Wednesday, May 14, 2008

What is it like to be ...

What is it like to be a bat ?

A famous, influencial, landmark paper written by Thomas Nagel & published in The philosophical review (Oct 1974).

http://members.aol.com/NeoNoetics/Nagel_Bat.html

or

http://web2.comlab.ox.ac.uk/oucl/research/areas/ieg/e-library/sources/nagel_bat.pdf


This paper is NOT about bats. It is about the problem of mind/conciousness & its physical reduction. The problem is examined with foucs on subjective experience.

This paper interests me not because of the problem it is about - conciousness & physical reduction - but, its use of subjective experience in analysing the problem.

After reading the paper, it should be apparant how difficult it is to really understand others' experiences.

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