Subjective character of experience

The subjective character of experience is a term in psychology and the philosophy of mind denoting that all subjective phenomena are associated with a single point of view ("ego"). The term was coined and illuminated by Thomas Nagel in his famous paper "What Is it Like to Be a Bat?"^[1]

Nagel argues that, because bats are apparently conscious mammals with a way of perceiving their environment entirely different from that of human beings, it is impossible to speak of "what is it like to be a bat for the bat" or, while the example of the bat is particularly illustrative, any conscious species, as each organism has a unique point of view from which no other organism can gather experience.^{[citation needed]} To Nagel, the subjective character of experience implies the cognitive closure of the human mind to some facts, specifically the mental states that physical states create.

See also

• Dualism (philosophy of mind)
• Functionalism
• Hallucinations in the sane
• Inverted spectrum
• Mary's Room
• Multiverse
• Philosophical zombies
• Philosophy of mind
• Philosophy of perception
• Physicalism
• Pragmatism
• Qualia
• Synesthesia
• The map is not the territory
• Vertiginous question

References

• Michael, L.A. (2007). The Principles of Existence & Beyond: Revelation of Enigma of the Existence. Visual Memes. ISBN 978-1-84799-199-7. OCLC 749947766.
• Song, D. Subjective Universe: Interweaving Matter and Mind through Cyclical Time. 2020

This page was last edited on 1 September 2023, at 18:46