar reasons.6 fully than by referring to the relation between the
I do not deny that conscious mental states and events subjective and the objective, or between the pour-soi
cause behavior, nor that they may be given functional and the en-soi.11 This is far from easy. Facts about what
characterizations. I deny only that this kind of thing it is like to be an X are very peculiar, so peculiar that
exhausts their analysis. Any reductionist program has to some may be inclined to doubt their reality, or the
be based on an analysis of what is to be reduced. If the significance of claims about them. To illustrate the
analysis leaves something out, the problem will be connection between subjectivity and a point of view,
falsely posed- It is useless to base the defense of and to make evident the importance of subjective
materialism on any analysis of mental phenomena that features, it will help to explore the matter in relation to
fails to deal explicitly with their subjective character. For an example that brings out dearly the divergence
there is no reason to suppose that a reduction which between the two types of conception, subjective and
seems plausible when no attempt is made to account for objective,
consciousness can be extended to include consciousness. I assume we all believe that bats have experience.
Without some idea, therefore, of what the subjective After all, they are mammals, and there is no more doubt
charac- that they have experience than that

the radical step of denying "consciousness" or the what-it-is-like-to-be 7

"Phenomenological" signifies in this context the way that an object
dimension to nonhuman mammals (or mammals without language), we
appears. is experienced or perceived; the way something is for a
may be looking down a smoothly graded slope that levels off with
conscious
unicellular organisms. Ed.
4 subject. ED.
For instance, the descriptions of Campbells's Imitation Man in 8
As an example of such an explanation see Smart's discussion of
Reading 23 omits this feature. ED.
5 Lightning in his reply to objection one in Reading 6, ED,
Perhaps there could not actually be such robots. Perhaps anything 9
Cf. Richard Rorty. "Mind-Body Identity Privacy, and Categories,"
complex enough to behave like a person would have experiences. But
The Review of Metaphysics XIX (1965). esp. 37-38.
that, if true. is a fact which cannot be discovered merely by analyzing 10
We can separate the yellowness of the flash of lightning from the
the concept of experience.
6 physical science description of lightning by calling it a mere
It is not equivalent 10 that about which we are incorrigible, both
appearance, an effect in the mind- But this 11 only 10 postpone an
because we arc not incorrigible about experience and because
accounting, in physical terms, of the appearance as such. The
experience is present in animals lacking language and thought, who
materialist account of the mind mult nuke such features as the
have no beliefs at all about their experiences.
yellowness intelligible. ED.
11
These two French expressions translate as "for itself" and "in
itself respectively. A subject. is for itself because it is present to itself
and is that to which objects are present, whereas an object is there for
the subject and not for itself It is the in itself. ED.
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PART VII CONSCIOUSNESS AND QUALIA
mice or pigeons or whales have experience. I have
chosen bats instead of wasps or flounders because if one the day hanging upside down by one's feet in an attic. In
travels too far down the phylogenetic tree, people so far as I can imagine this (which is not very far), it
gradually shed their faith that there is experience there at tells me only what it would be like for me to behave as a
all. Bats, although more closely related to us than those bat behaves. But that is not the question. I want to know
other species, nevertheless present a range of activity what it is like for a bat to be a bat. Yet if I try to imagine
and a sensory apparatus so different from ours that the this, I am restricted to the resources of my own mind,
problem I want to pose is exceptionally vivid (though it and those resources are inadequate to the task. I cannot
certainly could be raised with other species). Even perform it either by imagining additions to my present
without the benefit of philosophical reflection, anyone experience, or by imagining segments gradually
who has spent some time in an enclosed space with an subtracted from it, or by imagining some combination of
excited bat knows what it is to encounter a additions, subtractions, and modifications.
