Thoughts of Today: 2010
What it is like to be Batty
A Response to Nagel's Essay
The Editor, Sheridan Lardner
November 2009
Nagel's Original Essay, "What it is like to be a Bat"
Nagel’s main contention, that consciousness is irreducible to physical explanations, is well-argued and highly compelling. While many worldly phenomena are indeed physically reducible (for instance, that a table is mostly empty space between tiny molecules, not the solid piece of wood we think it is), experience does not appear to be. Our experience, or that of dogs, mice, or bats, is always defined by our subjective position in the world. When I experience a rainbow, I am physically seeing and processing a reducible quality; light refracted through water molecules. That is the objective truth. But my personal experience of seeing the rainbow radically differs from those of others, even though we physically embark on the same process. When we reduce a phenomenon, we try to make it objectively true and universally applicable. But this is not possible with the inherently subjective notion of experience.
While Nagel’s underlying philosophy is reasonable, he draws from it an inaccurate conclusion. In describing the difficulty in imagining what it is like to be a bat, he explains “I am restricted to the resources of my own mind, and those resources are inadequate to the task. I cannot perform it...by imagining some combination of additions, subtractions, and modifications [to my personal experience].” (Nagel 523) Nagel is correct that we are always restricted to our own mental resources. In saying that they are insufficient for the task, however, he short-changes humans. To demonstrate this, we will look at a specific example; an insane man. While someone who is insane is not a bat (at least not literally), his senses and experiences are as alien to us, as much as, if not even more than, those of a blind or deaf person. If Nagel is to be believed, we must expect that it is virtually impossible to understand the experience of madness without actually being mad, just as it is virtually impossible to understand the experience of deafness or blindness without actually being deaf or blind. This, however, is not quite true.
Choose a word in the English language, any word at all. If you cannot decide on one, consider the word “mind.” Now, speak the word out loud one hundred times in a row. Each time you speak the word, think of the different sounds that comprise the word, the word’s origin, and the word’s meaning. Continue this with each additional repetition, banishing all thoughts except those of this word. Dissect the word in your mental vacuum and continue to repeat it out loud one hundred times.
Those who follow the above instructions undergo a spiraling and falling sensation, as their thoughts tumble away from reality and into the strange fixation of repetition. Anyone is capable of following the above directions, including the fully sane. Yet, the experience that arises is one peculiar to madness. It is the same experience that a lunatic in an asylum has when he obsesses over a concept and tries to carry it out to infinity. Contrary to Nagel’s suggestion, we are indeed able to have this supposedly unique experience, even though we are not mad ourselves. We must admit that our own mental resources and sensory capabilities are not those of a madman, just as they are not of a deaf or blind person. And yet, through an interesting mental trick, we experience a moment of true madness, specifically the insanity of obsession and repetition. This hints that we may be able to experience a similar moment of true deafness, blindness, or even batness, through clever manipulation of the mind. It is unclear what those clever manipulations specifically are, or how they might be brought about. But that they might exist is undeniable. Nagel claims it is impossible to have the subjective experiences of madmen, blind men, deaf men, or bats, because our mental resources are confined to our own experience. The above thought experiment shows, however, that even a perfectly sane person, using his sane mental resources, can experience real, even if only momentary, madness.