What Is It Like to Be a Bat?
1974/10/01 by Thomas Nagel · 6,908 citations
Psychology · #Contemporary philosophy #Epistemology #General interest #Paranormal Experiences and Beliefs #Philosophy
paper · doi:10.2307/2183914
published in The Philosophical Review 83(4), 435 (Duke University Press)
openalex publication_date 1974/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Abstract
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. But the problems dealt with are those common to this type of reduction and other types, and what makes the mind-body problem unique, and unlike the water-H2O 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.
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