fundamentally alien form of life. To the extent chat I could look and behave like a
I have said that the essence of the belief that bats wasp or a bat without changing my fundamental
have experience is that there is something that it is like .structure, my experiences would not be anything like
to be a bat- Now we know that most bats (the the experiences of those animals. On the other hand, it
microchiroptera, to be precise) perceive the external is doubtful that any meaning can be attached to the
world primarily by sonar, or echolocation, detecting the supposition that I should possess the internal
reflections, from objects within range, of their own neurophysiological constitution of a bat. Even if I could
rapid, subtly modulated, high-frequency shrieks. Their by gradual degrees be transformed into a bat, nothing in
brains are designed to correlate the outgoing impulses my present constitution enables me to imagine what the
with the subsequent echoes, and the information thus experiences of such a future stage of myself thus
acquired enables bats to make precise discriminations metamorphosed would be like. The best evidence would
of distance, size, shape, motion, and texture comparable come from the experiences of bats, if we only knew
to those we make by vision. But bat sonar, though what they were like.
clearly a form of perception, is not similar in its op- So if extrapolation from our own case is involved in
eration to any sense that we possess, and there is no the idea of what it is like to be a bat, the extrapolation
reason to suppose that it is subjectively like anything must be incompletable. We cannot form more than a
we can experience or imagine. This appears to create schematic conception of what is is like. For example,
difficulties for the notion of what it is like to be a bat- we may ascribe general types of experience on the basis
We must consider whether any method will permit us to of the animal's structure and behavior. Thus we describe
extrapolate to the inner life of the bat from our own bat sonar as a form of three-dimensional forward
case,12 and if not, what alternative methods there may perception; we believe that bats feel some versions of
be for understanding the notion. pain, fear, hunger, and lust, and that they have other,
Our own experience provides the basic material more familiar types of perception besides sonar. But we
for our imagination, whose range is therefore limited. It believe that these experiences also have in each case a
will not help to try to imagine that one has webbing on specific subjective character, which it is beyond our
one's arms, which enables one to fly around at dusk and ability to conceive. And if there is conscious life
dawn catching insects in one's mouth; that one has very elsewhere in the universe, it is likely that some of it will
poor vision, and perceives the surrounding world by a not be describable even in the most general experiential
system of reflected high-frequency sound signals; and terms available to us.13 (The problem is not confined to
that one spends exotic cases, however, for it exists between one person
and another. The subjective
12
By "our own case" I do not mean just "my own case," but
13
rather the mentalistic ideas that we apply unproblematically to Therefore the analogical form of the English expression "what it
ourselves and other human beings. is like" is misleading. It doc* not mean "what (in our experience) it
resembles," but rather "how it is for the subject himself."
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READING 22 "WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE A BAT?"
character of the experience of a person deaf and blind
from birth is not accessible to me, for example, nor tence of facts beyond the reach of human concepts.
presumably is mine to him. This does not prevent us Certainly it is possible for a human being to believe that
each from believing that the other's experience has such there are facts which humans never will possess the
a subjective character.) requisite concepts to represent or comprehend. Indeed, it
If anyone is inclined to deny that we can believe in would be foolish to doubt this, given the finiteness of
the existence of facts like this whose exact nature we humanity's expectations. After all, there would have been
cannot possibly conceive, he should reflect that in transfinite numbers even if everyone had been wiped out
contemplating the bats we arc in much the same position by the Black Death before Cantor discovered them. But
that intelligent bats or Martians14 would occupy if they one might also believe that there are facts which could
tried to form a conception of what it was like to be us. not ever be represented or comprehended by human
The structure of their own minds might make it beings, even if the species lasted foreversimply
impossible for them to succeed, but we know they would because our structure does not permit us to operate with
be wrong to conclude that there is not anything precise concepts of the requisite type. This impossibility might
that it is like to be us: that only certain general types of even be observed by other beings, but it is not clear that
mental state could be ascribed to us (perhaps perception the existence of such beings, or the possibility of their
and appetite would be concepts common to us both; existence, is a precondition of the significance of the
perhaps not). We know they would be wrong to draw hypothesis that there are humanly inaccessible facts.
