The mind-body problem is a very unique problem. Having consciousness is what makes this problem so difficult. Without having consciousness, the mind-body problem would be much simpler and less interesting. In fact, most reductionist theories don’t even try to explain this problem. Concerning consciousness, it’s difficult to provide evidence of it but it is found at many different levels of animal life. Consciousness is referred to as being able to know what it’s like to be that organism. In this way, consciousness is a subjective experience. The most difficult part is obtaining an account of the physical basis of mind. Since the mind is subjective, its associated with a single point of view whereas, if you try to obtain a physical theory,
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Bats have the ability of possessing sonar which is very unlike any ability of humans. This is the main reason why Nagel choose bats as his example. His argument is that you can imagine yourself to behave as a bat behaves but you can’t imagine what it’s like for a bat to be a bat. He argues that you are restricted to the resources of your own mind and those resources aren’t adequate. The experiences you can imagine as being a bat aren’t like the actual experiences of being that animal. In the same way as we are limited, bats are also limited as they can’t successful imagine what it’s like to be a human. Angel also argues that there are some things that the human species will never be able to …show more content…
This is made difficult if you have few similarities with the person who you’re trying to experience their point of view. The more similar you are to a person, the easier it is so experience their point of view. This applies directly to the mind-body problem since there’s only one point of view concerning the facts of experience. To make something objective would be to have it depend less on a human viewpoint. The problem is that experience doesn’t fit into this. To try to make experience more objective would cause us to go farther away from the real nature of the phenomenon. One problem is that if we accept that there is a physical part of the mind that controls for subjective experience, then we have no idea how this process is
Bats have the ability of possessing sonar which is very unlike any ability of humans. This is the main reason why Nagel choose bats as his example. His argument is that you can imagine yourself to behave as a bat behaves but you can’t imagine what it’s like for a bat to be a bat. He argues that you are restricted to the resources of your own mind and those resources aren’t adequate. The experiences you can imagine as being a bat aren’t like the actual experiences of being that animal. In the same way as we are limited, bats are also limited as they can’t successful imagine what it’s like to be a human. Angel also argues that there are some things that the human species will never be able to …show more content…
This is made difficult if you have few similarities with the person who you’re trying to experience their point of view. The more similar you are to a person, the easier it is so experience their point of view. This applies directly to the mind-body problem since there’s only one point of view concerning the facts of experience. To make something objective would be to have it depend less on a human viewpoint. The problem is that experience doesn’t fit into this. To try to make experience more objective would cause us to go farther away from the real nature of the phenomenon. One problem is that if we accept that there is a physical part of the mind that controls for subjective experience, then we have no idea how this process is