Akins, Kathleen. "Science and Our Inner Lives: Birds of Prey, Bats, and the Common (Featherless) Bi-ped." N.p. 414-27.
Physiological facts about various species differ dramatically from the physiological facts about human species (e.g., eye-visual structure of birds vs. eye-visual structure of humans). But does human physiology experience have value in interpreting or projecting the subjective experience of other species--and by extension, even other humans?
I. Nagel ("What Is It Like to Be a Bat?") asserts there is no scientific answer to explaining subjective (mental) experience of self or others.
A. Nagel's claim that physical science cannot answer questions of the mind cannot be disproved; however,
1. Scientific approach may provide useful answers to difficult question
2. Deep intuition on which Nagel relies is not as useful as science
B. Main problem is to expose difficulties that "intuitive" approach to mind-body problems creates.
II. Intuitive view (Nagel): science cannot explain subjective experience
A. Alien (other) creature's experience elusive; problem of consciousness = problem of understanding quality of sensation
B. Phenomenology (sense experience) of "other" is based on projections of sympathetic sensory experience on part of observer/interpreter--not what it is really "like"
1. Projection of one's understanding of the "other" tells about one, not the other.
2. Explanation is in terms of interpreter's experience
3. Representational experience may increase interpreter's experience of the world but not of an "other's" world.
C. Failure to understand the other's subjectivity phenomenologically is not a failure of consciousness but of methodology.
III. Representation of subjective experience is not meant to be qualitative but only representative.
B. Systematic representation may constitute a point fo view
C. Representational capacities can be info
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