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What is it like to be a bat?

By Matthew Hobbs

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1974, The philosophical review

 Philosophy, Philosophical, The Philosophical Quarterly

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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
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 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 date—physics and evolutionary biology are the current
paradigms—as 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. Hisbook 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 ofsubject)." 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 theyline 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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 322
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 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 bea 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—
1
identification, or reduction. 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-H2 0 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

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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


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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);

PDF
Hilary Putnam, "Psychological Predicates," in Capitan and
3
Merril An, Mind, & Religion (Pittsburgh. 1967). reprinted in Tissues, organs,. and organ systems of a multicellular
organism are successively higher Ievels of functional organization

PDF
Rosenthal, op. cit., as "The Nature of Mental States"; D. M.
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

Package
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.

HOME MENTIONS TOOLS

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 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 it—namely, 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
4
of them are logically compatible with its absence. It is 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 behavior—for 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.
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.
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 324
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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 325
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 forever—simply
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,
14Any
however, in the sense that even this objective ascription
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 view—to understand the ascription in
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