Thomas Nagel

22
"What Is It Like to Be a Bat?"
Thomas Nagel
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ThomasNagelisaprofessorofphilosophyandlawatNewYorkUniversity.Hehaswritten extensivelyontopicsinethicsandthephilosophyofmind.HisbookTheViewfromNowhere(1986),this reading, andReading32(alsoby Nagel)havebeenthefocusofmuchdiscussioninthephilosophyof mind.AlthoughthisreadingdiffersfromReading32intopic,theyboth(likeColinMcGinninReading26) emphasizethelimitationsofanythinglikeourcurrentconceptsandtheoriesforunderstandinghuman consciousness-InthisreadingNagelwillarguethatthereissomethingveryfundamentalaboutthe humanmindandmindsingeneralwhichscientificallyinspiredphilosophyofmindinevitablyandperhaps wilfullyignores.HeusesvariouswordsforThatsomething—"consciousness,""subjectivity,""pointof view,"and"whatitisliketobe(thissortof subject)."Thelastexpressionisinthetitleofhispaperand seemstofithisargumentmostprecisely-Itreferstowhatmostpeoplehaveinmindwhentheylineup inamusementparkstogetonwild andscaryroller-coasterrides.Unlessthey'reanthropologistsor reportersatwork,theyaren'ttryingtolearnanything.Noraretheytryingtoaccomplishanything— they'repayingtoletsomethingintensehappentothem.Theywantanexperience,athrill;theywantwhat it'sliketobeinthatkindofmotion.Themeaningsoftheotherexpressionsoverlapwiththelastbut alsoincludeotherthings.
322 PART VII CONSCIOUSNESSAND QUALIA
For instance, "conscious(ness)" can signify simple perception or attention ("She becamcameondondurscescaecitoliofou-gnasn,woiataifvnraedennoooevthiessesretrooIsnnroetvc.hoiWealulrenoatotnahmdriinn"pk)es,soyasfcwph(a"ooDrilenoidntgseiycosoasfulvifnadiecogwtoeitarncsseo.rsnTahshlac(e"pisoHeeuedsfalrbyecy?gt"ova)ra.isnl"uePmedosaicn,yotbpnoeosfliscevsifoiesibu,wlsy"nphelasassy"a)a,e 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 avoid—a 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 of the problem give it little attention or get it obviously wrong. The recent wave of reductionist euphoria has produced several analyses of mental phenomena and mental concepts designed to explain the possibility of some variety of materialism, psychophysical identification, or reduction.1 But the problems dealt with arc those common to this type of reduction and other types, and what makes the mind-body problem unique, and unlike the water-H20 problem or the Turing machine- IBM machine problem or the lightning-electrical discharge problem or the gene-DNA problem or the oak tree-hydrocarbon problem, is ignored.2
Every reductionist has his favorite analogy from modern science. It is most unlikely that any of these unrelated examples of successful reduction will shed light on the relation of mind to brain. But philosophers share the general human weakness for explanations of what is incomprehensible in terms
Reprinted from The Philosophical Review 83 (1974); 435-50. 0 1974 Cornell University. Reprinted by permission. 1Examples are J.J. C. Smart, Philosophy and Scientific
Realism (London, 1963); David K. Lewis, "An Argument for the
Identity Theory." Journal of Philosophy LXIll (1966 reprinted with
addenda in David M. Rosenthal. Materialism & the Mind-Body
Problem (Englewood Cliffs. N. J., 1971);
Hilary Putnam, "Psychological Predicates," in Capitan and
Merril An, Mind, & Religion (Pittsburgh. 1967). reprinted in
Rosenthal, op. cit., as "The Nature of Mental States"; D. M.
Armstrong, A Materialist Theory of (Ac Mind (London, 1968); D, C, Dennett, Content and Consciousness (London, 1969). I have
expressed earlier doubts in "Armstrong on the Mind."
