PHI 1101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Sensory System, Thomas Nagel, Physicalism

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHI 1101
• Professor: Paul Forster

Document Summary

What appears from the subjective point of view cannot be objective. The less dependent on human viewpoint, more objective our description. Facts of the physical world not like that (same for everyone not matter how accessed) Can be observed and understood from many point of view and by individuals with different perceptual systems. Can be looked at as the direction in which the understanding can travel. Ex: we can imagine an alien who does not have our visual system. Even if we imagine gradually being transformed, (nothing in our present state allows us to imagine what it would be like) Nagel his not raising the question that we cannot know what it"s like to be a bat. Deeper problem, cannot form a concept: how does he argue that we cannot know the subjective experience of bats either by imagining what it is like to be a bat or by extrapolating from our own subjective experience.