Philosopher Tom Nagel wrote perhaps his most widely-known article, "What Is It Like To Be A Bat?", in 1974. The focus of the piece is the issue of subjective experience: there is something it feels like to have your consciousness, and this feeling-like is both essential and unable to be reduced to, or explained away as, some mere physical feature.
This is an interesting position. Many folks think that consciousness can be completely explained by neural structure - once we completely understand the network of our brains, we will know all there is to know about consciousness. Nagel rejects this so-called "reductionist" thesis, using a pretty engaging thought experiment.
Anyway, an article in today's BBC News made me think of this issue: an "immersive" exhibit at a conference in New Orleans demonstrates what it's like to experience the world with animals' senses rather than our own. Infrared and ultraviolet sight, etc. Perhaps even the sonar of a bat...?
5 days ago
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