"What Is It Like to Be a Bat?"
E421692
"What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" is a seminal 1974 philosophical essay by Thomas Nagel that argues the subjective character of conscious experience cannot be fully captured by objective, physicalist accounts of the mind.
All labels observed (3)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| What Is It Like to Be a Bat? | 5 |
| "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" canonical | 1 |
| “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” by Thomas Nagel | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T4231356 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" Context triple: [Thomas Nagel, hasWork, "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?"]
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A.
Bats people
Bats people are a small Nakh-speaking ethnic group from the Caucasus region, closely related to Chechens and Ingush, traditionally inhabiting parts of northeastern Georgia.
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B.
The Bat
The Bat is a popular inverted boomerang-style roller coaster at Canada's Wonderland known for its intense forward and backward loops.
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C.
Song to a Seagull
Song to a Seagull is the 1968 debut studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, showcasing her early folk sound and poetic lyricism.
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D.
Winged Monkeys
Winged Monkeys are magical, flying primates from L. Frank Baum’s Oz universe, best known for serving whoever controls the Golden Cap and for their memorable appearance in the 1939 film adaptation.
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E.
The Bird
The Bird is a famous oversized bronze bird sculpture by Colombian artist Fernando Botero, exemplifying his signature exaggerated, voluminous style.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" Target entity description: "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" is a seminal 1974 philosophical essay by Thomas Nagel that argues the subjective character of conscious experience cannot be fully captured by objective, physicalist accounts of the mind.
-
A.
Bats people
Bats people are a small Nakh-speaking ethnic group from the Caucasus region, closely related to Chechens and Ingush, traditionally inhabiting parts of northeastern Georgia.
-
B.
The Bat
The Bat is a popular inverted boomerang-style roller coaster at Canada's Wonderland known for its intense forward and backward loops.
-
C.
Song to a Seagull
Song to a Seagull is the 1968 debut studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, showcasing her early folk sound and poetic lyricism.
-
D.
Winged Monkeys
Winged Monkeys are magical, flying primates from L. Frank Baum’s Oz universe, best known for serving whoever controls the Golden Cap and for their memorable appearance in the 1939 film adaptation.
-
E.
The Bird
The Bird is a famous oversized bronze bird sculpture by Colombian artist Fernando Botero, exemplifying his signature exaggerated, voluminous style.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (46)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf | philosophical essay ⓘ |
| academicDiscipline | analytic philosophy ⓘ |
| academicImpact | widely cited in discussions of the hard problem of consciousness ⓘ |
| argumentType | thought experiment ⓘ |
| author | Thomas Nagel ⓘ |
| centralClaim |
objective science cannot fully describe what it is like to be another creature
ⓘ
subjective experience has an essentially first-person character ⓘ the subjective character of experience cannot be fully captured by objective physicalist theories ⓘ there is something it is like to be a conscious organism ⓘ |
| countryOfOrigin |
United States
ⓘ
linked to:
United States of America
|
| exampleFeatureDiscussed | echolocation ⓘ |
| exampleUsed | bat ⓘ |
| hasPageCountApprox | about 20 pages ⓘ |
| hasReception | considered one of the most influential essays in late 20th-century philosophy of mind ⓘ |
| influenced |
contemporary philosophy of mind
ⓘ
critiques of reductionism ⓘ debates about consciousness ⓘ discussions of qualia ⓘ |
| isFrequentlyAnthologizedIn | philosophy of mind collections ⓘ |
| isSeminalWorkIn | philosophy of consciousness ⓘ |
| language | English ⓘ |
| mainTopic |
consciousness
ⓘ
mind–body problem ⓘ objective vs subjective ⓘ philosophy of mind ⓘ physicalism ⓘ qualia ⓘ reductionism ⓘ subjective experience ⓘ |
| notableConcept |
point of view of a conscious subject
ⓘ
subjective character of experience ⓘ what-it-is-like-ness ⓘ |
| philosophicalPositionCritiqued |
materialism
ⓘ
reductive physicalism ⓘ |
| philosophicalTradition |
anti-reductionist
ⓘ
realist about consciousness ⓘ |
| positionOnPhysicalism | physicalist theories are incomplete but not necessarily false ⓘ |
| positionOnReduction | mental states cannot be fully reduced to physical states in current objective terms ⓘ |
| publicationType | journal article ⓘ |
| publicationYear | 1974 ⓘ |
| publishedIn | The Philosophical Review ⓘ |
| relatedConcept |
first-person perspective
ⓘ
objectivity ⓘ phenomenal consciousness ⓘ subjectivity ⓘ third-person description ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" Description of subject: "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" is a seminal 1974 philosophical essay by Thomas Nagel that argues the subjective character of conscious experience cannot be fully captured by objective, physicalist accounts of the mind.
Referenced by (7)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.
linked to: "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?"
subject linked to:
journal Mind
linked to: "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?"
subject linked to:
Nagel
linked to: "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?"
subject linked to:
book "Mortal Questions"
linked to: "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?"
subject linked to:
"Mortal Questions"
linked to: "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?"
Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False
→
relatedWork
→
What Is It Like to Be a Bat?
ⓘ
subject linked to:
"Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False"
linked to: "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?"