Consciousness

Assignment 1 of 12

Due Thursday, September 13^th

 

Remember:

• You must do one of the first 3 assignments.
• No late papers
• Use your own words—no quotations or paraphrases

Answer all of the questions in order.  Allocate space to your responses in proportion to what you find interesting.  That is, you can give very short answers to some questions and answer others at length.

 

1. Nagel is skeptical about whether standard models of reduction of the sort that explain the reduction of heat to molecular kinetic energy or water to H₂O applies to consciousness.  Why?
2. What is the problem exactly about knowing what it is like to be a bat?  Does Nagel say we cannot know what it is like to be a bat?
3. What is the significance of the analogy to the problem that a pre-Socratic philosopher would have understanding the claim that matter is energy?
4. Some say that Nagel is proposing to substitute a dualism of concepts for a dualism of properties.  What does that mean?