But we cannot presuppose this because of the mere fact that we DO NOT know what it is like to be a bat and therefore we do not know if a bat is a conscious being. I am not negating the fact that bats and other animals may have experiences and that these experiences are the results of being conscious animals. I am just saying that this has not yet been proven factually and it therefore cannot be used as a presupposition towards an argument. We can only infer that other animals have conscious experience through our own perceptions. We can then make comparisons from our own conscious experiences using these perceptions but this is not sufficient to support an argument.Nagel then proceeds with his argument by demonstrating why we cannot know ?what it is like to be a bat?. A human has an imagination and could therefore imagine what it would be like to have the characteristics of a bat. However, a human cannot imagine what it is like for a bat to be a bat. Nagel supports this by saying, ?if I try to imagine this, I am restricted to the resources of my own mind, and those resources are inadequate to the task.? (p.536). I agree with Nader on this point. In order for me to experience what it would be like to be a bat I would have to make the actual transformation to a bat and there is no way for me to do that. The only other possible way for this to occur would be by a proper explanation about the mind of a bat but this too
Nagel makes a valuable point (p. 326) when he states that we probably never will fully understand someone else or another organism's own perspective. He says that if one person is particularly good at something that another species is able to do (such as a blind person using their own echolocation and relating to bats) then they will have a partial yet still incomplete understanding. This is interesting to me because I have looked into mirror neurons a lot. Mirror neurons basically recreate someone else's mind inside your own mind; the cornerstone to secondary consciousness. In this sense certain people (such as those with autism, ASD, or other mental disability) have a great deal of difficulty making these mirror neurons fire and develop correctly. This also leads to an incomplete understanding of what another person is thinking. This is why we often think of these types of people as being 'inferior' however it's not that they can't process their own thoughts, actually they're quite good at that, they just can't relate to others. They struggle greatly with empathy in particular and this really relates to the way Nagel believes we can only ever truly get a partial understanding of another species.... I would draw this further and say we can't even get a full understanding of individuals within our own species.
![According to nagel, human beings are the only organisms with experiences. According to nagel, human beings are the only organisms with experiences.](/uploads/1/2/3/7/123711929/654852761.jpg)
Jun 4, 2010 - What it is Like to be a Bat in Philosophy's Belfry. To fortify against the first round of objections a few things should be noted. An Analysis of Thomas Nagel’s Essay “What Is It Like To Be a Bat” by Lisa Guinther Page 5 Part II Critique of Churchland’s reductionist or “Eliminative Materialism” Churchland begins his essay explaining how theoretical reduction works, which he sees as an elegant solution to explaining how to better understand things that we experience every- day; things like sounds, colors and temperature.