Thomas Nagel

In “What is is like to be a bat?”, Thomas Nagel claims that in humanity 's attempts to reduce the mind into more basic forms, we have removed an essential part of the mind -- what it’s like to hold the point of view of another (393). Nagel points out that experiencing an event in one’s own way is a key condition to the determination of mental states (392). Moreover, until there exists a form of examining the mind that includes the subjective, Nagel believes we have no objective or universal form of understanding the mind (392-393). This would make it apparent that if someone wished to examine the essence of mental states in order to objectify them, he or she should consider the subjective. However, many of the current reductionist models strive

They have friends who fall in and out of love. They have seen what it does to their friends. On the other hand, without ever experiencing the emotional hysteria associated with forming a strong attachment to a non parental figure, he or she can never truly understand what his or her friend is going through. Albeit, what does aid in his understanding would be to compare it to another subjective experience. And if he could combine the objective understanding that he has gained from the exposure to his grieving friend with similar experiences of loss, then maybe he will be able to gain a more encompassing empathetic view of heartbreak. What reductionist efforts have done though, in relation to the understanding of experience, has taken out any form of analogous comparison. In order to understand an experience, one cannot only study the brain, but also has to make connections to the subjective experience that would be relatable. Similar mistakes in reduction have been made in studies like optics in wave-particle duality theory. For awhile, we weren’t willing to look from a binocular perspective, when in reality light acts as both a wave and a

Throughout his piece on “What is it like to be a bat?”, Nagel holds steady to his proposition that we are doing something wrong in our search for a universal perspective. It should be noted that Nagel originally published this work in 1974. His supposition may now be anachronic. Taking into account our evolving methodology in studying the morphologies of the brain, Nagel would likely be pleased to see that our novel tricks have started to peck away at gaining an understanding of perception. On the other hand, quite impossibly would he consider this the key to understanding our perception. Likely, he would feel that these methods still whip out the shears to cut subjectivity from the picture. Only now after they’ve sheared off the the subjective, they try to glue on a different subjectivity. It’s like when a man starts to bald and decides to get a toupée. It’s close, but still a little