Our reading is Nagel's 1974 article "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?," which examines the reductionist theory that some contemporary philosophers propose as a solution to "the mindbody problem"-the problem of how the mind and body are related. Reductionism is the view that one kind of thing can be "reduced to" (explained fully in terms of) another kind of thing. With respect to the mind-body problem, reductionism holds that the mind and mental phenomena can be reduced to physical phenomena, such as neurological activity of the brain (hence the doctrine is known as physicalism or materialism). Nagel contends that the major difficulty facing reductionist, physicalist theories of mind is the phenomenon of consciousness. While there may be some way to reduce consciousness to physical states, we are far from knowing how this might be done.

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