Philosophical Review LXXIX (1970). 394-403; "Brain Bisection
and [he Unity of Consciousness," Synthese 22 (1971); and a review of Dennett. Journal of Philosophy LXIX (1972). See also
Saul Kripke, "Naming and Necessity" in Davidson and Harman,
Semantics of Natural Language (Dordrecht, 1972), esp. pp. 334 -
342: and M. T. Thomson, "Ostensive Terms and Materialism,"
The Monist 56 (1972). iThis list contains two very different types of relations: (3) Of
the macro-perceptible to the micro-imperceptible (water, lightning,
oak) and (2) of function to embodiment (Turing machine and
gene). ED.
suited for what is familiar and well understood, though entirely different. This has led to the acceptance of implausible accounts of the mental largely because they would permit familiar kinds of reduction. 1 shall try to explain why the usual examples do not help us to understand the relation between the mind and body— why, indeed, we have at present no conception of what an explanation of the physical nature of a mental phenomenon would be. Without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless. The most important and characteristic feature of conscious mental phenomena is very poorly understood. Most reductionist theories do not even try to explain it. And careful examination will show that no currently available concept of reduction is applicable to it. Perhaps a new theoretical form can be devised for the purpose, but such a solution, if it exists, lies in the distant intellectual future. Conscious experience is a widespread phenomenon. It occurs at many levels of animal life, though we cannot be sure of its presence in the simpler organisms, and it is very difficult to say in general what provides evidence of it. (Some extremists have been prepared to deny it even of mammals other than man.)3 No doubt it occurs in countless forms
3Tissues, organs,. and organ systems of a multicellular
organism are successively higher Ievels of functional organization
among cells. The various organ systems consist of large
populations of cells that have evolved to specialize in one or
other of the vital functions carried out by unicellular organisms as
they maintain and replicate themselves. For instance, the
digestive system specializes in what a bacterium does when IT selectively permits various molecules to cross its membrane
and uses them as reactants in metabolic processes. Similarly,
the central nervous system specializes in generically the lame
adaptive control function exercised by bacterial DNA as it
regulates the cell's metabolic activity- There is a fairly
smooth progression of" nervous systems from the very
primitive BO them great complexity or the mammalian and
human systems Unless we take
READING 22 "WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE A BAT?" tsfesfttoispronfbparohhsouueeooyxnrefoeeclteerrngsmmproataatmtertisaclehphtlaeeeeenWyonatilbreslemnioytttzimneimmeochhrmlecsneayhsruniinmeebaainnlianatt.btcymtyydalmhogghvhlieeezrhemoiipIreedvaaitsvonaitouitylvbtytaansirgiaulgpaiserclgotiistegcehyitnoasstiecogcodenh,cltsafiaii(lirnhao,cklntoinrttalmrlhbksahhuoaeeonotlhcetlelhetoslbdtsrttelfiuyeehuoyuootftomiirhtaicgtaocurtnmomsfscebacthoaesttioptbeeouhsAnrxivuomIsmgnateuhseptenucrbnhaot,dteeepiiortnaesalfooovnrhecaiar,tnhtiinnkuesdahtagtseuaaaaiuraueabtmeanbntolvlsbnblostnycboelyti.saajfemhisoesit.yretooslstoetdegar)BcemBiaawrrs—rtractgxmttaebuoiuna.eaibpoapvnsntetlftlsiehlnfeleloyos,aoiaytniimffttrhnmsnfiso,hhoutctmaaeoisa.hfisenphntntitnftmahsdmTltaocedamghithearexbracibht-iaaaynmohetplae5seosctttaentneheeehroetrrixstnrelacroIgeentaypyirttrvohcsnfaetlhheseaaeem,enennsitaoeromfil.dresficis4slrawacsfoecmyteoesiybomhniIrloslnoiteouneitcla—asbakhuoxriauloeiir.lnndeeeesss-rf6;lt.t 323
IccebafmftscWchaaeahxnoheliadeeuhiaanaslttrmobssrlraeseheyaaeaculrtoscscynsoiisiuiaot-eboptsseltdsduetlipreasshintoslozmndauhaeoosanleesveaemtisneiviiodbrarsooxyeeen-lnrnpeacsa,tsnlasiaahIiwd.onnactnsnaenlooihayItybtarmiells,esyyctndaiotesosnehetwit.nhunxnsahasioesAslttyitueoyecrnhnpeanltsifgehooftyiptdtsoswheunoeesrryeoslmsdhoeeyiuear,dftmpmtttouo,stttomeahucihifisnyattbeasnbihttjntotcawaeembotnlslctaauehehiatbldsspaidievttgrsterpeateoeiphthrvdctbketreecheoeuooslidhnenenncuaaomdtdasricrcmcfsenaoaeucuifmdnocodeeonbwtfnun.ucejehiweasstnrIlvtineac.flhtohestteFinthiinfsnbhcvoootaatsgoheeesfrrlt.
