The Comparison of 'Physicalism' and 'What is It Like to be a Bat?' of Thomas Nagel in the Context of the Search for Giving an Objective Account of Consciousness

Date

2017-06-01

Author

Tümkaya, Serdal

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

166
views

0
downloads

"What is it Like to be a Bat" (1974) and "The View from Nowhere" (1986) of Thomas Nagel are two extremely cited pieces of analytic philosophy in the last century. The arguments presented in those works have been frequently cited as either problems of giving an objective-scientific account of consciousness or an outright denial of the possibility of a physicalist characterization of it. After summarizing all of them, I turn to show why they are mistaken. By this, I hope I will be able to show that all these mistakes are originated from either blatantly ignoring his objective phenomenology project or misunderstanding it. The reasons that I use to explain these misperceptions would also suggest that Nagel's objective phenomenology project is some sort of constructing a theoretical and conceptual ground to have an objective account of the subjective aspect of experience.

Subject Keywords

Thomas nagel, Physicalism, Objectivism, Reductionism, Being a bat

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/56167

Journal

BEYTULHIKME-AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

Collections

Department of Philosophy, Article

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Thomas Nagel’ın ’Fizikalizm’ ve ’Yarasa Olmak Nasıl Bir Şeydir’ Makalelerinin Bilince Nesnel Bir Açıklama Verme Arayışı Açısından Kıyaslanması Tümkaya, Serdal (2017-01-01) What is it Like to be a Bat” (1974) and “The View from Nowhere” (1986) of Thomas Nagel are two extremely cited pieces of analytic philosophy in the last century. The arguments presented in those works have been frequently cited as either problems of giving an objective-scientific account of consciousness or an outright denial of the possibility of a physicalist characterization of it. After summarizing all of them, I turn to show why they are mistaken. By this, I hope I will be able to show that all these m...
A critical assessment of John Rawls’s Theory of Justice as fairness Eryılmaz, Ene; İnam, Ahmet.; Department of Philosophy (2019) This dissertation is a critical analysis of John Rawls’s theory of justice in its historical and philosophical context. To that end, his works from A Theory of Justice (1971) to Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (2001) are examined. Not only Rawls’s theory of justice but also his approach to metaphysics and metaethics are also tackled to understand justice as fairness deeply. While setting out Rawls’s main arguments and theses, a critical approach is adopted with his foremost critics. This study thus searc...
The Relationship of art and truth in the philosophy of Heidegger / Kurt, Fikret; Ceylan, Yasin; Department of Philosophy (2014) Revolutionary vision of Heidegger’s philosophy is rooted into the unthinking of the history of philosophy, and his extraordinary endeavor is to unravel whatever remained ignored under the courses of traditional philosophy: The meaning of the question of Being. By interrogating the meaning of the question of Being, Heidegger traces back to reveal the essential horizons related to the origin of thought and truth. Heidegger criticizes the traditional understanding of truth based on correspondence theory of tru...
The visual formation of cartesian subject in modern metaphysics : a critique of Cogito philosophy Ganioğlu, Zafer; Akçay, Ali Adnan; Department of Sociology (2006) This thesis scrutinizes modern metaphysics through a specific reading and critique of Cartesian Philosophy. In the study, the concepts of metaphysics, ideology, modernity, subject and modern science are re-examined in their relations among them and in that the peculiarity of modern metaphysics is attempted to be revealed. At the core of the thesis, Descartes’ understanding of subject is inquired to be modern subject, and its role in the transformations happened in Western world with the advent of modern age...
The quiddity of knowledge in Kant's critical philosophy Serin, İsmail; Ceylan, Yasin; Department of Philosophy (2004) In this thesis the quiddity of knowledge in Kant's critical philosophy has been investigated within the historical context of the problem. In order to illustrate the origins of the subject-matter of the dissertation, the historical background of Kant's views on the theory of knowledge has been researched too. As a result of this research, it is concluded that Kant did not invent a new philosophical problem, but he tried to improve a decisive solution for one of the oldest question of history of philosophy i...

Citation Formats

S. Tümkaya, “The Comparison of ‘Physicalism’ and ‘What is It Like to be a Bat?’ of Thomas Nagel in the Context of the Search for Giving an Objective Account of Consciousness,” BEYTULHIKME-AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, pp. 23–41, 2017, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/56167.