such a skeptical conclusion because we know what it is (After all, the nature of beings with access to humanly
like Co be us. And we know that while it includes an inaccessible facts is presumably itself a humanly
enormous amount of variation and complexity, and inaccessible fact.) Reflection on what it is like to be a bat
while we do not possess the vocabulary to describe it seems to lead us, therefore, to the conclusion that there
adequately, its subjective character is highly specific, are facts that do not consist in the truth of propositions
and in some respects describable in terms that can be expressible in a human language. We can be compelled
understood only by creatures like us. The fact that we to recognize the existence of such facts without being
cannot expect ever to accommodate in our language a able to state or comprehend them.
detailed description of Martian or bat phenomenology15 I shall not pursue this subject, however. Its bearing
should not lead us to dismiss as meaningless the claim on the topic before us (namely, the mind-body problem)
that bats and Martians have experiences fully is that it enables us to make a general observation about
comparable in richness of detail to our own- It would be the subjective character of experience. Whatever may be
fine if someone were to develop concepts and a theory the status of facts about what it is like to be a human
that enabled us to think about those things; but such an being, or a bat, or a Martian, these appear to be facts that
understanding may be permanently denied to us by the embody a particular point of view.
limits of our nature- And to deny the reality or logical I am not adverting here to the alleged privacy of
significance of what we can never describe or experience to its possessor. The point of view in question
understand is the crudest form of cognitive dissonance. is not one accessible only to a single individual. Rather it
This brings us to the edge of a topic that requires much is a type. It is often possible to take up a point of view
more discussion than I can give it here: other than one's own, so the comprehension of such facts
namely, the relation between facts on the one hand and is not limited to one's own case. There is a sense in
conceptual schemes or systems of representation on the which phenomenological facts are perfectly objective:
other. My realism about the subjective domain in all its one person can know or say of another what the quality
forms implies a belief in the exis- of the other's experience is. They are subjective,
14
however, in the sense that even this objective ascription
Any intelligent extraterrestrial beings totally different from us.
15
of experience is possible only for someone sufficiently
The term "phenomenology" 11 used both for the study or analysis
similar to the object of ascription to be able to adopt his
of objects as they appear to a subject and also for the content of
experience. ED.
point of viewto understand the ascription in
 326
PART VII CONSCIOUSNESS AND QUALIA
the first person as well as in the third, so to speak. The
more different from oneself the other experiencer is, the the place these things occupy in our phenomenal world.
less success one can expect with this enterprise. In our The objective nature of the things picked out by these
own case we occupy the relevant point of view, but we concepts could be apprehended by him because,
will have as much difficulty understanding our own although the concepts themselves are connected with a
experience properly if we approach it from another point particular point of view and a particular visual
of view as we would if we tried to understand the phenomenology, the things apprehended from that point
experience of another species without taking up its point of view are not: they are observable from the point of
of view.16 view but external to it; hence they can be comprehended
This bears directly on the mind-body problem. For from other points of view also, either by the same
if the facts of experiencefacts about what it is like for organisms or by others. Lightning has an objective
the experiencing organismare accessible only from character that is not exhausted by its visual appearance,
one point of view, then it is a mystery how the true and this can be investigated by a Martian without vision.