the radical step of denying "consciousness" or the what-it-is-like-to-be
dimension to nonhuman mammals (or mammals without language), we
may be looking down a smoothly graded slope that levels off with
unicellular organisms. Ed. Rea4dFinorg 2in3sotamnictes,ththisefedaetsucrriep.tEioDn.s of Campbells's Imitation Man in 5Perhaps there could not actually be such robots. Perhaps anything
complex enough to behave like a person would have experiences. But
that, if true. is a fact which cannot be discovered merely by analyzing
the concept of experience. 6 It is not equivalent 10 that about which we are incorrigible, both
because we arc not incorrigible about experience and because
experience is present in animals lacking language and thought, who
have no beliefs at all about their experiences.
ter of experience is, we cannot know what is required of a physicalist theory. While an account of the physical basis of mind must explain many things, this appears to be the most difficult. It is impossible to exclude the phenomenological7 features of experience from a re- duction in the same way that one excludes the phe- nomenal features of an ordinary substance from a physical or chemical reduction of it—namely, by explaining them as effects on the minds8 of human observers.9 If physicalism is to be defended, the phenomenological features must themselves be given a physical account.10 But when we examine their subjective character it seems that such a result is impossible. The reason is that every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inevitable that an objective, physical theory will abandon that point of view. Let me first try to state the issue somewhat more fully than by referring to the relation between the subjective and the objective, or between the pour-soi and the en-soi.11 This is far from easy. Facts about what it is like to be an X are very peculiar, so peculiar that some may be inclined to doubt their reality, or the significance of claims about them. To illustrate the connection between subjectivity and a point of view, and to make evident the importance of subjective features, it will help to explore the matter in relation to an example that brings out dearly the divergence between the two types of conception, subjective and objective, I assume we all believe that bats have experience. After all, they are mammals, and there is no more doubt that they have experience than that
7 "Phenomenological" signifies in this context the way that an object
appears. is experienced or perceived; the way something is for a
conscious subject. ED. 8As an example of such an explanation see Smart's discussion of
Lightning in his reply to objection one in Reading 6, ED, 9Cf. Richard Rorty. "Mind-Body Identity Privacy, and Categories,"
The Review of Metaphysics XIX (1965). esp. 37-38. 10We can separate the yellowness of the flash of lightning from the
physical science description of lightning by calling it a mere
appearance, an effect in the mind- But this 11 only 10 postpone an
accounting, in physical terms, of the appearance as such. The
materialist account of the mind mult nuke such features as the
yellowness intelligible. ED. 11These 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.
324 PART VII CONSCIOUSNESSAND QUALIA mice or pigeons or whales have experience. I have chosen bats instead of wasps or flounders because if one travels too far down the phylogenetic tree, people gradually shed their faith that there is experience there at all. Bats, although more closely related to us than those other species, nevertheless present a range of activity and a sensory apparatus so different from ours that the problem I want to pose is exceptionally vivid (though it certainly could be raised with other species). Even without the benefit of philosophical reflection, anyone who has spent some time in an enclosed space with an excited bat knows what it is to encounter a fundamentally alien form of life. I have said that the essence of the belief that bats have experience is that there is something that it is like to be a bat- Now we know that most bats (the microchiroptera, to be precise) perceive the external world primarily by sonar, or echolocation, detecting the reflections, from objects within range, of their own rapid, subtly modulated, high-frequency shrieks. Their brains are designed to correlate the outgoing impulses with the subsequent echoes, and the information thus acquired enables bats to make precise discriminations of distance, size, shape, motion, and texture comparable to those we make by vision. But bat sonar, though clearly a form of perception, is not similar in its op- eration to any sense that we possess, and there is no reason to suppose that it is subjectively like anything we can experience or imagine. This appears to create difficulties for the notion of what it is like to be a bat- We must consider whether any method will permit us to extrapolate to the inner life of the bat from our own case,12 and if not, what alternative methods there may be for understanding the notion. 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 in one's mouth; that one has very poor vision, and perceives the surrounding world by a system of reflected high-frequency sound signals; and that one spends
