The Experience Of Dr. Macpherson Lecturing

In Nagel’s What Is It Like To Be a Bat, issues regarding consciousness are raised. One such issue is the mind-body problem which, as noted by Nagel, does not seem to fit with reductionist theories. That is, reductionist theories aim to explain things (e.g. persons and/or animal experiences) in relation to physical processes (i.e. organisms are just the sum of their physical parts). However, consciousness does not easily cooperate with such theories because it must be given a physical account. In addition, the nature of consciousness is that it is unique to a specific viewpoint (e.g. we can imagine what it would be for us to be a bat, but we cannot experience the mindset of said organism).

As our scientific paradigm has shifted towards a materialist account of the world, many thinkers believe that appeals to the supernatural cannot provide truth. Consequently, beliefs that had once been considered adequate must now be reworked if not torn down entirely to fit this new world view. Daniel Dennett’s book Consciousness Explained attempts to provide an account of our internal experience (i.e. Consciousness) that is rooted in the materialist world view. Though he is not the first to undertake this project, he takes issue with what he perceives to be the popular materialist account of consciousness, and seeks promote his own theory. With this essay I aim to offer an informative summary of the book followed by an evaluative dialogue of its central claims.

Nagel discuses a lot about subjective character which he explains as what it’s like to be a specific organism. He believes that there are some experience that are completely beyond human understanding. Nagel states that even if you have an excellent imagination you still wouldn’t know what it’s like to be a bat. He argues that even if you can imagine what it’s like to have webbed arms and feet or hang upside down that doesn’t help you to know how a bat truly experiences its experiences. Each organism has a unique perspective and conscious experience that is only understandable from its own point of view.

However, it will be shown that it does not have to do this. Consciousness, as Michael Gazzaniga ( in "Postcards from the brain") put it, is our developing thoughts distributed across our brain, rather then them competing to be acknowledged, and exhibit what is relevant (or seems to be relevant) at the time. This occurs in a way that once one thought process is complete, another begins, and then another, and so on. This is continuous and mainly correlated with humans, as apposed to non-human animals. Additionally, it cannot be described as a process, as it an attribute that in continually develops. This adds to how our consciousness cannot be an accumulation of thoughts that are trying to push their way forward, but rather, an endless stream; just like in the saying: "stream on

TTL and AILD in their radical attempts to represent subjective consciousness as it is must satisfactorily resolve the question of whether or not it is possible to do so. The themes of the ineffability of consciousness, the failures of language, and the inevitability of aloneness are clearly present throughout the text as the efforts of multiple characters to communicate their own internalities and to understand those of others are shown. Despite dealing with the same fundamental issues, the texts approach this theme in differing ways and they, due to their choices in narrative style, can come to opposing conclusions without falling into contradiction. *Thesis[ Turn this into the thesis:

In the reading “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”, Nagel claims that because an organism, say a bat, has conscious experiences, “there is something it is like to be that organism” (Cahn p. 169). However, Thomas Nagel also says that we cannot truly understand what it is to be a bat. We can only try imagining what it would be like, but that is as close as we could possibly get to understanding what it is to be a bat. We cannot know how a bat experiences whatever it experiences. Their sensory system and activities differ very much from that of ours.

To help assert his take on the falsely posed take on the subject mind Nagel creates his definition of the subjective character of experience. It is defined as: There is something that it is like to be that organism. He creates this definition to show that it may be possible to know that other organisms have a consciousness – and in turn relate to the mind-body issue. He quotes

The discussion was between Ted Honderich, a Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic, and Sir Roger Penrose, a physicist and mathematician. Honderich put forward the argument that to be aware of the world is that it exists. Penrose’s perception of consciousness it isn’t ordinary electrochemical processes activity in the brain but it is a feature of the brain’s activity and that it is not localised. Honderich expressed that he thinks consciousness is related to the brain and the microtubules as being conscious is linked there being activity in the brain. He went on to say that consciousness consists of an existence of a world which has particular dependence on the perceiver and that for all of them to think of being conscious one of the

Nagels uses his hypothetical bat experiment to explain conscious experiences. the question he proposes is that can we as humans feel what it is like to be a bat. But of course, many people stated yes you can because bats have eyes to see just like we do and we can also use a sonar machine to replicate what a bat sees when it uses its ears. But Nagel says no that we will never be able to understand what it's like to be a bat because this experiment shows that there is something that is or is felt by a certain conscious thing that we will never feel. So that is why he chose bats.

