Today’s Lecture
• A comment about your final Paper
• Third in-class quiz and grade spreadsheet
• Revisiting comments on Functionalism
• Thomas Nagel
• Comments about your Third Assignments
A comment about your final Paper
• I am giving you a bonus day of grace to get your final Paper
in to me.
• Three things to note about this extra day of grace:
• (1) It means that IF you get your paper to me, or the
assignment drop box, by 4:00 p.m. on August 11th, THEN
you will not receive any late penalties for your paper.
• (2) This extra day of grace only applies to your Paper.
• (3) Technically, this does not change the due date for the
paper (which remains August 8th).
• (4) If you have any extra day s of grace remaining you can
add them to this bonus day.
Third in-class quiz and grade
spreadsheet
• Do remember that due to my oversight in not giving
a third in-class quiz, each of you have received an
automatic ‘2 out of 2’ for the ‘quiz that wasn’t’.
• On Wednesday I am placing a randomized grade
spreadsheet on the course website (look for your
grades under the columns associated with your
student ID number). Please check to ensure that the
data matches what you have. If there are any
discrepancies, come and see me.
Revisiting comments on Functionalism
• Functionalism contends that an internal state of an
individual counts as a type of mental state if it
performs the relevant causal role, in relation to other
states of the central nervous system or non-neuronal
physiological processes, and is causally efficacious
in contributing to the subsequent behavior of the
organism that possesses it (see FP, p.391).
• Metaphysical Behaviorism, remember, reduces
mental states to dispositions to act.
• Logical Behaviorism, remember, reduces talk of
mental states to talk of dispositions to act.
From “The Nature of Mental States”:
IV
• Problems facing Metaphysical Behaviorism:
• (1) They need to properly specify the relevant behavioral
dispositions for the relevant psychological state without
appealing to the very state itself (FP, p.431).
• (2) It seems conceivable to imagine two individuals, one
being in pain while the other is not in pain, exhibiting
relevantly similar behavior (FP, p.432).
• (3) It seems more plausible to explain behavior with
reference to internal causally efficacious psychological
states than to identify said states with the behavior itself
(FP, p.432).
Revisiting comments on Functionalism
• For the behaviorist, the mind, human or nonhuman, is a
black box that remains outside of the domain of empirical
psychology.
• The Functionalist rejects this ‘treatment’ of the mind, but
keeps some of the behavioral orientations of behaviorism. In
particular, the conception of belief (and other mental states
possessing intentional content [where ‘intentional content’
refers, for our purposes, to the information about something
contained in a given state]) at work in functionalism
involves causal efficacy (a belief properly so called has, by
its very nature, behavioral import) and is individuated
(identified as the kind of belief it is) based on its interaction
with either other mental states contained in the relevant
individual’s mind or with the individual’s non-mental
physiological processes or mechanisms.
Revisiting comments on
Functionalism
• Just as neither kind of Behaviorism seems
to deal well with, among other things,
claims of sensation, critics of functionalism
contend that it (i.e. functionalism) cannot
accommodate consciousness. Thomas
Nagel’s “What Is It Like To Be A Bat?” is,
in part, an attack on contemporary theories
of mind on this very issue (FP, p.476).
Revisiting comments on Functionalism
• Do remember that a rejection of type-type MindBrain Identity Theory does not require one to reject
a type-token Mind-Brain Identity Theory. In a typetoken Identity Theory, mental states are, in the case
of humans and other terrestrial animals, identical to
actual states in the relevant central nervous systems,
though they may be instantiated in very different
biological systems or forms of life (i.e. that lack
central nervous systems) elsewhere in the universe.
Thomas Nagel
• Thomas Nagel is a contemporary American
philosopher who was born in 1937.
• Nagel’s motivating concern in philosophy is
exploring the relationship between first person and
third person accounts/perspectives of ourselves and
the world (broadly construed), and, perhaps more
importantly, the epistemic status of first person
accounts/perspectives. In particular, Nagel
challenges the view that third person accounts/
perspectives are always to be preferred over first
person accounts (FP, p.475).
Thomas Nagel
• It is not that Nagel rejects the value of third
person accounts/perspectives or the value of
objectivity associated with such view
points. Rather, Nagel contends that first
person accounts/perspectives take
preeminence in certain contexts of belief
(FP, pp.475-76).
Thomas Nagel
• Important things to note about the reading:
• (1) Nagel is not disavowing Physicalism (or
Metaphysical Materialism) (FP, p.477).
