Knowledge Tree
Relations (1)
cross_type 2.81 — strongly supporting 6 facts
Thomas Nagel is fundamentally linked to the concept of subjective experience through his seminal work, which defines consciousness as the presence of a 'subjective character' or 'what it is like' to be a system {fact:1, fact:2, fact:4}. He famously articulated the difficulty of capturing this subjective experience through objective physical descriptions, notably in his analysis of bat consciousness {fact:3, fact:5, fact:6}.
Facts (6)
Sources
Consciousness (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Fall 2025 ... plato.stanford.edu 2 facts
claimThomas Nagel argues that bats are conscious because they experience their world through echo-locatory senses, creating a subjective experience that humans cannot empathetically understand from a human point of view.
claimThomas Nagel's "what it is like" criterion defines a conscious organism as a being for whom there is a subjective way the world seems or appears from that creature's mental or experiential point of view.
The Hard Problem of Consciousness | Springer Nature Link link.springer.com 1 fact
claimThomas Nagel's example regarding the impossibility of knowing what it feels like to be a bat supports the same rationale as the knowledge argument, suggesting that physical knowledge does not capture the subjective experience.
Hard Problem of Consciousness | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy iep.utm.edu 1 fact
quoteThomas Nagel calls for a future 'objective phenomenology' which will 'describe, at least in part, the subjective character of experiences in a form comprehensible to beings incapable of having those experiences.'
A harder problem of consciousness: reflections on a 50-year quest ... frontiersin.org 1 fact
claimThomas Nagel introduced the concept of qualia into mainstream philosophical discourse in his 1974 paper, 'What Is It Like to Be a Bat?', which articulated the difficulty of explaining subjective experience in objective terms.
Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence? A Framework for Classifying ... arxiv.org 1 fact
claimThe authors of 'Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence? A Framework for Classifying Objections and Constraints' define consciousness as phenomenal consciousness, which Thomas Nagel described as the fact of there being 'something it is like' to be a system, involving qualia or subjective experience.