the day hanging upside down by one's feet in an attic. In so far as I can imagine this (which is not very far), it tells me only what it would be like for me to behave as a bat behaves. But that is not the question. I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat. Yet if I try to imagine this, I am restricted to the resources of my own mind, and those resources are inadequate to the task. I cannot perform it either by imagining additions to my present experience, or by imagining segments gradually subtracted from it, or by imagining some combination of additions, subtractions, and modifications. To the extent chat I could look and behave like a wasp or a bat without changing my fundamental .structure, my experiences would not be anything like the experiences of those animals. On the other hand, it is doubtful that any meaning can be attached to the supposition that I should possess the internal neurophysiological constitution of a bat. Even if I could by gradual degrees be transformed into a bat, nothing in my present constitution enables me to imagine what the experiences of such a future stage of myself thus metamorphosed would be like. The best evidence would come from the experiences of bats, if we only knew what they were like. So if extrapolation from our own case is involved in the idea of what it is like to be a bat, the extrapolation must be incompletable. We cannot form more than a schematic conception of what is is like. For example, we may ascribe general types of experience on the basis of the animal's structure and behavior. Thus we describe bat sonar as a form of three-dimensional forward perception; we believe that bats feel some versions of pain, fear, hunger, and lust, and that they have other, more familiar types of perception besides sonar. But we believe that these experiences also have in each case a specific subjective character, which it is beyond our ability to conceive. And if there is conscious life elsewhere in the universe, it is likely that some of it will not be describable even in the most general experiential terms available to us.13 (The problem is not confined to exotic cases, however, for it exists between one person and another. The subjective 12By "our own case" I do not mean just "my own case," but
rather the mentalistic ideas that we apply unproblematically to
ourselves and other human beings.
13Therefore the analogical formof the English expression "what it
is like" is misleading. It doc* not mean "what (in our experience) it
resembles," but rather "how it is for the subject himself."
325 READING 22 "WHATIS IT LIKETOBEA BAT?" character of the experience of a person deaf and blind from birth is not accessible to me, for example, nor presumably is mine to him. This does not prevent us each from believing that the other's experience has such a subjective character.) If anyone is inclined to deny that we can believe in the existence of facts like this whose exact nature we cannot possibly conceive, he should reflect that in contemplating the bats we arc in much the same position that intelligent bats or Martians14 would occupy if they tried to form a conception of what it was like to be us. The structure of their own minds might make it impossible for them to succeed, but we know they would be wrong to conclude that there is not anything precise that it is like to be us: that only certain general types of mental state could be ascribed to us (perhaps perception and appetite would be concepts common to us both; perhaps not). We know they would be wrong to draw such a skeptical conclusion because we know what it is like Co be us. And we know that while it includes an enormous amount of variation and complexity, and while we do not possess the vocabulary to describe it adequately, its subjective character is highly specific, and in some respects describable in terms that can be understood only by creatures like us. The fact that we cannot expect ever to accommodate in our language a detailed description of Martian or bat phenomenology15
should not lead us to dismiss as meaningless the claim that bats and Martians have experiences fully comparable in richness of detail to our own- It would be fine if someone were to develop concepts and a theory that enabled us to think about those things; but such an understanding may be permanently denied to us by the limits of our nature- And to deny the reality or logical significance of what we can never describe or understand is the crudest form of cognitive dissonance. This brings us to the edge of a topic that requires much more discussion than I can give it here: namely, the relation between facts on the one hand and conceptual schemes or systems of representation on the other. My realism about the subjective domain in all its forms implies a belief in the exis-
14Any intelligent extraterrestrial beings totally different from us. 15The term "phenomenology" 11 used both for the study or analysis
of objects as they appear to a subject and also for the content of experience. ED.
