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Is There Anything it is Like to be a Bat?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 April 2002

P. M. S. Hacker
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Abstract

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The concept of consciousness has been the source of much confusion over the past two decades. Current orthodoxy in ‘consciousness studies’ has it that the key to understanding the concept of consciousness is to grasp the idea of qualia. But the appearance of mystery here is the product of conceptual confusion. There is nothing to ‘the qualitative character of experience’ beyond the individual character of a specific experience and how the subject felt in undergoing it, and here there are no mysteries beyond empirical ignorance and conceptual mystification.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 77 , Issue 2 , April 2002 , pp. 157 - 174
Copyright
© The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2002