character of experiences could be revealed in the To be precise, it has a more objective character than is
physical operation of that organism. The latter is a revealed in its visual appearance. In speaking of the
domain of objective facts par excellencethe kind that move from subjective to objective characterization, I
can be observed and understood from many points of wish to remain noncommittal about the existence of an
view and by individuals with differing perceptual end point, the completely objective intrinsic nature of
systems.17 There are no comparable imaginative the thing, which one might or might not be able to
obstacles Co the acquisition of knowledge about bat reach. It may be more accurate to think of objectivity as
neurophysiology by human scientists, and intelligent a direction in which the understanding can travel.18 And
bats or Martians might learn more about the human in understanding a phenomenon like lightning, it is
brain than we ever will. legitimate to go as far away as one can from a strictly
This is not by itself an argument against reduction- human viewpoint.19
A Martian scientist with no understanding of visual In the case of experience, on the other hand, the
perception could understand the rainbow, or lightning, connection with a particular point of view seems much
or clouds as physical phenomena, though he would closer. It is difficult to understand what could be meant
never be able to understand the human concepts of by the objective character of an experience, apart from
rainbow, lightning, or cloud, or the particular point of view from which its subject
apprehends it. After all, what would be left of what it
16
It may be easier than I suppose to transcend inter-species was like to be a bat if one removed the viewpoint of the
barriers with the aid of the imagination. For example, blind people bat? But if experience does not have, in addition to its
are able to detect objects near [hem by a form of sonar, using vocal subjective character, an objective nature that can be
clicks or taps of cane. Perhaps it one knew what that was like. one apprehended from many different points of view, then
could by extension imagine roughly what it was like to possess the how can it be supposed that a Martian investigating my
much more refined sonar of a bat. The distance between oneself and brain might be observing physical processes which were
other persons and other species can fall anywhere on a continuum. Even my mental processes (as he might observe physical
tor other persons the understanding of" what it is like to be them is only processes which were bolts of lightning), only from a
partial. and when one moves to species very different from oneself a different point of view? How,
lesser degree of partial understanding may still be available. The
18
imagination is remarkably flexible. My point, however, is not that we The ideal of completely objective understanding is referred to
cannot know what it is like to be a bat I am not raising that in the title of Nagel's 1986 book The View from Nowhere. If a
epistemological problem. My point is rather that even to form a particular point of view if always a view from somewhere, then full
conception of what IE is like to be a bat (and a fortiori to know what it objectivity would be a view without (hat limitation. ED.
19
is like to be a bat) one must take up the bat's point of view. If one can The problem I am going to raise can therefore be posed even if the
take it up roughly, or partially, then one's conception will also be distinction between more subjective and more objective descriptions or
rough or partial. Or so it seems in our present state of viewpoints can itself be made only within a larger human point of view I
undemanding. do not accept this kind of conceptual relativism, but it need not be re-
17
A blind neuroscientist may possess all [he scientific knowledge futed to make the point that plychophysical reduction cannot be
about human vision that any sighted neuroscientist can possess, and accommodated by the subjective-to-objective model familiar from other
much more about it than most sighted people. What escapes reduction cases.
by scientific explanation is what the blind scientist doesn't know
about human vision. Reading 24 addresses this point. Ed.
 327
READING 22 "WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE A BAT?"
for that matter, could a human physiologist observe them
from another point of view?20 real nature of the phenomenon; it takes us farther
We appear to be faced with a general difficulty about away from it.
psychophysical reduction. In other areas the process of In a sense, the seeds of this objection to the
reduction is a move in the direction of greater objectivity, reducibility of experience are already detectable in
toward a more accurate view of the real nature of things. successful cases of reduction; for in discovering sound
This is accomplished by reducing our dependence on to be, in reality, a wave phenomenon in air or other
individual or species-specific points of view toward the media, we leave behind one viewpoint to take up
object of investigation. We describe it not in terms of me another, and the auditory, human or animal viewpoint
impressions it makes on our senses, but in terms of its that we leave behind remains un-reduced. Members of
more general effects and of properties detectable by radically different species may both understand the
means other than the human senses. The less it depends same physical events in objective terms, and this does
on a specifically human viewpoint, the more objective is not require that they understand the phenomenal forms
our description. It is possible to follow this path because in which those events appear to the senses of members
although the concepts and ideas we employ in thinking of the other species. Thus it is a condition of their
about the external world are initially applied from a point referring to a common reality that their more particular
of view that involves our perceptual apparatus, they are viewpoints are not part of the common reality that they
used by us to refer to things beyond themselvestoward both apprehend. The reduction can succeed only if the
which we have the phenomenal point of view. Therefore species-specific viewpoint is omitted from what is to be
we can abandon it in favor of another, and still be reduced.
