What Is it Like to Be a Bat?
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| What Is it Like to Be a Bat? | |
|---|---|
 PD-USGov, exact author unknown · Public domain · source | |
| Title | What Is it Like to Be a Bat? |
| Author | Thomas Nagel |
| Year | 1974 |
| Publication | The Philosophical Review |
| Genre | Philosophy of mind, consciousness |
What Is it Like to Be a Bat? is a 1974 philosophical essay by Thomas Nagel that challenges reductionist accounts of consciousness and argues for the irreducibility of subjective experience. Nagel uses the example of a bat to illustrate limits of objective, physicalist explanations and to probe the relation between facts about brain processes and phenomenal consciousness.
Background and publication
Nagel wrote the essay amid debates in analytic philosophy and cognitive science involving figures such as Gilbert Ryle, Daniel Dennett, David Lewis, John Searle, and Wilfrid Sellars. It first appeared in The Philosophical Review and was later reprinted in collections alongside work by scholars from institutions like Harvard University, Princeton University, Oxford University, Stanford University, and Cambridge University. The essay engages historical issues traced to René Descartes, John Locke, and David Hume while addressing contemporary responses from proponents of the identity theory and functionalism such as U.T. Place, J.J.C. Smart, and Hilary Putnam. Nagel situates his argument against the backdrop of empirical research institutions including the Max Planck Society, the Smithsonian Institution, and laboratories at MIT, where studies of perception and neurophysiology were expanding philosophical questions about subjective experience.
Philosophical arguments and themes
Nagel's central claim draws on the metaphysical and epistemological contrast between objective description and subjective perspective, invoking thinkers like Thomas Nagel himself in the broader analytic tradition and contrasting with reductionists including Paul Churchland and Patricia Churchland. He argues that conscious experience has a "what it is like" subjective character that resists being fully captured by third-person descriptions, echoing concerns familiar from Ludwig Wittgenstein and Immanuel Kant about the limits of conceptual frameworks. The essay mobilizes the phenomenology of perception in dialogue with debates involving Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty while engaging analytic successors such as Frank Jackson (known for the "knowledge argument") and Mary's room thought experiment. Nagel critiques scientific and physicalist programs associated with Reductionism as defended in different forms by W.V.O. Quine and Carl Hempel, and he raises methodological issues about subjective accessibility that resonate with the work of Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper on theory choice.
Reception and critical responses
The essay provoked extensive commentary from philosophers at universities such as Yale University, Columbia University, University of California, Berkeley, and University of Oxford. Critics included Daniel Dennett, who offered counterarguments emphasizing functional explanation and eliminativism, and John Searle, who advanced alternative views about biological naturalism. Other responses came from David Chalmers, who later formulated the "hard problem of consciousness," and from defenders of materialism like Derek Parfit and Bryan Magee. Reviews and symposia appeared in venues associated with The Journal of Philosophy, Mind, and Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, generating exchanges with scholars such as Roderick Chisholm, Jaegwon Kim, and Thomas Metzinger. Interdisciplinary responses emerged from cognitive scientists at University College London, California Institute of Technology, Columbia University, and New York University, leading to debates about methodology among proponents of behaviorism and emergentist accounts advocated by figures like John Eccles.
Influence and legacy in philosophy of mind
Nagel's essay reshaped discussions about consciousness across analytic and continental spheres, influencing subsequent work by David Chalmers, Patricia Churchland, Paul Churchland, Frank Jackson, and Thomas Metzinger. It helped catalyze articulation of the "hard problem" and stimulated renewed attention to subjectivity in forums such as Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness conferences and publications by the Cognitive Science Society. The piece is taught widely in curricula at institutions including Harvard University, MIT, University of Chicago, and University of Oxford and is cited in monographs from presses such as Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Princeton University Press. Nagel's framing influenced interdisciplinary research programs connecting philosophers like Patricia Churchland with neuroscientists at Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University, and it informed ethical and legal reflections involving scholars from Yale Law School and Harvard Law School concerned with personhood and moral status debates.
Contemporary scientific perspectives on bat consciousness
Empirical research on chiropteran perception and cognition, carried out at laboratories such as Smithsonian Institution National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, University of Maryland, Duke University, and University of California, Berkeley, contributes data about echolocation, neural circuitry, and behavior. Neuroscientists influenced by work at MIT, Harvard Medical School, and Caltech study auditory cortex processing, hippocampal spatial maps, and sensorimotor integration in species studied by field biologists at locations like Gabon, Costa Rica, Madagascar, and Texas. Researchers including investigators collaborating with National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and EU-funded projects compare bat vocalization and cortical organization to models advanced by Antonio Damasio, Christof Koch, and Stanley B. Prusiner in attempts to link neural mechanisms with subjective reports (where accessible) and behavior. Ethologists and cognitive ecologists referencing work from Jane Goodall's tradition and comparative psychologists at Oxford University and University College London explore whether aspects of chiropteran experience can be inferred through convergent behavioral and neurophysiological markers, bearing on philosophical questions posed by Nagel about the limits of third-person science. Contemporary debates bring together contributors from Nature (journal), Science (journal), and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in multidisciplinary efforts to reconcile subjective phenomenology with objective neuroscience.