• (2) He is rejecting BOTH ontological AND theory
reduction concerning mental states (FP, pp.476-77).
• (3) Nagel rejects the Cartesian view that mental
states are “radically private” (FP, p.477).
“What Is It Like To Be A Bat?”
Introductory remarks
• Present contemporary physicalist theories of mind cannot
explain consciousness, or provide a reductionist analysis of
conscious mental phenomena (FP, pp.478-79).
• Consciousness, or conscious experience, occurs in many
terrestrials life forms (FP, p.479).
• It probably occurs in life-forms in other parts of the
universe (FP, p.479).
• It is difficult to specify the general justificatory grounds for
ascribing consciousness (FP, p.479).
• It is unlikely that the consciousness of an experience has
particular behavioral consequences (FP, p.479)
“What Is It Like To Be A Bat?”
Introductory remarks
• Consciousness, according to Nagel, involves an important
(read essential) subjective component.
• “[F]undamentally an organism has conscious mental states
if and only if there is something that it is like to be that
organism - something it is like for the organism” (FP, p.479
[emphasis the author’s]).
• Do note that Nagel is not arguing that all mental states are
conscious. This means that there are mental states that do
not have a subjective component (essential or otherwise).
“What Is It Like To Be A Bat?”
• Present contemporary physicalist theories of mind
cannot explain consciousness, or provide a
reductionist analysis of conscious mental
phenomena for the following reasons:
• (1) Contemporary physicalist theories of mind are
logically consistent with minds that lack
consciousness (FP, p.478).
• (2) The explanatory frameworks for contemporary
physicalist theories do not provide explicit
physicalist analyses of conscious experience (FP,
p.479).
“What Is It Like To Be A Bat?”
• (3) Without an idea about the nature of subjective
experience, we cannot specify what needs to be
explained by a physicalist theory of mind. Without
such a specification, we cannot declare the adequacy
of any given physicalist theory of mind. We still lack
an adequate account of what subjective experience
is (FP, p.480).
“What Is It Like To Be A Bat?”
• A methodological worry about epistemic objectivity, mind
and physicalism:
• (1) Epistemic objectivity involves the abandonment of
subjectivity, in particular the abandonment of “a single point
of view” (FP, p.480).
• (2) Conscious experience is essentially subjective (i.e. it
essentially involves a single point of view).
• (3) So it seems unlikely that we can develop an objective
physicalist theory of conscious experience (FP, p.480).
“What Is It Like To Be A Bat?”
• Nagel’s Bat example:
• The differences between bat and human physiology
and sensory faculties makes it impossible to simply
extrapolate from our own experiences when trying
to describe what it is like to be a bat.
• If we are to adequately understand bat (conscious)
experience it would appear that we cannot depend
on our usual methods of extrapolation (FP, p.481).
• (1) It won’t be enough to merely imagine possessing
the relevant physical structures, as this only gives us
a way to understand what it would be like for us “to
behave as a bat behaves” (FP, p.481).
“What Is It Like To Be A Bat?”
• (2) We cannot take this a step further and simply
imagine possessing the neurophysiology of the bat.
After all this will only work if we can imagine what
it would be like to possess the relevant internal
neurophysiology of the bat, and this is the problem
that got us here in the first place. Any talk of
undergoing such a transformation will make little
sense (FP, p.481).
• It would seem, then, that the only way to know the
experience of a bat is to be one (FP, p.481).
“What Is It Like To Be A Bat?”
• Note that Nagel doesn’t deny that we can
say some very general things about the
types of experiences a bat must have.
• We can reasonably suppose, given its
physiological structures and behavior, that
“bats feel some version of pain, fear,
hunger, and lust, and that they have other,
more familiar types of perception than
sonar” (FP, p.481).
“What Is It Like To Be A Bat?”
• We can see, then, that something seems to
be lost when we abstract away from, or are
unable to imagine, the experience of the
individual whom we regard as minded.
• This, Nagel suggests, will get worse if we
think of, or even encounter, extra-terrestrial
life (FP, p.481).
“What Is It Like To Be A Bat?”
• He suggests that we do not have to leave our own species
for this problem to arise. He asks us to imagine
encountering a human that is both deaf and blind, and has
been so since birth.
• “The subjective character of the experience of a person deaf
and blind from birth is not accessible to me ... nor
presumably mine to him. This does not prevent us each
from believing that the other’s experience has such a
subjective character” (FP, p.482).