thinking about the same things.21 But while we are right to leave this point of view
Experience itself, however, does not seem to fit the aside in seeking a fuller understanding of the external
pattern. The idea of moving from appearance to reality world, we cannot ignore it permanently. since it is the
seems to make no sense here. What is the analogue in essence of the internal world, and not merely a point of
this case to pursuing a more objective understanding of view on it. Most of the neo-behaviorism22 of recent
the same phenomena by abandoning the initial subjective philosophical psychology results from the effort to
viewpoint toward them in favor of another that is more substitute an objective concept of mind for the real
objective but concerns the same thing? Certainly it thing, in order to have nothing left over which cannot be
appears unlikely that we will get closer to the real nature reduced. If we acknowledge that a physical theory of
of human experience by leaving behind the particularity mind must account for the subjective character of
of experience, we must admit chat no presently available
)
our human point of view and striving for a description conception gives us a clue how this could be done. The
in terms accessible to beings that could not imagine problem is unique. If mental processes are indeed
what it was like to be us. If the subjective character of physical processes, then there is something it is like,
experience is fully comprehensible only from one point intrinsically,23 to undergo certain physical processes.
of view, then any shift to greater objectivitythat is,
less attachment to a specific viewpointdoes not take 22
The causal theory and its successor, functionalism, can be seen
us nearer to the as developing from behaviorism because all three are third-person
points of view that emphasize the connection between mind and
20 behavior. ED.
The problem is not just that when I look at the "Mona Lisa," my 23
The relation would therefore not be a contingent one, like that of
visual experience has a certain quality, no trace of which is to be found by
a cause and its distinct effect. It would be necessarily true that a
someone looking into my brain. For even if he did observe there a tiny
certain physical state is felt a certain way. Saul Kripke (op. cit.) argues
image of the "Mona Lisa," he would have no reason to identify it with the
that causal behaviorism and related analyses of the mental fail because
experience
21 they construe. e.g.. "pain" as a merely contingent name of pains. The
Nagel is referring here, of course, to the scientific description of the
world exclusively in mathematically analyzable or primary qualities (see subjective character of an experience ("its immediate phenomonological
section 1 of the Introduction, "Descartes and the Scientific Revolution," quality" Kripke calls it [p. 340]) is the essential property left our by
such analyses, and the one in virtue of which it is, necessarily, the
for i discussion of these ideas). ED.
experience it is. My view is closely related to hit. Like Kripke, I find
the hypothesis that a certain brain state should necessarily have a
certain subjective character incomprehensible without further
explanation. No such explanation emerges from
 328
PART VII CONSCIOUSNESS AND QUALIA
What it is for such a thing to be the case remains a
mystery. converge on a single thing, be it an object, a person, a
What moral should be drawn from these reflections, process, an event, or whatever.24 But when the two
and what should be done next? It would be a mistake to terms of the identification are very disparate it may not
conclude that physicalism must be false. Nothing is be so clear how it could be true. We may not have even
proved by the inadequacy of physicalist hypotheses that a rough idea of how the two referential paths could
assume a faulty objective analysis of mind. It would be converge, or what kind of things they might converge
truer to say that physicalism is a position we cannot on, and a theoretical framework may have to be
understand because we do not at present have any supplied to enable us to understand this. Without the
conception of how it might be true. Perhaps it will be framework, an air of mysticism surrounds the
thought unreasonable to require such a conception as a identification.
condition of understanding. After all, it might be said, This explains the magical flavor of popular
the meaning of physicalism is clear enough: mental presentations of fundamental scientific discoveries,
states are states of the body; mental events are physical given out as propositions to which one must subscribe
events. We do not know which physical states and without really understanding them. For example, people
events they are, but that should not prevent us from are now told at an early age that all matter is really
understanding the hypothesis. What could be clearer energy. But despite the fact chat they know what "is"
than the words "is" and "arc"? means, most of them never form a conception of what
But I believe it is precisely this apparent clarity of makes this claim true, because they lack the theoretical
the word "is" that is deceptive. Usually, when we are background.
