Lesson · 4 min Stretch
What It Is Like
In one line Some facts about experience are about what it is like, and a physical description may miss them.
Thomas Nagel asked what it is like to be a bat. A bat finds its way by echoes. We can learn how its sonar works, from the wiring of its ears to the pattern of its calls. But knowing all that does not tell us what it is like for the bat.
His point is that experience has a subjective character. There is something it is like to taste coffee or to see red, from the inside. A description in physical terms, however complete, may leave that out, because it describes from the outside.
Nagel did not claim to solve the problem. He claimed that any theory of mind has to face it. It also has a practical echo: before we explain a person’s experience away, we can ask what it is like for them.
Go deeper
Nagel chose the bat because its experience is so unlike ours that we cannot picture it, yet we have little doubt that bats have experience. His argument is that this gap shows a limit in physical description, not that mind is magic.
Philosophers answer in different ways: some say the gap will close with better science, some that experience is a kind of information, and some that Nagel is right and a new idea is needed.
The smell of coffee
Kit tries to explain the smell of coffee to a friend who was born without a sense of smell. She lists what is in it, how it is roasted and what it is often paired with.
Her friend nods, but both feel that something has not passed across. Kit can give facts about coffee, but not what it is like to smell it. She resolves to ask, next time, what a thing is like for the person who meets it.
Try this today Try to describe the taste of a fruit to someone who has not had it, and notice what you cannot say.
Cite or share this lesson
A plain reference you can paste into notes or an essay:
Quest2Reason. “What It Is Like.” https://quest2reason.com/learn/lesson/what-it-is-like. Accessed 13 November 2026.
Sources
- Thomas Nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” (1974) — The essay arguing that experience has a subjective character that physical description leaves out.
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Consciousness” — An overview of the problem of explaining experience.