What did Nagel argue in 'What Is It Like to Be a Bat?'

In his 1974 paper in the Philosophical Review, Thomas Nagel argued that the essential subjectivity of conscious experience means reductionist theories of mind, which analyze the mind in purely physical terms, cannot succeed as they stand. On this view, the physical sciences as currently conceived cannot give a complete description of reality, and the physical idea of objective reality would need to be transcended for science to comprehend the mind, as the [academic.oup.com](https://academic.oup.com/book/56130/chapter-abstract/442795888) abstract puts it. The bat is his example of a creature whose experience we cannot grasp from the outside. [1]

Nagel proposed that an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something it is like to be that organism, something it is like for the organism itself. He called this the subjective character of experience. The same idea goes by other names in the literature, including qualitative experience, phenomenal experience, raw feels and qualia, according to [philosophybreak.com](https://philosophybreak.com/articles/thomas-nagel-what-is-it-like-to-be-a-bat/). [knowledgeinsight.org](https://knowledgeinsight.org/programs/phenomenology-and-consciousness/consciousness-studies/the-hard-problem-and-its-prices/what-is-it-like-to-be-a-bat-finding-the-explanatory/) notes that most discussions of consciousness still define their subject this way. [2] [3]

Bats find their way by echolocation, sending out high-pitched calls and sensing objects from the returning echoes. Few people doubt that bats are conscious, yet their sonar is unlike any human sense. Nagel wrote that imagining webbing on one's arms, poor vision and a day spent hanging upside down in an attic would only show what it would be like for us to behave as a bat behaves. He wanted to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat. Both [knowledgeinsight.org](https://knowledgeinsight.org/programs/phenomenology-and-consciousness/consciousness-studies/the-hard-problem-and-its-prices/what-is-it-like-to-be-a-bat-finding-the-explanatory/) and [philosophybreak.com](https://philosophybreak.com/articles/thomas-nagel-what-is-it-like-to-be-a-bat/) make the point that knowing everything about the bat's brain and sonar would still leave this question open. [3] [2]

Science usually explains things by moving away from a particular point of view, as when lightning is described as an electrical discharge rather than as a flash and a thunderclap. Appearances are set aside and the underlying process is described. Nagel argued that with experience the appearance is the thing itself, so removing the viewpoint removes what was to be explained. In his words, a shift to greater objectivity takes us farther from the real nature of the phenomenon, as quoted by [philosophybreak.com](https://philosophybreak.com/articles/thomas-nagel-what-is-it-like-to-be-a-bat/). [knowledgeinsight.org](https://knowledgeinsight.org/programs/phenomenology-and-consciousness/consciousness-studies/the-hard-problem-and-its-prices/what-is-it-like-to-be-a-bat-finding-the-explanatory/) gives the lightning illustration. [2] [3]

Nagel did not conclude that physicalism is false, or that consciousness does not arise from the brain. His claim was that we currently have no conception of how it could be true of experience, so we cannot yet understand the claim. Philosophy Break compares it to a pre-Socratic philosopher saying that matter is energy: possibly true, but with no framework to make sense of it. He hoped for a new conceptual approach that might join the subjective and the objective, and the same source adds that such concepts may lie beyond what the human intellect can manage. [2] [3]