In today’s society, the mind is a set of cognitive elements which enables an individual’s consciousness, perception, thinking, judgement, and memory. In addition, without our minds and/or conscious experiences, a person would not be able to understand what makes them who they are. Similarly, in Thomas Nagel’s essay “What Is It Like to Be a Bat,” Nagel claims that even though there is something it is like to be an organism, humans are not capable of fully knowing what it is like to be a bat. In addition, Nagel supports his claims through the importance of an organism’s conscious experiences, memories, and knowledge which allow an individual to identify themselves. Therefore, in this paper I will discuss Nagel’s argument which I believe
In accordance to the argument from analogy, although an individual may experience the same sensations or feelings as I do, this does not mean that we share the same conscious experiences. For example, let’s consider the conscious experiences between a blind man and a man with normal eyesight who partake in the same routines and/or activities throughout their day. In this scenario, both men cannot claim that they know what it is like to be the other person based on their different experiences with their sense of vision. In other words, the man who has normal eyesight is usually able to understand what he is reading, eating, or doing at a certain time throughout his day. However, for the blind man, he does not have the ability to rely on his sense of vision in order to understand what activities he partakes in. Therefore, although both men have the ability to understand how each other’s senses work and/or feel, their experiences with vision, taste, smell, touch, and hearing can only be shared with themselves and no one else. For this reason, Nagel would say that both men could not know what it is like to be the other person because of the lack of prior knowledge, memories, or
In Thomas Nagel’s work, Death, he argued that death is bad. In this essay, I will present Nagel’s thesis and explain how Nagel believes that death is harmful. Then I will address the three objections and rebuttals provided in his paper. Finally, I will evaluate Nagel’s response to the asymmetry objection.
...is an account of the birth of self-consciousness through intersubjectivity or the integration within culture. It is a dialectical interpretation that acts, for Hegel, as a form for perceiving the way in which the self comes to know itself through the other and through historical processes. The master/slave dialectic is an early account of intersubjectivity and also a lack of intersubjectivity because it is not based on equal recognition. Self-consciousness, for Hegel, is attained only through the recognition by another independent self. The human world is a world based on recognition, and the human being has within themselves the desire for recognition from other human beings. Hegel proposes that one cannot become a self-conscious individual without seeing oneself in another, and that each individual bases their existence on a world that is founded upon recognition.
An important precondition for Hegel's examination of the sensual is his caveat that sense-certainty must not use complex concepts of any kind to express that which it knows. In this sense, Hegel treats sense-certainty as the realm whose truth is expressed as pure being or ISNESS, as opposed to mediated forms that understand ISNESS in a wider context of meaning (Hegel, 91). By insisting on this limitation, Hegel treats sense-certainty as stripped down to bare assertions of sensual experience, allowing the phenomenologist to examine the sensual based solely on what it is capable of showing us on its own. Indeed, it is this litmus test of self-sufficient communication that sets the stage for Hegel to return sensuality to the universal conceptual framework that supports it once it has been seen to fail in its own right.
The narrator of “My Life as a Bat” believes in reincarnation, and believes in her last life she was a bat. She knows by her bat like experiences. Whether it be her dislike of human hair, to her bat
The term ‘analogy’ is very vague in nature, but when used in this context, we assume that the behavior of other people is in many ways analogous in reference to causes. These causes being behavior directed from sensation or thought. It is apparent and observable that people or beings other then I behave in ways in which we behave when placed in different situations. For example sadness or the nature of anger or happiness can be seen in others. Others then can and do react to different causes similar to the way in which I do as well. Another consideration is that of shared experience. Russell uses the example of two friends having a conversation in which memoirs are explored. These two individuals have shared experiences together. They eventually discover that each other’s memories aid each other in recalling information forgotten with time. (Russell 89)
As presented in the Phenomenology of Spirit, the aim of Life is to free itself from confinement "in-itself" and to become "for-itself." Not only does Hegel place this unfolding of Life at the very beginning of the dialectical development of self-consciousness, but he characterizes self-consciousness itself as a form of Life and points to the advancement of self-consciousness in the Master/Slave dialectic as the development of Life becoming "for-itself." This paper seeks to delineate this often overlooked thread of dialectical insight as it unfolds in the Master/Slave dialectic. Hegel articulates a vision of the place of human self-consciousness in the process of Life as a whole and throws light on the role of death as an essential ingredient in the epic drama of life's struggle and Spirit's birth.