told that X is Y we know how it is supposed to be true, At the present time the status of physicalism is
but that depends on a conceptual or theoretical similar to that which the hypothesis that matter is
background and is not conveyed by the "is" alone. We energy would have had if uttered by a pre-Socratic
know how both "X" and "Y" refer, and the kinds of philosopher. We do not have the beginnings of a
things to which they refer, and we have a rough idea conception of how it might be true. In order to un-
how the two referential paths might derstand the hypothesis that a mental event is a physical
event, we require more than an understanding of the
theories which view the mind-brain relation as contingent, but perhaps word "is." The idea of how a mental and a physical term
there are other alternatives, not yet discovered. might refer to the same thing is lacking, and the usual
A theory that explained how the mind-brain relation was necessary analogies with theoretical identification in other fields
would still leave us with Kripke's problem of explaining why it fail to supply it. They fail because if we construe the
nevertheless appears contingent. That difficulty seems to me reference of mental terms to physical events on the
surmountable, in the following way. We may imagine something by usual model, we either get a reappearance of separate
representing it to ourselves either perceptually, sympathetically, or subjective events as the effects through which mental
symbolically. I shall not try to say how symbolic imagination works, but reference to physical events is secured, or else we get a
part of what happens in the other two cases is this. To imagine false account of how mental terms refer (for example, a
something perceptually, we put ourselves in a conscious state causal behaviorist one).25
resembling the thing itself. (This method can be used only to imagine
24
mental events and statesour own or another's.) When we try to The morning star is the evening star" is a good example here.
imagine a mental state occurring without its associated brain state, we The referents of both expressions are bright objects in their
first sympathetically imagine the occurrence of the mental state: respective skies. The right sort of orbit puts the one where the other is
that is, we put ourselves into a state that resembles it mentally. At the at a later time for a convergence of their "referential paths." Place
same tune. we attempt to perceptually imagine the non-occurrence of discusses this issue in section 4 of Reading 5. ED.
25
the associated physical state, by putting ourselves into another state Suppose, for instance, that you're A neuroscientist who's been
unconnected with the first: one resembling that which we would be in if successful in discovering exactly what goes on where in the brain
we perceived the non-occurrence of the physical state. Where the when a certain kind of painful sensation is felt. You've established a
imagination of physical features is perceptual and the imagination of reliable correlation between the having of that kind of pain and the
mental features is sympathetic, it appears to us that we can imagine occurrence of a specific set of neural events. Unless that set had been
any experience occurring without its associated brain state, and vice correlated with your pain sensation and with reports of that sensation
versa. The relation between them will appear contingent even if it is by other humans, there would have been no reason to single it out over
necessary, because of the independence of the disparate types of any other collection. If you regard the pain sensation as an effect of
imagination. (Solipsism, incidentally, results if one misinterprets the neural events, then it is distinct from them and not identical with
sympathetic imagination as if it worked like perceptual imagination: them. If you argue, with the
it then seems impossible to imagine any experience that is not one's
own.)
 READING 22 "WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE A BAT?" 329
Strangely enough, we may have evidence for the truth of
something we cannot reallv understand. Suppose a what a theory would be like that enabled us to conceive
caterpillar is locked in a sterile safe by someone unfamiliar of it.28
with insect metamorphosis, and weeks later the safe is
Very little work has been done on the basic
reopened, revealing a butterfly. If the person knows that
question (from which mention of the brain can be
the safe has been shut the whole time, he has reason to
entirely omitted) whether any sense can be made of
believe that the butterfly is or was once the caterpillar,
experiences having an objective character at all. Does it
without having any idea in what sense this might be so.
make sense, in other words, to ask what my experiences
(One possibility is that the caterpillar contained a tiny
are really like, as opposed to how they appear to me?
