What is it like to be a bat?
Thomas Nagel’s classic essay “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” prompts renewed debate over whether consciousness can be fully explained in physical or functional terms, or whether there is an irreducible “what it’s like” aspect that science struggles to capture. Commenters explore competing views—physicalism, dualism, panpsychism, and more pragmatic research attitudes—while drawing analogies to animal minds, AI systems like LLMs, human sensory differences, and programming “umwelten” (e.g., learning Vim or Lisp) as ways to probe subjective experience. Many accept that we lack a precise definition of consciousness but argue that empirical progress in neuroscience and AI can still proceed, even if the hard problem remains conceptually unsettled.
Nature of consciousness and reductionism
- Some see the essay as a critique of strict reductionism: objective physical accounts fail to capture subjective experience (“what it’s like”), but that doesn’t automatically make consciousness metaphysically “special.”
- Others argue Nagel pushes toward rejecting reductionism entirely, which would collapse distinctions between levels (particles vs. consciousness). Critics reply that this misreads him: he’s marking limits, not abolishing levels of description.
- Physicalism vs. alternatives is heavily debated. Pro‑physicalists appeal to neuroscience and interaction problems for dualism; opponents argue that no description of brain states explains why there is any experience rather than none.
The phrase “what it is like”
- A long subthread disputes whether “there is something it is like to be X” is meaningful or just a linguistic trick.
- Defenders say it’s a concise way to pick out subjective experience and distinguish conscious from non‑conscious systems.
- Skeptics claim the term is circular, defined only via equally vague notions (“qualia,” “subjective experience”), and smuggles in dualism.
- Some note that translations into other languages drop the “like”/comparison flavor, suggesting the English phrasing may be rhetorically loaded but not essential.
Animal minds and ethical stakes
- Many assume bats and other mammals are conscious, citing evolutionary continuity and behavioral evidence; a minority question this and push on the lack of a strict definition.
- Discussion touches on whether consciousness requires self‑reflection, or whether simple “what it’s like” experience (pain, hunger, perception) suffices.
- Ethical implications surface: if animals lack subjectivity, almost anything becomes permissible; if they do have it, pain and preference matter morally.
AI, “batfishing,” and p‑zombies
- A proposed term “batfished” means being tricked into ascribing subjectivity to non‑sentient systems (e.g., LLMs). Some like the coinage; others say “anthropomorphizing” already covers this.
- Participants ask whether an LLM run has “something it’s like to be it.” Most are skeptical but note we lack a crisp test, mirroring the bat problem.
- P‑zombies (behaviorally identical but without inner life) and simulation scenarios are invoked to argue both for and against physicalism and for limits of certainty.
Self, free will, and first‑person limits
- Several comments distinguish “raw” experience from meta‑cognition (“knowing that you know”) and debate whether the latter is necessary for consciousness.
- Free will is contested: some tie consciousness to the ability to choose; others argue decisions are fully determined physical processes, with “will” an illusion generated by self‑monitoring brains.
- There’s recurring worry that we can only truly know “what it’s like” to be ourselves right now; even our own past experience is reconstructive and unreliable.
Neuroscience, measurement, and progress
- One side insists we lack even a usable definition of consciousness; others respond that many sciences start with fuzzy targets (dark matter, SIDS) and refine concepts pragmatically.
- Empirical work—brain lesions, anesthesia, blindsight, facial recognition, echolocation training—shows tight links between brain states and reported experience, which physicalists cite as strong (if incomplete) evidence.
- Integrated Information Theory and similar frameworks are mentioned as attempts at quantitative measures, but their status remains contested.
Umwelten and transformed perception
- The concept of “umwelt” (species‑specific experiential world) is extended to human skills: learning Vim, Lisp, Haskell, music theory, or array programming can permanently change what structures we “see” in code or text.
- This is tied back to Nagel: you can’t fully understand another umwelt—bat, blind person, or functional programmer—without partially living it, not just having it described.