What's It Like to Be a Bat

The 20th century certainly had its share of philosophical tomes: Being and Nothingness,  Being and Time, Process and Reality, and Philosophical Investigations to name a few. But it  also had many somewhat less ambitious gems like Martin Buber’s I and Thou. What’s it like  to be a Bat, a 1974 essay by Thomas Nagel, falls into this second category.  

By 1900, it had begun to occur to us that mental phenomena might be reduceable to  chemical reactions and electrical pulses. From Freud to Ryle to Skinner to Dennett, the  race was on to find ways to account for the phenomenon of consciousness solely in terms  of physical processes. After all, we have more or less successfully reduced biology to  chemistry, why shouldn’t we expect to reduce psychology to physiology? 

But Nagel objected to the analogy. Just as it seemed that we were on the brink of a  materialist solution to the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness, Thomas Nagel fired an  unwelcome shot across the bow. 

What Is It Like to Be a Bat? arrived at the ‘academy’ with all the fanfare of a 3 day dead fish.  There was indeed a stench, but it turned out it was coming from the academy itself. Nagel threw open the windows and let in fresh air and the light of day. He exposed the bankruptcy  of the reductionist agenda: 

“There is something that it is like to be a bat…what it is like for a bat to be a bat…because  we know what it is like to be us.” 

Do we? Do we know what it’s like to be ourselves? Or is that what we’ve been trying to figure  out for the past 3000 years?  

I am myself, of course, but that’s pretty much a tautology. It doesn’t tell what it’s like to be  me. But I’m also aware of being myself…and that is what it’s like to be me – that non-thetic  awareness of self qua self. I am aware of my awareness, no matter what I happen to be  aware of. And so I say with some justification, “I am conscious.” 

When a hypothetical life form ‘responds’to environmental stimuli, biochemical pathways  are activated and that may produce some sort of coordinated behavior on the part of the  organism. But that does not necessarily mean that the organism is aware of itself qua organism or that it is aware of itself being aware of its environment or that the whole plays a  part in determining how the parts of the organism (organelles) act in response to external  stimuli.

Response to stimulus does not necessarily imply consciousness. However, whether the  Zombie organisms we’re proposing actually exist in nature is a hot topic of debate among  biologists and philosophers today. 100 years ago, human children were often thought to be  Zombies, as well as members of aboriginal tribes, of ‘other’races, or even of ‘other’ nationalities.  

I am reminded that in the 1960’s folks actually asked whether Vietnamese people  experienced loss with the same intensity as Euro-Americans. Disgusting as all this is, we  can learn from it…and also take some solace in the fact that we’ve come a long way in a  fairly short period of time. In the 2020’s folks are asking whether unicellular creatures might  be conscious. 

What kid hasn’t thought about what it would be like to be a free flying eagle or even a  majestic oak? But when you imagined it, you imagined that you, yourself, would be that oak  or that bird. You imagined ‘being yourself being something else’; you didn’t even consider  ‘becoming someone else and being something else’ – big difference! That would have been ridiculous…and meaningless. The sentence, “I became someone else” is oxymoronic. I can  only and ever be I (whatever I is), and never other, because ‘other’ is defined as ‘not-I’. 

Kid, oak, or eagle, I’m still me. Having feathers in place of hair or bark in place of skin doesn’t make me any less me. This is not to dismiss Nagel’s ground breaking insight. There is something it’s like to be something, but which ‘something’ I’m being is of no matter to  anyone but my transitory self. I could be ‘hare’ today and ‘goon’ tomorrow and still be me, the same me! 

A hawk is not a Hapsburg, but what it’s like ‘to be a hawk’ is the same as what it’s like ‘to be  a Hapsburg’. I am, whatever I am, always me. I know who I am and I know that I can be whatever I choose to be…and still be me. Who I am never changes (Parmenides); what I am  never stays the same (Heraclitus).  

If what I am never stays the same, then what I am (e.g. a bat) can never be who I am! ‘Who’  implies the conservation of identity across some region of spacetime (or other phase  space). The Heraclitean flow vitiates even the concept of identity. I can step into the same  river as many times as I wish; both I and the river have and retain our identities. But I can  never step into the same water twice. Flowing water has no stable identity…by definition. I,  on the other hand, from infancy to seniority, from paramecium to paralegal, am still myself. 

I am what it’s like not to be whatever I happen to be at the moment. “Neti, neti” – not this,  not that!" I know this because I am what’s left whenever I stop being what I am. I am  that which keeps me from becoming what is. Sartre might say, “I am my freedom!”

A well-meaning adult asks a bewildered child, “And what do you want to be when you grow  up?” Absurdly, the question assumes that the child wants to be the only thing that the child  can never be, and that is, something, a what! So long as the child is a who, she can never  be a what; sorry, Grandpa! 

