A browser game inspired by Thomas Nagle's Essay “What is it like to be a bat?”

A browser game inspired by Thomas Nagle's Essay “What is it like to be a bat?”(jrmgriffith.itch.io)

2 points by Snail_Commando 11 years ago | 3 comments

duckingtest 11 years ago |

Original idea, though I don't think that's how it is to be a bat... it's an unfiltered output from echolocation. Human brain does ton of processing with visual stimuli. I think a view in which detected objects fade very slowly (several seconds at least) would be a better translation of bat's experience.

Snail_Commando 11 years ago | |

This actually kind of reinforces (or at least points to) one of the central ideas of the essay, that we cannot know what it is to be a bat--we would always contextualize or speculate about the bat experience in human terms of experience.

If you accept this, no matter how great We make this simulation (of objective physical phenomena and our best theorized non-human perceptions of these phenomena), this game is always false.

(For what it's worth, I'm not sure yet if I hold any firm viewpoints on this. The essay (at least partially) is an argument against reductionism, but I'm no philosopher; to be honest I'm still wrapping my head around the entire argument. I just think it's interesting to think about.)

Snail_Commando 11 years ago |

This is not my creation, but I've read the essay before and I was intrigued by the game. It's pretty cool.

Here is the essay if anyone is interested:

http://organizations.utep.edu/portals/1475/nagel_bat.pdf