 |
| Nagel in the classrom |
Thomas Nagel made several intriguing and thought-provoking arguments in his essay “What is it
like
to be a Bat?” In this essay, Nagel attacked physicalism, or the theory
that all
facts are physical facts, where facts are defined as propositions or states of
affairs. For
example, the proposition that "I am in pain" is about the state of affairs
of my
being in pain. If physicalism is true, then all facts about the mind, such as my state of being in pain,
are
made true by physical states of affairs. However, Nagel argues that some
facts, for instance, what it’s
like to be an organism (in this case, a bat) are characterized by the
subjective nature of the experience - not their objective nature.
 |
| Funny cartoon - Nagel's argument in a nutsehll |
I liked that he chose bats as his primary example because
bats use of echolocation as a means to orient themselves in their environment, navigate, find food... etc. is rather unfamiliar to us. As
humans, Nagel argues that we can’t conceptualize what it's like to be a
bat
because the subjective character of experience (ie. sensing the world
through
echolocation) is only accessible by a single point of view (ie. the
bat). As humans attempt to
characterize the experience scientifically, or in objective terms that
are accessible
from many points of view, we move way from the subjective character of
the experience. In other words, he argues that the subjective
nature of what it is like to be a
bat cannot be explained by science or in a way that humans can
understand. Nagel thus concludes that physicalism, or everything that exists is no more than its physical properties,
is false.
This is cool! I'm not familiar with the philosophy of Thomas Nagel, but from what I gather from this post, it seems quite fascinating. This reminds me of the oh so famous question, "what is truth?" Can it/should it be absolute? Interesting post!
ReplyDeleteThis seems like a pretty interesting essay. I have never read any of Thomas Nagel's work but this seems like it would be a good place to start.
ReplyDeleteHi Ross, Thanks for commenting on my blog. I really like your post on Nagel. In the context of truth or what is real, I think it's overwhelming to come to terms with the idea that physicalism is just interpretation of physical properties. --Emily
ReplyDeleteNagel's work is really interesting and it's cool that he used a bat to explain his philosophy on physicalism. I don't know much about Nagel, but the idea that the existence of organisms is characterized by their subjective environment versus their objective environment makes sense and demonstrates how human beings are quite naive in terms of believing that everything in existence is related to physicalism.
ReplyDelete