Thomas Nagel, What Is It Like To Be A Bat? - Objective Understanding And Experience episode artwork

EPISODE · Jun 19, 2026 · 15 MIN

Thomas Nagel, What Is It Like To Be A Bat? - Objective Understanding And Experience

from Sadler's Lectures · host Lectures on classic and contemporary philosophical texts and thinkers by Gregory B. Sadler

This lecture discusses the 20th century Analytic philosopher, Thomas Nagel's essay "What Is It Like To Be A Bat", and focuses upon Nagel's analysis of one way that a person who acknowledges that we cannot imagine or conceptualize the subjective experience of a bat might try to get around that, by appealing to more objective concepts and facts about the organs, body, and brain of the bat. He notes that this doesn't yield us the subjective experience and we are not even sure how to correlate the subjective and objective characters of matters like this, including how the human mind is supposed to be connected with or reducible to the human brain. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler or Buy Me A Coffee - https://buymeacoffee.com/a4quydwom If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO You can find over 4,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Get Nagel's What Is It Like to Be a Bat? - https://amzn.to/3P8ihhk

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Thomas Nagel, What Is It Like To Be A Bat? - Objective Understanding And Experience

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