tence of facts beyond the reach of human concepts. Certainly it is possible for a human being to believe that there are facts which humans never will possess the requisite concepts to represent or comprehend. Indeed, it would be foolish to doubt this, given the finiteness of humanity's expectations. After all, there would have been transfinite numbers even if everyone had been wiped out by the Black Death before Cantor discovered them. But one might also believe that there are facts which could not ever be represented or comprehended by human beings, even if the species lasted forever—simply because our structure does not permit us to operate with concepts of the requisite type. This impossibility might even be observed by other beings, but it is not clear that the existence of such beings, or the possibility of their existence, is a precondition of the significance of the hypothesis that there are humanly inaccessible facts. (After all, the nature of beings with access to humanly inaccessible facts is presumably itself a humanly inaccessible fact.) 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. I shall not pursue this subject, however. Its bearing on the topic before us (namely, the mind-body problem) is that it enables us to make a general observation about the subjective character of experience. Whatever may be the status of facts about what it is like to be a human being, or a bat, or a Martian, these appear to be facts that embody a particular point of view. I am not adverting here to the alleged privacy of experience to its possessor. The point of view in question is not one accessible only to a single individual. Rather it is a type. It is often possible to take up a point of view other than one's own, so the comprehension of such facts is not limited to one's own case. There is a sense in which phenomenological facts are perfectly objective: one person can know or say of another what the quality of the other's experience is. They are subjective, however, in the sense that even this objective ascription of experience is possible only for someone sufficiently similar to the object of ascription to be able to adopt his point of view—to understand the ascription in
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16It may be easier than I suppose to transcend inter-species
barriers with the aid of the imagination. For example, blind people
are able to detect objects near [hem by a form of sonar, using vocal
clicks or taps of cane. Perhaps it one knew what that was like. one
could by extension imagine roughly what it was like to possess the
much more refined sonar of a bat. The distance between oneself and
other persons and other species can fall anywhere on a continuum. Even
tor other persons the understanding of" what it is like to be them is only
partial. and when one moves to species very different from oneself a
lesser degree of partial understanding may still be available. The
imagination is remarkably flexible. My point, however, is not that we
cannot know what it is like to be a bat I am not raising that
epistemological problem. My point is rather that even to form a
conception of what IE is like to be a bat (and a fortiori to know what it
is like to be a bat) one must take up the bat's point of view. If one can
take it up roughly, or partially, then one's conception will also be
rough or partial. Or so it seems in our present state of
undemanding. 17A blind neuroscientist may possess all [he scientific knowledge
about human vision that any sighted neuroscientist can possess, and
much more about it than most sighted people. What escapes reduction
by scientific explanation is what the blind scientist doesn't know
about human vision. Reading 24 addresses this point. Ed.
the place these things occupy in our phenomenal world. The objective nature of the things picked out by these concepts could be apprehended by him because, although the concepts themselves are connected with a particular point of view and a particular visual phenomenology, the things apprehended from that point of view are not: they are observable from the point of view but external to it; hence they can be comprehended from other points of view also, either by the same organisms or by others. Lightning has an objective character that is not exhausted by its visual appearance, and this can be investigated by a Martian without vision. To be precise, it has a more objective character than is revealed in its visual appearance. In speaking of the move from subjective to objective characterization, I wish to remain noncommittal about the existence of an end point, the completely objective intrinsic nature of the thing, which one might or might not be able to reach. It may be more accurate to think of objectivity as a direction in which the understanding can travel.18 And in understanding a phenomenon like lightning, it is legitimate to go as far away as one can from a strictly human viewpoint.19
In the case of experience, on the other hand, the connection with a particular point of view seems much closer. It is difficult to understand what could be meant by the objective character of an experience, apart from the particular point of view from which its subject apprehends it. After all, what would be left of what it was like to be a bat if one removed the viewpoint of the bat? But if experience does not have, in addition to its subjective character, an objective nature that can be apprehended from many different points of view, then how can it be supposed that a Martian investigating my brain might be observing physical processes which were my mental processes (as he might observe physical processes which were bolts of lightning), only from a different point of view? How,
18The ideal of completely objective understanding is referred to
in the title of Nagel's 1986 book The View from Nowhere. If a
particular point of view if always a view from somewhere, then full
objectivity would be a view without (hat limitation. ED. 19The problem I am going to raise can therefore be posed even if the
distinction between more subjective and more objective descriptions or
viewpoints can itself be made only within a larger human point of view I
do not accept this kind of conceptual relativism, but it need not be refuted
to make the point that plychophysical reduction cannot be
accommodated by the subjective-to-objective model familiar from other
cases.