Even so, there are a number of correct ways to answer Grandpa’s question: (1) defiantly, “I  don’t want to be anything;” (2) confidently, “I just want to be me;” (3) heroically, “Nemo”  (from the Odyssey, not the novel…or the movie); (4) mythologically, “Proteus” (the shape  shifter); (5) existentially, “I want not to be whatever I am and to be whatever I am not;” (6)  ghoulishly, “I want not to be the one thing I am certain to become…a corpse.”  

‘Astronaut, firefighter, pro athlete and rock star’ are not on the list. I wonder how the  important children in your life would answer Grandpa’s question. Something to think about. 

What it’s like to be me never changes. I am The Ship of Theseus. No matter how  much you swap out my physical or social infrastructure, I am still the same ship. Even if  everything changes (doxa), nothing changes (Aletheia). To paraphrase a famous cliché:  “The more things change, the more what stays the same stands out,” i.e. the ship! 

Heidegger divided the phenomenon of existence into Dasein (that it is) and Wassein (what  it is). ‘Being something’ is a quantum of experience (Dasein) regardless of ‘what’ that  something is. ‘To be’ cannot be reduced to its predicate, i.e. to what it is. 

As Nagel astutely pointed out, there is something it’s like to be something; but what it’s like  to be something is the same no matter who’s being it and no matter what that something is.  

Every day, when I wake from deep sleep, I rediscover what I am. In my dreams I am usually  a youngish man in good health, living an active lifestyle; when I wake up, I discover that I am  none of those things. Sometimes the disconnect can be quite disorienting, but I never  question that I’m me. What I am may be in doubt for the moment, but who I am is not. If it was, then according to the cannons of 21st century psychology, I would be ‘a crazy person’. 

I have not yet had the experience of waking up as a member of another species…but I don’t  rule it out a priori. I’ve read Ovid! I can conceive of myself being a sparrow. I cannot  conceive of myself ‘being not-me’. Discovering that my septuagenarian self is a sparrow is  improbable; discovering that I am not-me – impossible! Not crazy. 

Met him pike horses (Joyce) is not something on my bucket list, but if it did happen, oak or  eagle, sponge or spore, I do not doubt that I would still be ‘me’. Again, not crazy! 

Speaking of Ovid, according to his Metamorphosis, folks are shape shifting all the time.  Yesterday’s fair maiden is tomorrow’s swan, but her sense of self remains unchanged. 

That’s the tragedy, that’s the punishment. Leyda, born human, must live an avian life. If  Leyda were no longer Leyda, the story would lose all meaning.  

So, what’s it like to be a bat? Exactly what it’s like to be you! Because to be is ‘to be what you are regardless of what you are’. So be a bat if you want but it won’t stop you from being  you. New job, same you; new family, still you; new home country, you. Different species? Sorry, still you. You can run but you cannot hide. 

So, “What’s it like to be…(anything)?” Well, what’s it like to be you? That’s exactly what it’s  like to be a bat…or anything else for that matter. Everything that is, is what it is, in the same  way that you are what you are.  

Once you were a single celled zygote, then an embryo, a baby, child, teen, adult, senior. That initial cell will copy itself 100 trillion times during your lifetime. Right now, about 30  trillion of those copies are alive and working together as your body. 

Throughout all of this there is one you, only one you, and always the same you; that never  changes. It’s what Thomas Aquinas would have called a ‘simple substance’. It has no parts, no aspects, no qualities. It’s what Jean-Paul Sartre called neant, nothing. You are existence  without essence. You are the sound of one hand clapping! 

Think back to your earliest memory. There you were! It was you, the same you that’s  chatting with me now, many decades later. To suggest that 4 year old ‘you’ is not the same  thing as 44 year old ‘you’ or 88 year old ‘you’ is nonsense. It’s you; you are you. You are not  one you, then another you. That’s not what ‘you’ means. You are what does not and indeed  cannot change amid the universe of changes; you are the river, not the water. 

“Wait,” you say. “I’m not the same now at 44 as I was at 4? Not even close.” Ok then, tell me what’s different? Ok, any anything else? Anything else? Ok, all of what you just described as  being different…none of that is any part of you! It’s all part of your external world. 

We have fallen prey to a fallacy: we’ve accepted the idea that my skin forms the boundary between me and not-me. Not true! My body, the contents of my mind, the patterns of my  habitual behaviors… none of that is me. That’s all my world! 

The Serenity Prayer nails it: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I  cannot change (the world), the courage to change the things I can (freedom), and the  wisdom to know the difference (philosophy).”

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