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Nagel's Theory Of Dualism
1093 Words5 Pages
On the other hand, this essay attempts to uphold that human mind is nonphysical with the theory of dualism. The key idea of it is that human is a kind of substance that consists of two distinct properties-the physical body and the nonphysical mind. Nagel (1974), being one of the most successful defenders of the theory, proposes his argument from qualia which involves two premises and a conclusion:
(1) The qualia of a bat are unknowable to us (who lacks the qualia of a bat).
(2) The physical properties of a bat are knowable to us (who lacks the qualia of a bat).
∴ (3) The qualia of a bat are not the physical properties of a bat.
Dualism accounts for subjective experiences which materialism is unable to do so. First of all, it is necessary here to clarify exactly what is meant by the word “qualia”. Qualia refers to the most basic phenomena associated with consciousness and thinking of animate beings (Warburton, 2004). By applying on the above argument, it means the feeling of “what it is like” to be a bat. Although the physical properties of the occurrences in the nervous system of a bat are publicly accessible, the first-person subjective perspective of the experiencer remains inscrutable to every individual other than it. Referring it back to human, the particular feel to a conscious experience such as sensations, desire, and pain in human is only explainable under the prerequisite that the mind is nonphysical, but impossible to be
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Nagel offers the example of the bat and states that one could try to imagine what it is like to be a bat by “imagining some combination of additions, subtractions, and modification”(Nagel 5). However, we can see that this imagining would only tell us what it is like for ourselves to be a bat. This is important because it shows that, although we can break down the objective properties of a bat, it doesn’t allow us to understand the bats subjective character. Lastly, the two-pronged conclusion.
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