327 READING 22 "WHATIS IT LIKETO BEA BAT?fforormthaantomthatetrerp,ocionutlodfaviheuwm?a20n physiologist observe them "
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20The problem is not just that when I look at the "Mona Lisa," my
visual experience has a certain quality, no trace of which is to be found by
someone looking into my brain. For even if he did observe there a tiny
image of the "Mona Lisa," he would have no reason to identify it with the
experience
wo21rlNdaegxeclluissirveefelyrriinngmhaetrhee,moaftcicoaulrlsyea,ntoaltyhzeasbcleieonrtipfircimdeasrcyrqiputaiolintieosf(tsheee
section 1 of the Introduction, "Descartes and the Scientific Revolution,"
for i discussion of these ideas). ED.
real nature of the phenomenon; it takes us farther away from it. In a sense, the seeds of this objection to the reducibility of experience are already detectable in successful cases of reduction; for in discovering sound to be, in reality, a wave phenomenon in air or other media, we leave behind one viewpoint to take up another, and the auditory, human or animal viewpoint that we leave behind remains un-reduced. Members of radically different species may both understand the same physical events in objective terms, and this does not require that they understand the phenomenal forms in which those events appear to the senses of members of the other species. Thus it is a condition of their referring to a common reality that their more particular viewpoints are not part of the common reality that they both apprehend. The reduction can succeed only if the species-specific viewpoint is omitted from what is to be reduced. But while we are right to leave this point of view aside in seeking a fuller understanding of the external world, we cannot ignore it permanently. since it is the essence of the internal world, and not merely a point of view on it. Most of the neo-behaviorism22 of recent philosophical psychology results from the effort to substitute an objective concept of mind for the real thing, in order to have nothing left over which cannot be reduced. If we acknowledge that a physical theory of mind must account for the subjective character of experience, we must admit chat no presently available conception gives us a clue how this could be done. The problem is unique. If mental processes are indeed physical processes, then there is something it is like, intrinsically,23 to undergo certain physical processes.
22The causal theory and its successor, functionalism, can be seen
as developing from behaviorism because all three are third-person
points of view that emphasize the connection between mind and
behavior. ED. 23The relation would therefore not be a contingent one, like that of
a cause and its distinct effect. It would be necessarily true that a
certain physical state is felt a certain way. Saul Kripke (op. cit.) argues
that causal behaviorism and related analyses of the mental fail because
they construe. e.g.. "pain" as a merely contingent name of pains. The
subjective character of an experience ("its immediate phenomonological
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
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 CONSCIOUSNESSAND QUALIA What it is for such a thing to be the case remains a mystery. What moral should be drawn from these reflections, and what should be done next? It would be a mistake to conclude that physicalism must be false. Nothing is proved by the inadequacy of physicalist hypotheses that assume a faulty objective analysis of mind. It would be truer to say that physicalism is a position we cannot understand because we do not at present have any conception of how it might be true. Perhaps it will be thought unreasonable to require such a conception as a condition of understanding. After all, it might be said, the meaning of physicalism is clear enough: mental states are states of the body; mental events are physical events. We do not know which physical states and events they are, but that should not prevent us from understanding the hypothesis. What could be clearer than the words "is" and "arc"? But I believe it is precisely this apparent clarity of the word "is" that is deceptive. Usually, when we are told that X is Y we know how it is supposed to be true, but that depends on a conceptual or theoretical background and is not conveyed by the "is" alone. We know how both "X" and "Y" refer, and the kinds of things to which they refer, and we have a rough idea how the two referential paths might
theories which view the mind-brain relation as contingent, but perhaps
there are other alternatives, not yet discovered.
A theory that explained how the mind-brain relation was necessary
would still leave us with Kripke's problem of explaining why it
nevertheless appears contingent. That difficulty seems to me
surmountable, in the following way. We may imagine something by
representing it to ourselves either perceptually, sympathetically, or
symbolically. I shall not try to say how symbolic imagination works, but
part of what happens in the other two cases is this. To imagine
something perceptually, we put ourselves in a conscious state
resembling the thing itself. (This method can be used only to imagine
mental events and states—our own or another's.) When we try to
imagine a mental state occurring without its associated brain state, we
first sympathetically imagine the occurrence of the mental state:
that is, we put ourselves into a state that resembles it mentally. At the
same tune. we attempt to perceptually imagine the non-occurrence of
the associated physical state, by putting ourselves into another state
unconnected with the first: one resembling that which we would be in if
we perceived the non-occurrence of the physical state. Where the
imagination of physical features is perceptual and the imagination of
mental features is sympathetic, it appears to us that we can imagine
any experience occurring without its associated brain state, and vice
versa. The relation between them will appear contingent even if it is
necessary, because of the independence of the disparate types of
imagination. (Solipsism, incidentally, results if one misinterprets
sympathetic imagination as if it worked like perceptual imagination:
it then seems impossible to imagine any experience that is not one's
own.)