winged parasite that devoured it and grew into
We cannot genuinely understand the hypothesis that
the butterfly.) their nature is captured in a physical description unless
It is conceivable that we are in such a position with
we understand the more fundamental idea that they
regard to physicalism. Donald Davidson has argued that if
have an objective nature (or that objective processes can
mental events have physical causes and effects, they must
have a subjective nature).29
have physical descriptions. 26
I should like to close with a speculative proposal. It
He holds that we have reason to believe this even though
may be possible to approach the gap between subjective
we do notand in fact could nothave a general
and objective from another direction. Setting aside
psychophysical theory.27 His argument applies to
temporarily the relation between the mind and the brain,
intentional mental events, but I think we also have some
we can pursue a more objective understanding of the
reason to believe that sensations are physical processes,
mental in its own right. At present we arc completely
without being in a position to understand how. Davidson's
unequipped to think about the subjective character of
position is that certain physical events have irreducibly
experience without relying on the imaginationwithout
mental properties, and perhaps some view describable in
taking up the point of view of the experiential subject.
this way is correct. But nothing of which we can now
This should be regarded as a challenge to form new
form a conception corresponds to it; nor have we any idea
concepts and devise a new methodan objective phe-
Churchlands in Reading 25, that it is nonessential to the type-identity of nomenology not dependent on empathy or the
pain as a mental event, then Nagel would say that you're omitting from imagination. Though presumably it would not capture
pain the very aspect that makes it a mental event in the first placethe everything, its goal would be to describe, at least in
what-it-is-like-to-be-in-that-state, the subjectivity. ED. part, the subjective character of experiences in a form
26
Nagel is referring to Davidson's argument in his widely discussed comprehensible to beings incapable of having those
essay "Mental Events" (1970). Davidson claims that mental events came experiences.
physical events, However, for two events 10 be related as cause and We would have to develop such a phenomenology
effect. the first must be a type of event that is related to the second by a to describe me sonar experiences of bats; but it would
scientific law. He further argues that there cannot be lawlike connections also be possible to begin with humans. One might try,
between physical events and mental events involving propositional for example, to develop concepts that could be used to
attitudes; for instance, there cannot be a strict correlation between a explain to a person blind from birth what it was like to
certain type of brain event and the belief that the economy is improving. see. One would reach a blank wall eventually, but it
Exactly which belief a person has can never be inferred from the should be possible to devise a method of expressing in
isolated fact that she is in a certain brain state. The specification of objective terms much more than we can at present, and
beliefs requires a much broader, social context. Since there cannot be with much
psychophysical correlations, there cannot be type-identities between
mental and physical events. The former are irreducible. Nevertheless,
28
Similar remarks apply to my paper " Physicalism,"
since mental events do cause physical events, there must be a token
Philosophical Review LXX1V (1965), 339-356. reprinted with
identity between any particular mental event and some physical event
postscript in John O'Connor. Modern Materialism (New York,
since only physical events can be causes since only they can be lawfully
1969).
correlated with physical events. Thus, Davidson is a materialist who
29
This question also lies at the heart of the problem of other
maintains that mental events are physical events with some property
that is irreducibly mental and cannot be incorporated into scientific laws. minds, whose close connection with the mind-body problem is often

The mental is a lawless or anomalous domain. For this reason, his overlooked- If one understood how subjective experience could have
an objective nature, one would understand the existence of subjects
position is known as "anomalous monism." ED.
27
See "Mental Events" in Forster and Swanson, Experience and other than oneself.

Theory (Amherst, 1970); though I don't understand the argument

against psychophysical laws.
