"The distance between oneself and other persons and other species can fall anywhere on a continuum. Even for other persons the understanding of what it is like to be them is only partial, and when one moves to species very different from oneself, a lesser degree of partial understanding may still be available. The imagination is remarkably flexible. My point, however, is not that we cannot know what it is like to be a bat. I am not raising that epistemological problem. My point is rather that even to form a conception of what it is like to be a bat and a fortiori to know what it is like to be a bat, one must take up the bat's point of view."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Atheists from the United StatesAcademics from the United StatesEssayists from the United StatesHarvard University alumniCornell University alumni
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
p. 172, note 8.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Nagel
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Thomas Nagel
46 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Thomas Nagel →
Related Quotes
"In speaking of the fear of religion, I don’t mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain establ…"
"I believe that there is a necessary connection in both directions between the physical and the mental, but that it ca…"
"Everyone is entitled to commit murder in the imagination once in a while, not to mention lesser infractions."
"Consciousness is what makes the mind–body problem really intractable."
"Without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless."
"Any reductionist program has to be based on an analysis of what is to be reduced. If the analysis leaves something ou…"
"[E]very subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inevitable that an o…"
"Bats … present a range of activity and a sensory apparatus so different from ours that the problem I want to pose is …"
"[T]he essence of the belief that bats have experience is that there is something that it is like to be a bat. Now we …"
"We appear to be faced with a general difficulty about psychophysical reduction. In other areas the process of reducti…"