converge on a single thing, be it an object, a person, a process, an event, or whatever.24 But when the two terms of the identification are very disparate it may not be so clear how it could be true. We may not have even a rough idea of how the two referential paths could converge, or what kind of things they might converge on, and a theoretical framework may have to be supplied to enable us to understand this. Without the framework, an air of mysticism surrounds the identification. This explains the magical flavor of popular presentations of fundamental scientific discoveries, given out as propositions to which one must subscribe without really understanding them. For example, people are now told at an early age that all matter is really energy. But despite the fact chat they know what "is" means, most of them never form a conception of what makes this claim true, because they lack the theoretical background. At the present time the status of physicalism is similar to that which the hypothesis that matter is energy would have had if uttered by a pre-Socratic philosopher. We do not have the beginnings of a conception of how it might be true. In order to un- derstand the hypothesis that a mental event is a physical event, we require more than an understanding of the word "is." The idea of how a mental and a physical term might refer to the same thing is lacking, and the usual analogies with theoretical identification in other fields fail to supply it. They fail because if we construe the reference of mental terms to physical events on the usual model, we either get a reappearance of separate subjective events as the effects through which mental reference to physical events is secured, or else we get a false account of how mental terms refer (for example, a causal behaviorist one).25
24The morning star is the evening star" is a good example here.
The referents of both expressions are bright objects in their
respective skies. The right sort of orbit puts the one where the other is
at a later time for a convergence of their "referential paths." Place
discusses this issue in section 4 of Reading 5. ED. 25Suppose, for instance, that you're A neuroscientist who's been
successful in discovering exactly what goes on where in the brain
when a certain kind of painful sensation is felt. You've established a
reliable correlation between the having of that kind of pain and the
occurrence of a specific set of neural events. Unless that set had been
correlated with your pain sensation and with reports of that sensation
by other humans, there would have been no reason to single it out over
any other collection. If you regard the pain sensation as an effect of
the neural events, then it is distinct from them and not identical with
them. If you argue, with the
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Hwpirwpmtfnhoesoeieaetirytsesmsnhcihnottohdwioatnaouioolloandtpctnypsoohbnarinyeotsliobhisscptnmieaet—ecghcltpreaiaottewianliitrnvneotreaescednal,techhtcprteaah.eitoovnvnaaorsBedietrrnineytufsrpits.aeteosp2peca,n7nhrontsshbynootaauosdtnctHpihtisocuosiitIauntsnnoolslgdstdohbeiemtiaeaorv;nrslrnfeeinektgeoanouwvvnttwpr—mseidhheheieywthhhachnsaavhaoiitlvdvsecwseaeoewwe.lsaveDicheprpaerarapnircaevbovlandgeiaticnyeuhdebessncosislnodoeiuesbomeenrgtliawas'hoynesl,
Churchlands in Reading 25, that it is nonessential to the type-identity of
pain as a mental event, then Nagel would say that you're omitting from
pain the very aspect that makes it a mental event in the first place—the
what-it-is-like-to-be-in-that-state, the subjectivity. ED. 26Nagel is referring to Davidson's argument in his widely discussed
essay "Mental Events" (1970). Davidson claims that mental events came
physical events, However, for two events 10 be related as cause and
effect. the first must be a type of event that is related to the second by a
scientific law. He further argues that there cannot be lawlike connections
between physical events and mental events involving propositional
attitudes; for instance, there cannot be a strict correlation between a
certain type of brain event and the belief that the economy is improving.
Exactly which belief a person has can never be inferred from the
isolated fact that she is in a certain brain state. The specification of
beliefs requires a much broader, social context. Since there cannot be
psychophysical correlations, there cannot be type-identities between
mental and physical events. The former are irreducible. Nevertheless,
since mental events do cause physical events, there must be a token
identity between any particular mental event and some physical event
since only physical events can be causes since only they can be lawfully
correlated with physical events. Thus, Davidson is a materialist who
maintains that mental events are physical events with some property
that is irreducibly mental and cannot be incorporated into scientific laws.
