Abstract

This paper contributes to the long-running debate over Thomas Nagel’s claim that, although we cannot conceive of what it is like to be another type of conscious organism , there most certainly is something it is like. Peter Hacker has examined Nagel’s claim from the perspective of Wittgensteinian analysis, and has argued that the claim is conceptually confused: it makes no sense to say there is ‘something it is like’ to be a person, or a bat, or to be oneself, and hence there can be no place for such expressions in our language. While taking seriously Wittgenstein’s approach to the investigation of language, I propose that Hacker has been too hasty in declaring the phrase ‘something it is like’ to be nonsensical. I put forward three distinct, but mutually supportive, arguments to substantiate my proposal