Philosopher Nagel famously said "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?"
You can read about it here.
IMO there is nothing profound about it. Let me explain...
Let me first discuss what I understand Nagel is saying. Human anatomy and physiology is different from that of Bats. Both are mammals, however Bats can fly and use sound waves to locate objects in their flight path. Humans obviously use light waves to see the world around us. The when Nagel talks about it in terms of different classes i.e. Humans and Bats I partly agree with what he is saying. However the key word to observe in his statement is like to be as opposed to purely be. In other other words he did not say What is it to Be a Bat. I think this makes a whole lot of difference.
IMO, thinking of this statement in terms of classes, Humans vs Bats, is imprecise. We can think of it first in terms of instances of bats i.e. Bat 1 and Bat 2. It is a trivial observation that two bats generally have same physiology and anatomy (or for the purposes of this example we can assume that to be true for Bat 1 and Bat 2). I think you will agree that Bat 1 will know What it is Like to be Bat 2. However, Bat 1 will not know how What is to Be Bat 2. The word be is by definition relative reference to Bat 2. I think you will agree that by similar logic Human 1 will know (or can imagine, may be with the aid of animation) What it is Like to be Bat 2. Human 1 will not know What is to Be Bat 2. You see my point? Hope so. And for that matter it is true for even non-living objects like two stones which are identically shaped and made out of same material, if the concept of identity has to have any meaning at all.
Good authors themselves imagine what it is like to be the characters they write about in their novels all the time. Same is true with movie directors and actors. Heck, even we are asked to do the same if we want to emotionally and fully grasp the novels and movies. And in fact it is true, that we enjoy novels and movies, when we actually practice, imagining the characters in novels we are reading or movies we are watching. And we do this all the time for non-human characters - Neytiri in movie Avatar or even non-living characters - Hal 9000 in space Odyssey 2001.
It is understood Batman definitely knew "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?"
Some may call it nit picking. But, philosophy is about nit picking. However, that difference in meaning has profound implications for the ideas that weather or not science can some day explain/describe consciousness and first person experience. Nagel's "What is it like to be a bat?" (implying, no it is not possible) statement is used by many to assert that Science (or Scientists) will NEVER be able to explain or describe someone's consciousness or first person experience because science cannot directly access that individual's consciousness or first person experience by being them. However that is a fallacy. The consciousness or first person experience are by definition relative notions to that individual. I think this is a obvious and trivial point, yet it needs to be made here.
Some day I will write about David Chalmer's Hard Problem of Consciousness along similar lines.
Disclaimer
Nagel, David Chalmers are million times smarter than I am. Therefore my thinking on these topics may be wrong.
But do you think any amount of 3rd-person knowledge about, say, your physiology, could ever logically entail what it feels like to be you?
How could it ever be possible, even in principle, to derive the what-it's-like of your subjective, qualitative, 1st-person experience from the objective, purely quantitative, 3rd-person description of your physiological processes?
To me, it seems undeniable that there is a true ontological gap between these two descriptions. And if physicalism is true, you shouldn't even need to derive one from the other, since both descriptions should literally be describing the *exact same thing*. e.g. Your experience of being in pain isn't *caused* by certain brain processes, it literally *just is* those brain processes. Does that seem l…