Overtones of Solipsism in Thomas Nagel's "What is it Like to be a Bat?" and the View from Nowhere

Abstract

Thomas Nagel has been arguing for many years now a physicalist account of consciousness can only provide an incomplete analysis of mind. It cannot, given the very nature of the account, capture the subjective character of experience, i.e., what it is like to be a conscious creature, to have experience. According to Nagel, an objective physical account cannot exhaustively analyze subjectivity. What constantly eludes the stretch of the physical theory are the phenomenological features of experience. The reason for this is that every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inevitable an objective, physical theory will abandon point of view.' He has maintained this thesis, with some modifications, for two decades and continues to argue in support of it despite constant criticism of both the thesis -and the positions he has developed in defense of it. He has been criticized for working with too simplistic a notion of consciousness, to which he attaches too much significance and about which he says too little.' In