In Thomas
Nagel’s essay “What is it like to be a bat?” he thinks that every living thing
is unique to something about that living thing, and there’s no way that we can
get feel or experience of what that particular living thing experiences. To prove this he used the example of a
bat. A bat use sounds to perceive their
surroundings where a human who use eyesight can never experience of how a bat
experiences.
The
essay starts with the theme of “Consciousness,” where the author believes is
what makes organisms so unique.
Consciousness, being the interaction of the mind and body makes up the
complications for others to comprehend the feelings or experiences of
things. He says “I want to know what it
is like for a bat to be a bat. … I am
restricted to the resources of my own mind, and those resources are inadequate
to the task.” The author wants to experience
what is it like for a bat with wings and hangs upside down, to be a bat. Despite how the author tries imagines what a
bat experiences, he is unable to do so.
As human beings, our resources [our mind and body] are so limited and
uniquely attached to ourselves only. Given
only these resources the author can’t experience what a bat experiences as our
body are entirely different from what a bat has.
Consciousness
is also unique among different organisms of the same species. The author made a reference to a blind and
deaf child. He claims that the
subjective character is not known to him.
The subjective character means the perception of the world around the
character. In the case of a blind and
deaf child, the author simply cannot conceive the experience that the child
conceives because he is different from the child as he is not blind or
death. The child however, can describe
the experience of blind and deaf to the author, but the author would have a
different perception of what it’s like due to the difference in subjective
character.
With
consciousness unique to the body and the mind, the author believes that it is
impossible to perceive how another being or organism perceives it. My question is, given universal truths like
2+2=4, does the consciousness also differ from how different individuals’ own
perception of how 2+2 is 4?
I actually like Nagel's view because it is similar to what people think. Of course people pretend to be someone or something they aren't. Like the example of the blind and deaf people. We have all tried to close our eyes to see how they feel, but our consciousness will not allow us because that's what makes us different. For your question, I think because we are programmed to know that 2+2 is 4 we are similar. What makes us different is how we find the answer. I thought this post was good, even though I thought it needed more textual references.
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