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What is it Like to be an Aardvark?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

B. R. Tilghman
B. R. Tilghman
Affiliation:
Kansas State University
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Extract

The Alligator's Child was full of 'satiable curtiosity. One day while rummaging in a trunk in the lumber room he came across a photograph of his father wearing an aardvark uniform and standing by a large ant hill. All excitement, he rushed to his father and breathlessly said, ‘Father, I didn't know that you had been an aardvark! What is it like to be an aardvark?’

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 66 , Issue 257 , July 1991 , pp. 325 - 338
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1991

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References

1 That means he asked ever so many questions.

2 Nagel, Thomas, ‘What is it Like to be a Bat?’, The Philosophical Review (10 1974).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Some of what I say in criticism of Nagel's account of the ‘subjective character of experiences’ rehearses objections that have already been covered by Malcolm, Norman in Armstrong, D. M. and Malcolm, Norman, Consciousness and Causality: A Debate on the Nature of Mind (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), 45ff.Google Scholar

4 Tye, Michael, ‘The Subjective Qualities of Experience’, Mind (01 1986, 6.Google Scholar

5 The confusions in the thesis that psychological concepts including that of reasons can be given a causal analysis are displayed by Malcolm, (Consciousness and Causality, 67ff.)Google Scholar See also Johnston, Paul, Wittgenstein and Moral Philosophy (London and New York: Routledge, 1989), 38–51.Google Scholar

6 As we might expect, there is no hint of what this might be.

7 Our inability to describe what red looks like is not a failure. Wittgenstein challenges us: ‘Describe the aroma of coffee.—Why can't it be done? Do we lack the words? And for what are words lacking?’ (PI §610). There is, of course, nothing for which words are lacking. This is not because it is one of those ultimate simples that can only be known by acquaintance. We must remember that there is simply no place in our language for the question.

8 Cheney, Dorothy L. and Seyfarth, Robert M., How Monkeys See the World (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990).Google Scholar

9 Wittgenstein's remark that ‘My attitude towards him is an attitude towards a soul. I am not of the opinion that he has a soul’ (PI, 178) is especially relevant here. For discussions of the import of this passage see Winch, Peter, ‘“Eine Einstellung Zur Seele”’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, n.s. LXXXI (1980–1981)Google Scholar and Tilghman, B. R., Wittgenstein, Ethics and Aesthetics (London: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1991) Ch. 5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 ‘We only say of a human being and what is like one that it thinks’ (PI §360). (My emphasis.) This remark together with the extended discussion which precedes it should be kept in mind.

11 I do not wish to deny that this question cannot also sometimes have depth, e.g. when it is a matter of getting at a man's responsibilities, commitment, skill and judgment, not to mention willingness to face danger.

12 I recently saw announcements of a meeting on racial problems that posed the question, ‘What is it like to be a black student on a predominantly white campus?’

13 I am indebted to James Hamilton, Richard Scheer and Robin Smith for suggestions and criticisms.