MindPapers: 1.2a. What is it Like?

Akins, Kathleen (1993). A bat without qualities? In Martin Davies & Glyn W. Humphreys (eds.), Consciousness: Psychological and Philosophical Essays. Blackwell. (Cited by 24 | Google | Annotation)

Akins, Kathleen (1993). What is it like to be Boring and myopic? In B. Dahlbom (ed.), Dennett and His Critics. Blackwell. (Cited by 22 | Google | Annotation)

Alter, Torin (2002). Nagel on imagination and physicalism. Journal of Philosophical Research 27:143-58. (Cited by 2 | Google)

Beisecker, David (2005). Phenomenal consciousness, sense impressions, and the logic of 'what it's like'. In Ralph D. (Ed) Ellis & Natika (Ed). Newton (eds.), Consciousness & Emotion: Agency, Conscious Choice, and Selective Perception. John Benjamins. (Cited by 1 | Google)

Blackmore, Susan J. (2003). What is it like to be...? In Susan J. Blackmore (ed.), Consciousness: An Introduction. Oxford University Press. (Google)

BonJour, Laurence A. (manuscript). What is it like to be human (instead of a bat). (Google)

Abstract: My purpose in this paper is to discuss and defend an objection to physicalist or materialist accounts of the mind—one that I believe to be essentially conclusive. [1] The argument in question is not new. A version of it seems to be lurking, alon g with much else, in Thomas Nagel's famous paper "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" [2]; and a somewhat more explicit version is to be found in a well-known paper by Frank Jackson.[3] Despite the efforts of Nagel and Jackson (and some others), however, I believe that the most compelling version of the argument has not emerged clearly, with the result that responses that in fact fail to speak to its central point are widely taken to be adequate. Thus one purpose of the present paper is to offer what I regard as a more perspicuous restatement of the Nagel-Jackson argument, one which shows clearly why the responses in question do not work. A second purpose is to suggest that the application of the argument is in fact very much wider than the case of phenomenal properties or qualia upon which both Nagel and Jackson focus, that it in fact applies just as well to the content of intentional mental states like thoughts and indeed to the general phenomenon of consciousness itself

Flanagan, Owen J. (1985). Consciousness, naturalism and Nagel. Journal of Mind and Behavior 6:373-90. (Cited by 2 | Google | Annotation)

Foss, Jeffrey E. (1989). On the logic of what it is like to be a conscious subject. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 67 (June):305-320. (Cited by 5 | Google | More links | Annotation)

Hacker, P. M. S. (2002). Is there anything it is like to be a bat? Philosophy 77 (300):157-174. (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)

Hanna, Patricia (1992). If you can't talk about it, you can't talk about it: A response to H.o. Mounce. Philosophical Investigations 15 (2):185-190. (Google)

Hanna, Patricia (1990). Must thinking bats be conscious? Philosophical Investigations 13 (October):350-55. (Google)

Hellie, Benj (2007). `There's something it's like' and the structure of consciousness. Philosophical Review 116 (3). (Cited by 1 | Google)

Hill, Christopher S. (1977). Of bats, brains, and minds. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 38 (September):100-106. (Google | More links)

Kulvicki, John (2007). What is what it's like? Introducing perceptual modes of presentation. Synthese 156 (2). (Google | More links)

Abstract: The central claim of this paper is that what it is like to see green or any other perceptible property is just the perceptual mode of presentation of that property. Perceptual modes of presentation are important because they help resolve a tension in current work on consciousness. Philosophers are pulled by three mutually inconsistent theses: representational externalism, representationalism, and phenomenal internalism. I throw my hat in with defenders of the first two: the externalist representationalists. We are faced with the problem of explaining away intuitions that favor phenomenal internalism. Perceptual modes of presentation account for what it is like to see properties in a way that accommodates those intuitions without vindicating phenomenal internalism itself. Perceptual MoPs therefore provide a new way of being an externalist representationalist

Lewis, David (1983). Postscript to "mad pain and Martian pain". Philosophical Papers 1:122-133. (Cited by 23 | Google | Annotation)

