The ultimate mystery in philosophy & metaphysics

Going beyond Nagel and his ‘like a bat’: an exercise in primordial ontology, involving both conceptual clarification and observational drilling down

(Artwork by the author.)

Introduction Nagel and his ‘what it’s like to be a bat’
An ontology of subjectivity
Is ‘what it’s like to be me’ a crucial marker of interiority?
The ontological ground of perceptibility itself: the ‘apprehending
capacity’
Markers of subjectivity and interiority
The ontological interchangeability of perceptual markers
Interiority and the ‘ultimate metaphysical mystery’: existence itself called into question
Summary and Conclusion
Bibliography

Nagel’s ‘like a bat’ is ‘the most widely cited and influential thought experiment about consciousness.’ Daniel Dennett (1991)

Introduction

Philosophy and metaphysics are both notoriously uninformative when it comes to a plain and simple ontology of ‘consciousness’, and anyone studying the literature will…