Myers, G. D., (2010).Psychology (9th ed.). In T. Kuehn & P. Twickler (Eds.), The Biology of Mind. (p.64). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.
The purpose of this academic piece is to critically discuss The Darwinist implication of the evolutionary psychological conception of human nature. Charles Darwin’s “natural selection” will be the main factor discussed as the theory of evolution was developed by him. Evolutionary psychology is the approach on human nature on the basis that human behavior is derived from biological factors and there are psychologists who claim that human behavior is not something one is born with but rather it is learned. According to Downes, S. M. (2010 fall edition) “Evolutionary psychology is one of the many biologically informed approaches to the study of human behavior”. This goes further to implicate that evolutionary psychology is virtually based on the claims of the human being a machine that can be programmed to do certain things and because it can be programmed it has systems in the body that allow such to happen for instance the nervous system which is the connection of the spinal cord and the brain and assists in voluntary and involuntary motor movements.
In his 1971 paper “Personal Identity”, Derek Parfit posits that it is possible and indeed desirable to free important questions from presuppositions about personal identity without losing all that matter. In working out how to do so, Parfit comes to the conclusion that “the question of identity has no importance” (Parfit, 1971, p. 4.2:3). In this essay, I will attempt to show that Parfit’s thesis is a valid one, with positive implications for human behaviour. The first section of the essay will examine the thesis in further detail, and the second will assess how Parfit’s claims fare in the face of criticism. Problems of personal identity generally involve questions about what makes one the person one is and what it takes for the same person to exist at separate times (Olson, 2010).
Thomas Nagel begins his collection of essays with a most intriguing discussion about death. Death being one of the most obviously important subjects of contemplation, Nagel takes an interesting approach as he tries to define the truth as to whether death is, or is not, a harm for that individual. Nagel does a brilliant job in attacking this issue from all sides and viewpoints, and it only makes sense that he does it this way in order to make his own observations more credible.
Consciousness begins as what Hegel calls "a natural consciousness" (56). That which is known to this consciousness "will prove to be knowledge only in conception, not in reality" (56). This kind of consciousness assumes knowledge of reality that is often refuted. Hegel says, "since natural consciousness does forthwith think it really knows, it views its own experiential course in a negative light, taking the very realization of its conception to be instead its own loss" (57), demonstrating the frailty of this method of thought.
In ?What is it like to be a bat??, Nagel attempts to distinguish between objective and subjective conscious experience. He begins his paper by explaining how ?consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem intractable? (p. 534) and why reductionists must use this in order to come to a true conclusion about the mind. He uses the ?what is it like to be a bat? example to support this argument because he wants to prove that the mind has a subjective aspect to it. However, this argument already begins with a flaw. This argument presupposes that a bat is a thinking, conscious being. He even states this prior to the bat example when he states ?Conscious experience is a widespread pheno...
Consciousness is one of those topics that are in the position of trying to understand one’s own organism with one’s own organism. The topic of consciousness is so elusive that it mirrors child hood games of trying to catch your own shadow. In the World of philosophy, discerning the truth about consciousness is no childish game. Materialist J.J.C Smart and philosopher Thomas Nagel agree that qualia exist, but are diametrically opposed when it comes to what consciousness is. In this paper I will argue for Nagel’s point of view that consciousness falls outside the nucleus of scientific explanation. Physicalism cannot objectively uncover consciousness using scientific methods because consciousness cannot be reduced to material parts. If Smart’s reductionist view points were correct, where as physics can explain all there is to know about everything in the universe, then why does consciousness seem to evade physical laws of investigation? Explaining consciousness provides physicalism with challenges that place limits on scientific knowledge, and what it can uncover about consciousness.
Speculations on the origin of the mind have ranged from ghosts to society. Each new theory brings about more speculation and disagreement than the last. Where the mind resides, where it came from and if the brain has any involvement with the concept are common questions that fuel theory paradigms. Those questions are also the foundation of the debate about the roll of experience versus the existence of innate capacities. Steven Pinker theorizes the mind as a computing system created by the brain to fill the gap between innate capacities and capacities missing using common sense and learned critical thinking skills.
... Since we are all unique, we all have a precise and specific “imprinting protocol” that makes us human. Finding our exact “imprint” is “the mystery of the human person” (Cortez, 93). But, “the emergence of higher-level properties and complex systems with novel properties. cannot be comprehensively understood in lower-level terms alone,” affirming that what defines a physical being as being “human,” or what delineates David as a “real boy” is ultimately abstract and unknown (Cortez, 94).