Lormand, Eric (2004). The explanatory stopgap. Philosophical Review 113 (3):303-57. (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)

Malatesti, Luca (2004). Knowing what it is like and knowing how. In Alberto Peruzzi (ed.), Mind and Causality. John Benjamins. (Google)

Maloney, J. Christopher (1986). About being a bat. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 64 (March):26-49. (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)

McCulloch, Gregory (1988). What it is like. Philosophical Quarterly 38 (January):1-19. (Cited by 5 | Google | More links | Annotation)

McMullen, C. (1985). 'Knowing what it's like' and the essential indexical. Philosophical Studies 48 (September):211-33. (Cited by 12 | Google | Annotation)

Medina, Jeffrey A. (2002). What it's like and why: Subjective qualia explained as objective phenomena. Cerebrals Online Journal 12:12. (Google | More links)

Abstract: Notably spurred into the philosophical forefront by Thomas Nagel's 'What Is It Like To Be a Bat?' decades ago, and since maintained by a number of advocates of dualism since that critical publication, is the assertion that our inability to know 'what it's like' to be someone or something else is inexplicable given physicalism. Contrary to this well-known and central objection, I find that a consistent and exhaustive physicalism is readily conceivable. I develop one such theory and demonstrate that not only is it consistent with the private and varied nature of subjective experience, it, in fact, entails it

Mellor, D. H. (1993). Nothing like experience. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 63:1-16. (Cited by 14 | Google | Annotation)

Nagasawa, Yujin (2003). Thomas versus Thomas: A new approach to Nagel's bat argument. Inquiry 46 (3):377-395. (Google | More links)

Abstract: In this paper I examine Thomas Nagel's familiar challenge to physicalism. Nagel famously uses his vivid example about the sensory apparatus of bats to illustrate the difficulty of providing a purely physical characterization of phenomenal experience. Adapting Thomas Aquinas's principle regarding the nature of divine omnipotence, I argue that the fact that we cannot know what it is like to be a bat does not threaten physicalism

Nagel, Thomas (1974). What is it like to be a bat? Philosophical Review 83 (October):435-50. (Cited by 1354 | Google | More links | Annotation)

Nelkin, Norton (1987). What is it like to be a person? Mind and Language 2:220-41. (Cited by 5 | Google | Annotation)

Nemirow, Laurence (1990). Physicalism and the cognitive role of acquaintance. In William G. Lycan (ed.), Mind and Cognition. Blackwell. (Cited by 55 | Google | Annotation)

Nemirow, Laurence (1980). Review of Nagel's mortal questions. Philosophical Review 89:473-7. (Cited by 6 | Google | Annotation)

Pugmire, David R. (1989). Bat or Batman. Philosophy 64 (April):207-17. (Google | Annotation)

Rudd, Anthony J. (1999). What it's like and what's really wrong with physicalism: A Wittgensteinian perspective. Journal of Consciousness Studies 5 (4):454-63. (Google)

Russow, L. (1982). It's not like that to be a bat. Behaviorism 10:55-63. (Cited by 3 | Google | Annotation)

Simoni-Wastila, Henry (2000). Particularity and consciousness: Wittgenstein and Nagel on privacy, beetles and bats. Philosophy Today 44 (4):415-425. (Google)

Teller, Paul R. (1992). Subjectivity and knowing what it's like. In Ansgar Beckermann, Hans Flohr & Jaegwon Kim (eds.), Emergence or Reduction?: Prospects for Nonreductive Physicalism. De Gruyter. (Cited by 4 | Google)

Tilghman, B. R. (1991). What is it like to be an aardvark? Philosophy 66 (July):325-38. (Cited by 1 | Google | Annotation)

Wider, Kathleen (1989). Overtones of solipsism in Nagel's 'what is it like to be a bat?' And 'the view from nowhere'. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 49:481-99. (Google | Annotation)

Wright, Edmond L. (1996). What it isn't like. American Philosophical Quarterly 33 (1):23-42. (Cited by 4 | Google)

1.2a	What is it Like? [35]

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