The mental is a lawless or anomalous domain. For this reason, his
position is known as "anomalous monism." ED. 27See "Mental Events" in Forster and Swanson, Experience and Theory (Amherst, 1970); though I don't understand the argument
against psychophysical laws.
what a theory would be like that enabled us to conceive
of it.28V
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I should like to close with a speculative proposal. It may be possible to approach the gap between subjective and objective from another direction. Setting aside temporarily the relation between the mind and the brain, we can pursue a more objective understanding of the mental in its own right. At present we arc completely unequipped to think about the subjective character of experience without relying on the imagination—without taking up the point of view of the experiential subject. This should be regarded as a challenge to form new concepts and devise a new method—an objective phe- nomenology not dependent on empathy or the imagination. Though presumably it would not capture everything, its goal would be to describe, at least in part, the subjective character of experiences in a form comprehensible to beings incapable of having those experiences. We would have to develop such a phenomenology to describe me sonar experiences of bats; but it would also be possible to begin with humans. One might try, for example, to develop concepts that could be used to explain to a person blind from birth what it was like to see. One would reach a blank wall eventually, but it should be possible to devise a method of expressing in objective terms much more than we can at present, and with much
28Similar remarks apply to my paper " Physicalism,"
Philosophical Review LXX1V (1965), 339-356. reprinted with
postscript in John O'Connor. Modern Materialism (New York,
1969). 29This question also lies at the heart of the problem of other
minds, whose close connection with the mind-body problem is often
overlooked- If one understood how subjective experience could have
an objective nature, one would understand the existence of subjects
other than oneself.
330 PART Vll CONSCIOUSNESSAND QUALIgecTtpdApuddtarhxrrbeeeneihunoseaarsrndoamtdapcsctmiaetuoAteerpnreiticppndussseppcrohltpttteteaiahnupoiio,nrnomtceisrunhntdaen"elapan[cibRd,pnfyhdtihdytmresegsiisbyoidsvsuiotescmageehsbeinsuilnnhecevsjcet.seeaaetlensiTtcenblvrltnihis3ntasolehkbe0ioerarvneeeoubyrtoesoitefgalwtvobudohcehosemsjn.oooaeifaesusnsostncseoetorcioBrythtoneemoifoiiuoutvtopnshenetefnewttxoaretsesdahdcespnumrsraieswcemebotnrftresarfejfih,guowcsoevyixocsredacreaepiwitndatppbuehtl.coltperlarreaiaeeuauiarrohasetelnmmltnrendoanbtncpoiolfaoataeoboefeintsgtnemaqh"dlsowiti—kuueuelttbhethihslenrmlnjaef—esweieeotcdcatseclkhihrfuotoodiaiifsurgcnvooooesithyeassrffft.. A
30I have not defined the term "physical." Obviously it does not
apply just to what can be described by the concept of contemporary
physics, since we expect further developments. Some may think there
is
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enpmoesixvohfdoeptyernslsestauihtcnebtiahapsjlpetopicogouittnhusngiegveehsoestiostrh.yf3atia1hnsasoedcfmboeomoremrbrnieejnicengdtcf,diatvi-mcivebtaenionl.sidetayobOermettshhosceeprorturg.wnonetbBilensilumkeeetemrpalwwyllaheptteehrwdtcoahiatbteunhlranenonomtouiyrltt
nothing to prevent mental phenomena from eventually being
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
physical ever expands to include mental phenomena, it will have to
assign theman objective character — whether or not this is done by
analyzing them in terms of other phenomena already regarded as
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. 3a1mI hinadveebrteeaddtovemrsaionnyspoefotphliesfporapthereitrocaomnummenbtesr. of audiences, and
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 presumablyhelp 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 philosophyof 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 Intentionality—the 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 characters—a 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 appearances are qualia? -
MD::AOnfdcothuersseeanroet.nHotopwarctooufldthIe?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
tahpepemairnsdt,oinmwovheicahcarpopsseathraensckeys,oictcduor.esMn:oNt footlsloow. Ftrhoamt tthheerefaicstscohmaet tahcetusaulndaocmtuaailnlyin
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.