Notes from the Wired

Is There Anything it is Like to be a Bat?

January 7, 2026 | 1,775 words | 9min read

Paper Title: Is There Anything it is Like to be a Bat?

Link to Paper: https://philpapers.org/rec/HACITA

Date: 2002

Paper Type: Philosophy, Consciousness, Experience, Metaphysic, Qualia

Short Abstract This paper argues that the supposed mystery of consciousness and qualia is not a genuine mystery at all, but a grammatical and conceptual confusion generated by philosophers. Qualia, as commonly conceived, do not exist in the way philosophers claim they do.

1. Consciousness and Qualia

Consciousness has been a highly contentious and extensively debated topic in philosophy and in the sciences.

We can distinguish two different types of problems regarding consciousness:

It is crucial to keep these distinct; failure to do so leads to confusion. One cannot empirically research something unless its conceptual boundaries are clear—hence philosophy is needed to clarify concepts before science investigates them.

The term consciousness is used in various ways:

Philosophers, however, often posit another alleged type of consciousness—one that supposedly distinguishes us from philosophical zombies and is meant to demonstrate the failure of functionalist accounts. This is “subjective experience” or “inner life,” and central to this notion is the concept of qualia: subjective, intrinsic qualities of experience (often described in terms of “what-it-is-likeness”).

But Hacker argues that this “mystery” of consciousness and qualia is a piece of mystification and a philosophical invention.

2. Qualia

Authors such as Ned Block, Searle, and Chalmers define qualia as the distinctive “what it’s like” aspects of subjective experience—how it feels to see, hear, taste, smell, feel pain, think, desire, and so on. Many extend qualia beyond perception to cognition and emotion (e.g., “there is something it is like to think that 2+2=4,” or to desire something).

This conception has been widely adopted in neuroscience (e.g., Glynn, Damasio, Edelman, Tononi), where qualia are treated as basic elements of perception, imagery, thought, and even mood.

The phrase “there is something it is like” originates from Nagel’s What is it like to be a bat?, which defines conscious experience as how it is for the subject. This yields two common theses:

The “something it is like” is meant to signify pure subjectivity, though Nagel never specifies what any concrete experience is like. He also suggests we may never understand the qualitative character of other species’ experiences (or even of other humans’).

Thus, for Chalmers and others, the main obstacle to a scientific explanation of consciousness is that explaining consciousness consists in explaining qualia.

3. “How it feels” to have an experience

The prevailing view holds: an experience is conscious precisely when there is something it is like for the subject to have it, i.e. qualia.

But Hacker asks: does every experience have a distinctive “feel”? He argues no. When someone regains sight or hearing, asking “How does it feel?” solicits a personal attitude, e.g. “It’s wonderful” or “It feels strange.” This does not point to intrinsic qualitative properties of seeing.

For ordinary perception: seeing a table, chair, or lamppost—there is no unique qualitative “feel” at all.

When we say that tasting beer, hearing Beethoven, smelling a rose, and seeing a sunset are different experiences, that is true. But they differ:

Their difference does not require mysterious inner qualitative items (qualia). And even when experiences differ, they need not differ in “feel.” For example, smelling roses vs. smelling lilac may both be equally pleasant.

Colors, smells, and perceptual qualities belong to objects of perception, not to experiences as inner qualitative entities.

If experiences have a “qualitative character,” it is the subject’s affective attitude toward the experience (finding it pleasant, unpleasant, boring, etc.). Thus “how it felt” amounts to “how the person reacted,” not to an additional mental ingredient.

We may therefore clarify:

  1. Experiences are individuated by what they are experiences of.
  2. Experiences can receive attitudinal predicates, but typically do not.
  3. Distinct experiences may share the same attitude (e.g., equally pleasant), thus cannot be individuated by “feel.”
  4. Thinking is individuated by what is thought, not by a “feel” contra Chalmers. Thinking that 2+2=4 differs from thinking that 25×25=625 only by content, not by attitude or feel.

In short, Hacker argues that the so, called qualitative character of an experience is the subject’s attitude toward it.

4. “There being something which it is like …”

Nagel and others claim that consciousness consists in “there being something it is like,” but this rests on grammatical and conceptual confusion.

The phrase “what is it like?” has two legitimate uses:

  1. Comparative: “To V is like to W.”
  2. Affective/attitudinal: “What was it like for you to V?” → pleasant, boring, etc.

