Nagel writes: “Our own experience provides the basic material for imagination, w

Nagel writes: “Our own experience provides the basic material for imagination, whose range is therefore limited. It will not help to try to imagine that one has webbing on one’s arms, which enables one to fly around at dusk and dawn catching insects in one’s mouth; that one has very poor vision, and perceives the surrounding world be a system of reflected high-frequency sound signals; and that one spends the day hanging upside down by one’s feet in an attic. In so far as I can imagine this…it tells me only what it would be like for me to behave as a bat behaves. But…I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat.”
Why doesn’t the fact that I can imagine having webbed wings, or catching bugs, or having poor eyesight etc., help me imagine what it would like to be a bat? What’s the difference between imagining, on the one hand, what it is like to behave like a bat, and on the other, what it is like for a bat to be a bat?
Do you think Nagel’s argument “proves too much”? That is to say, can I imagine what it would be like to be a different person? Why or why not?

Posted in Uncategorized

Place this order or similar order and get an amazing discount. USE Discount code “GET20” for 20% discount