• What do you think? What does this show about theorizing
about mind?
• Can we believe that there are facts of the universe that lie,
and will forever lie, outside of our understanding and
knowledge? Is this an intelligible belief (FP, p.482)?
“What Is It Like To Be A Bat?”
• Nagel’s “Intelligent bat or Martian” example:
• He asks us to imagine a sapient bat or Martian trying to
extrapolate from their own experience in order to
understand our own. Given that they are radically different
from us in their neurophysiology, they will have an
analogous problem to our own when we are trying to
understand an ordinary bat. But they should not adopt the
epistemic principle that ‘We cannot meaningfully believe
that there are facts which we cannot conceive exist’ and thus
conclude that we only enjoy rather general types of
experience, if we enjoy any experience at all. After all, such
an epistemic principle would lead them to a false belief
about us (and many animals like us), namely that we do not
possess subjective experiences (FP, p.481).
“What Is It Like To Be A Bat?”
• Nagel wants to draw the following conclusion from
the discussion thus far:
• “Whatever may be the status of facts about what it is
like to be a human being, or a bat, or a Martian,
these appear to be facts that embody a particular
point of view” (FP, p.483).
• There are facts, then, that to be objectively known
require first person experience (FP, p.483).
“What Is It Like To Be A Bat?”
• Note, Nagel does not think that this entails a view
that consciousness is radically private. It merely
points out the limits of extrapolation as we move
across relevantly similar to dissimilar taxa.
• The closer the subject of study is to ourselves, the
easier it is to extrapolate the nature of their
subjective experience. Thus we can have objective
knowledge of subjective events.
• What is clear is that by not accounting for
subjectivity in human (and nonhuman) minds we do
not, and cannot, provide an exhaustive analysis of
mental phenomena (FP, p.483).
“What Is It Like To Be A Bat?”
• The problems gets worse, however.
• To be able to develop an adequate and objective
theory of mind we need to suppose that mental
phenomena have both subjective and objective
characteristics AND either that the subjective
characteristics have objective markers or we can
extrapolate from our own cases to the content of
these subjective experiences (FP, pp.483-84).
• But how do we adequately defend this supposition?
“What Is It Like To Be A Bat?”
• These problems seems to point to a relevant
dissimilarity between mind and successful
reductionist programs in other areas of knowledge.
• In the physical sciences we adopt a more objective
viewpoint by abstracting away from subjective
views points, thus allowing for a purely physicalist
treatment of the phenomena under discussion.
“What Is It Like To Be A Bat?”
• But the nature of conscious mental phenomena
seems to preclude this path towards more objectivity
(or at least this view of objectivity) (FP, pp.484-86).
• Though these considerations do not give us what we
would need to conclude that physicalism is false
(FP, p.485), we must admit that, at this point, we
“do not have the beginnings of a conception of how
it might be true” (FP, p.486).
• For Nagel, this is not an incoherent claim.
“What Is It Like To Be A Bat?”
• We do not require understanding to have evidence for the
truth of a hypothesis (FP, p.486).
• Nagel attempts to defend this claim with his “Caterpillar in
a box” thought experiment.
• Imagine that we do not know that caterpillars
metamorphosize into butterflies at some point in their
ontogeny. We lock a caterpillar in a sealed sterile container
in which it survives until the metamorphosis takes place.
Upon discovery of the butterfly and no caterpillar when we
open the box we can reasonably infer that the butterfly was,
in some sense, the caterpillar even though how this is the
case alludes us (FP, p.486).
“What Is It Like To Be A Bat?”
• Nagel likens this to our present
understanding of mind. We know the mind
is physical in some sense. After all mental
states have causes and produce effects.
• We do not yet know how this is possible
(FP, p.487).
Comments about your Third Assignments
• (1) Take care not to make claims that are open to a
criticism or objection already raised in your readings
(or in lectures), or take care to respond to such
criticisms or objections in the course of your
discussion.
• (2) If you disagree with a philosopher’s position,
you need to provide adequate reasons for rejecting
it.
• (3) Don’t claim something for which you offer
insufficient justification.
• (4) Beware of adopting a non-critical stance towards
sources outside of your course texts.
Comments about your Third
Assignments
• (5) Don’t beg the question against your interlocutor.
• (6) Make sure you accurately portray the position of
the philosopher you are criticizing.
• (7) Take care to avoid merely repeating a position
(or critical stance) I have advocated in class.
• (8) Make sure to proof read your assignment before
submitting it.