Notes on Consciousness

"What is it like to be a bat?" — Thomas Nagel

• "He asked: What is it like to be a bat? It's probably like something, but very different from what it's like to be a human."
• "For some animals, there's something it feels like to be such an animal. There is a self, of some kind, that experiences what goes on." #Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith #Peter Godfrey-Smith
• "When we imagine the lives and experiences of simpler animals, we often wind up visualizing scaled down versions of ourselves." #Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith #Peter Godfrey-Smith
• "What does it feel like to be an octopus? To be a jellyfish? Does it feel like anything at all? Which were the first animals whose lives felt like something to them?" #Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith #Peter Godfrey-Smith
• "Waking up, watching the sky, eating—these things all have a feel to them. That's what has to be understood." #Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith #Peter Godfrey-Smith

See also: Self, Experience, Subjective Experience