 330
PART Vll CONSCIOUSNESS AND QUALIA
greater precision. The loose intermodal analogies for
example, "Red is like the sound of a trumpet"which
crop up in discussions of this subject are of little use. more intelligible form. Aspects of subjective
That should be clear to anyone who has both heard a experience that admitted this kind of objective
trumpet and seen red. But structural features of description might be better candidates for objective
perception might be more accessible to objective explanations of a more familiar sort. But whether or
description, even though something would be left out. not this guess is correct, it seems unlikely that any
And concepts alternative to those we learn in the first physical theory of mind can be contemplated until
person may enable us to arrive at a kind of more thought has been given to the general problem
understanding even of our own experience which is of subjective and objective. Otherwise we cannot
denied us by the very ease of description and lack of even pose the mind-body problem without
distance that subjective concepts afford. sidestepping it.31
Apart from its own interest, a phenomenology
that is in [his sense objective may permit questions nothing to prevent mental phenomena from eventually being
about the physical30 basis of experience to assume a recognized as physical ill their own right. But whatever else may be
said of the physical, it has to be objective. So if our idea of the
30
I have not defined the term "physical." Obviously it does not physical ever expands to include mental phenomena, it will have to
apply just to what can be described by the concept of contemporary assign them an objective character whether or not this is done by
physics, since we expect further developments. Some may think there analyzing them in terms of other phenomena already regarded as
is physical. It seems to me more likely, however, that mental-physical
relations will eventually be expressed in a theory whose
fundamental terms cannot be placed clearly in either category.
31
I have read versions of this paper to a number of audiences, and
am indebted to many people for their comments.

Nagel's "speculative proposal" in the last three paragraphs of his paper is difficult to
understand. He asks us to contemplate the possibility of an account of the subjective that
would be objective and about "the mental in its own right" rather than trying to understand
the mental in terms of the physical. This account would have as its goal to "develop
concepts that could be used to explain to a person blind from birth what it was like to see"
and presumably help us non-bats get a conceptual access to what it is like to be a bat. He
admits that we would eventually "reach a blank wall." However, if we are talking simply about
the sensuous differentiation of one kind of subjectivity from another, bats from those
without a sonar modality, sighted humans from ones that are blind at birth, it's hard to see
how the blank wall isn't there from the start and forever. What blocks access to these
alternate subjectivities is not that the differentiation can't be expressed in neurochemicai or
other physical terms, but that it can't be expressed at all. A materialist might say the
following to Nagel: "Look, I don't deny that there are sensuous ingredients in our
experience, and that they are ineffable or even unintelligible, I'm not claiming that
experience includes only what is scientifically intelligible. All I'm saying Is that what is
intelligible about the mental and the world in general is what can be understood
scientifically."
An anti-materialist (not necessarily a duatist, just a philosopher dissatisfied with the
status quo in philosophy of mind) might make the following complaint to Nagel: "You
reduce subjectivity to a single aspect (the what-it-is-like) that you contrast with the
objective; and that aspect is one that makes subjectivities Incommensurable with one another
insofar as they are based on qualitatively different sensuous content. But subjectivity is
really much more complex, including not only the ineffably sensuous, but also psychosocial
determinants such as culture and language, and Intentionalitythe presence of an object
to a subject, of an external world within a self. Intentionality is not an appearance of
something else, it's not a what-it-is-like sort of thing, but rather the structure of what I am as
a conscious being, and what any nonhuman consciousness would be. By focusing so
heavily on the sensuously ineffable, you've made yourself an easy target for hylophiles
who want to call you a "New Mysterian."
 READING 22 "WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE A BAT?" 331

REVIEW QUESTION

Here is a short, and inconclusive exchange between two charactersa materialist and a
dualise (M and D), talking about qualia (aspects of the world as it appears to a being with
my sort of sensory receptors and brain);
D: You don't deny, do you, that appearances occur, and that among these appear-
ances are qualia?
M: Of course not. How could I?
D: And these are not part of the public, measurable world of physical science. M:
Correct.
D: Then, since appearances do occur and they don't belong to the world as described by
physical science, there must be more to reality than what is physical. And that "more" is
the mind, in which appearances occur. M: Not so. From the fact chat the sun actually
appears to move across the sky, it does not follow that there is some actual domain in
which the sun really moves that way. In general, it does not follow from the fact that
something appears to happen or be in a certain way, that there is some place or part of
reality in which it really occurs.
D: You're missing the point. M: That's
what I was going to say.

Comment on this exchange from Nagel's point of view.