Abstract

According to Nagel, bat consciousness is "what it is like to be a bat.'' According to Baars, we will never know what it is like to be bat, so this approach to consciousness does not allow the science of consciousness to progress. Rather, the nature of consciousness as such should be determined empirically, by contrasting processes which are conscious with processes that are not conscious. The present commentary argues that contrastive analysis is appropriate for finding the processes most closely associated with consciousness; but it will not illuminate the nature of consciousness as such. Unlike bat consciousness, human consciousness is accessible to humans introspectively. Consequently, a complete science of consciousness needs to relate introspective, first-person accounts of consciousness to third-person processing models of the brain.