Philosophers such as Nagel conflate these uses, yielding expressions like “There is something it is like to V,” which illegitimately blends comparison and affect.

Saying “there is something it is like for a subject to have an experience” smuggles the affective form into contexts where it does not belong. Most experiences are neutral and have no affective attitude.

Questions such as “What is it like to be a doctor/soldier/winner?” are coherent because they rely on:

But questions like:

break the contrast structure and become incoherent. Without a contrasting class, the question collapses into the trivial “What is human life like?”

Thus, the key phrases used by Nagel, Searle, Tononi, etc. are conceptually malformed. We do not meaningfully “know what it is like to be us,” and this does nothing to illuminate consciousness.

5. The qualitative character of experience

To recap: explanatory appeals to

But perhaps qualia, talk contains a core worth salvaging. Qualia discourse attempts to capture the idea that experiences differ (e.g., seeing red vs. seeing blue). This can be interpreted in two ways:

Innocuous interpretation: Experiences are distinguishable; we can tell them apart.

Misleading interpretation: The distinction must consist in a private inner feel or introspected “what-it-is-like-ness.”

The differences between experiences do not lie in private inner feelings, but in the subject’s attitude and in what the experiences are experiences of.

6. “Thus” and “This”

Qualia theorists claim experiences have unique qualitative “characters.” Chalmers asks: “Why is seeing red like this rather than like that?”

But as Wittgenstein noted, saying “I see red thus” only makes sense if one can point to something, e.g. a colour sample. Without such shared criteria, “thus” is empty, akin to saying “this is this.”

We imagine we can point inward to the raw feel of experience, but no private sample exists. One points to a red patch and says, “I see red like this” and this works because it is public. Pointing inward lacks any criteria and therefore fails to make sense.

Similarly, the question “Why don’t we experience red as trumpet sounds?” is nonsense; eyes do not detect sound.

There are only two legitimate ways to speak of the qualitative character of experience:

  1. What the experience was: a matter of modality and object.
  2. What it was like for the subject: an affective attitude (pleasant, boring, etc.).

Hence there is no deep mystery here, only empirical ignorance and philosophical mystification.

Some Throughts

I am not fully convinced by Hacker’s arguments, but some points stand out. Hacker seems to assume that language comes before qualia, that our talk about experience only makes sense if language already structures it. But why assume that? It seems just as natural to think of experiences as existing before language. If experiences come first, it’s not surprising that phrases like “what is it like” feel awkward when trying to describe them. Language is then just a tool we use to point toward something that cannot be fully captured in words.

Hacker might respond: if experiences exist before language, why do we even talk about them? My reply is that asking “what is it like?” is not about giving a fully accurate description. It is a way of gesturing toward something inexpressible, much like saying “God is all-powerful.” These statements are not literal; they use language approximately to convey something beyond propositional expression.

Wittgenstein’s private language argument is often brought in here. It shows that a language whose meanings depend only on private, introspected reference is impossible. But this does not deny private experiences exist. It only shows that meaning is determined by use within a form of life, not by introspection alone. Mystics, artists, and metaphors do not try to analytically define experiences or fix their identity over time; they aim to orient, and shape perception. A metaphor does not fail just because it lacks precise identity conditions.

Hacker’s critique assumes that for experience to be meaningful, it must be precisely re-identifiable according to strict rules. But in practice, this is not required. Experiences can differ meaningfully even without exact identity. Moods, styles, atmospheres, and existential states are meaningful even if we cannot fix their precise identity. For example, I can say “I have fallen back into the same mood” without proving it is exactly the same as yesterday. Recognition and similarity are enough for lived meaning.

The same applies to perception. Seeing red now and later seeing another red object does not require comparing two ineffable things in themselves. We compare the current experience with our memory of past experience. Memory provides a reference, fallible but enough for recognition, discrimination, and action. Wittgenstein’s argument only denies perfect re-identification, not the ability to recognize or experience similarity. Experiences remain structured, differentiated, and real.

If we take a disclosive rather than strictly referential view of meaning, qualitative experiences can still be real, differentiated, and meaningful, even if they resist precise or repeatable description. The private language argument limits the semantic foundation but does not deny the reality of experience.

One response that Hacker could give to this would be that I conflate two domains: the lived and practical experience with the philosophical claim that qualia are unique. To me, that sounds very similar to the differentiation between phenomenology and the noumenal. But if you subscribe to anti-essentialism with a pragmatic definition of truth and meaning, then the noumenal is simply phenomenology, to a certain extent.

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