In chapter 3, I've read up to page 123. I learned that perception is a process that makes these words meaningfull. The brain senses the indirectly, because the sense organse convert stimulation into the language of the nervous system, and neural messages. the retina is the thin light-sensitive layer at the back of the eyeball. An afterimages sensations that linger after the stimulus is removed the gate controled theory eplains why pain can sometimes be blocked or facilitated " top down " by our mental state.The ability to see an object as being the same shape from different angles or distance is just one eample of a perceptual constancy. I've also learned that the laws of perceptual grouping eemplify a more general

This rather abstract notion of phenomenal consciousness is simplified to the term ‘P-consciousness’. P-consciousness is phenomenal experience. Everything that P-consciousness can be is, in turn, everything that experience can be. It is the matter of when we utilize our senses (see, hear, smell, etc.) to gain information from the environment, as well as when an individual experiences internal reflection through sensations, thoughts, or emotions. All of these actions are continuously occurring with or without the intention of doing so. P-consciousness is always representational of the information derived from the event being experienced. Contrarily, Access-Consciousness is introduced as the mode of consciousness in which representation, unlike P-consciousness, is “poised for control of speech, reasoning, and action” (pg. 208 Block) . It is this mode of consciousness whose content can be broadcasted to communicate one’s inner events, unlike the phenomenal qualities of P-consciousness. The distinguishing factor between these two modes of consciousness is the element of qualia. P-consciousness is phenomenal while A-consciousness is representational; however, given that P consciousness can also be representational, P-consciousness can overlap in the A-consciousness realm during reasoning or the execution of actions. A consciousness is a

When consciousness is not present, a person is then seen to be unconscious (One has no awareness of processes or surroundings). Nolen-Hoeksma et al (2009) has created a new concept known as ‘Pre-Conscious memories’ these are objects and events not being fully accessed but still affect our own

Assuming that one has to be in a conscious state of mind in order for one to understand what it is like to be something, Nagel starts off his argument with an idea for consciousness. He criticizes the concept of functionalism for disregarding the subjective view of the mind into a purely objective view. Taking into account what he had just stated, Nagel makes his claim: “The fact that [a bat] has conscious experience at all means, basically, that there is something that it is like to be [a bat]” (Nagel 1974, pp. 436). This “what it is like” is the subjective aspect of Nagel’s theory. He suggests that previous theories on the mind-body problem did not capture this “subjective character of experience” (Nagel 1974, pp. 436). The “subjective character of experience” can be defined as the idea that a certain organism can only have conscious experiences that only it can feel. Using the subjective aspect of consciousness, Nagel explains that consciousness cannot be defined through only objective means. I agree in Nagel’s stance that the subjective experience is “not analyzable in terms of any explanatory system of functional states, or intentional states” (Nagel 1974, pp. 436). Nagel’s argument is convincing; when people feel an emotion such as pain, no one really knows how to describe it, for one person’s pain might be completely different from another’s. What is there to say that feelings such as pain could be described purely through objective means? In other words, the

Nagel believes that we must think about a method that will allow us to know what it is like to be a bat, and if we cannot think of anything then we must find an alternative method. We could imagine what it is like to be a bat but our imagination is very limited as we are restricted to our own minds because we are humans - we are not bats. Nagel believes that this extrapolation of imagining what it is like to be a bat is incompletable stating that we cannot form more than a schematic conception of what it is like (Thomas Nagel The Philosophical Review LXXXIII, 4 (October 1974): 435-450). Nagel strengthens his point by telling us to think about another species like a bat or perhaps a Martian imagining what it is like to be a human. He states “the structure of their own minds might make it impossible for them to succeed, but we know they would be wrong to conclude that there is not anything precise that it is like to be us: only that certain general types of mental state could be ascribed to us” (Thomas Nagel The Philosophical Review LXXXIII, 4 (October 1974):

Nagel asserts that an organism has particular conscious mental states that are only associated with characteristics of said organism. Nagel claims that consciousness cannot be explained without experience, and experience cannot be explained by a reductionist being. Along with the reductionist view, the physicalist view cannot explain consciousness. Physicalism is the belief that everything is physical, suggesting each mental state or conscious experience has a physical property associated with it. Nagel contradicts this theory with his idea that every subjective experience is connected with a single point of view and that having any objective experience is impossible.