Kiah Prince

Thomas Nagel and the Problem with Physical Reduction

100855854

In Thomas Nagels What Is It Like To Be a Bat? he takes a stance against physicalism by pointing out the problem consciousness brings to the theory, and he uses his argument of the subjective character of experience to do so. This is outlined by the quote, If the subjective character of experience is fully comprehensible only from one point of view, then any shift to greater objectivitythat is, less attachment to a specific viewpoint does not take us nearer to the real nature of the phenomenon: it takes us farther away from it. (Nagel, 1974, p. 444). To outline the implications of this quote, I will first describe what he means when he refers to the subjective character of experience, I will then move on to argue how his argument applies to the problem physicalism has with consciousness, and what it implies for the mind-body problem. Nagel describes experience as being a deeply subjective concept and how it would be impossible to truly understand what it would be like to be another organism of either the same or a different species. In Nagels paper What Is It Like To Be a Bat? he explains how we can try to imagine what being a bat would be like (e.g., using sonar, sleeping upside down, eating bugs) but we can only get as far as imagining what it would be like for us to behave as a bat behaves and not how the bat truly experiences its experiences. Nagels subjective character of experience is the idea that if an organism has conscious mental states, then there is something that it is like to be that organism. Essentially, each organism has a unique subjective perspective and conscious experience that is only comprehensible from the organisms point of view. Nagel believes that no concept of physical reduction can fully explain conscious experience. Physicalism is the view that everything that exists is no more extensive than its physical properties. The mind-body problem is the problem of understanding the relationship between the mind and the physical matter of the body. A typical physicalist reduction to explain the mind-body problem would be that the mind is the brain. In this reduction, and others like it, Nagel argues that the word is doesnt adequately describe anything about how or why the mind and brain are the same, and that we have no concept of their relation. Also, if mental processes are physical processes, then there must be something that it is like to have those processes, which is not properly explained by physicalism. He is not saying that physicalism is necessarily wrong, but instead, that we do not have any conception of how it might be true. The theory is not yet falsifiable. For Nagel, conscious experience is an intrinsically subjective point of view. By attempting to remove conscious experience from the subjective view so as to bring it to a more objective definition, only distorts the definition of consciousness and removes what is essential to understanding the phenomenon of conscious experience. Instead of coming up with a solution to the mind-body problem, Nagel argues that we may never be able to find a solution or, that perhaps we will never be able to comprehend it. This mentality coincides with what the philosopher John R. Searle calls mysterianism. Searle describes mysterianism in his book Mind: A Brief Introduction as the belief that humans cannot explain the hard problem of consciousness. Although I personally do believe that we may someday be able to comprehend the conscious mind, I would have to say that I agree with Nagel when he mentions that more thought should be given to the general problem of subjective and objective descriptions before we can contemplate a physical theory. If we could fully understand that experiences have objective nature, or that objective processes can have subjective nature, then perhaps we could form a physical description of consciousness.

Kiah Prince References:

Thomas Nagel and the Problem with Physical Reduction

100855854

Nagel, Thomas. What Is It Like To Be A Bat? The Philosophical Review. Vol. 83, No. 4 (1974), p. 435-450. Searle, R. John. Mind: A Brief Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.