دانشگاه قم پژوهش‌های فلسفی -کلامی 1735-9791 26 1 2024 04 01 Consciousness, subjective facts and physicalism – 50 years since Nagel’s bat. Consciousness, Subjective Facts, and Physicalism – Fifty Years since Nagel’s Bat 20 5 2877 10.22091/jptr.2024.10424.3021 FA Robert Van Gulick Professor, Philosophy Department, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, US. 0000-0000-0000-0001 Journal Article 2024 02 20 The existence of subjective facts in the epistemic sense defined by Thomas Nagel’s famous article, “What is like to be a bat?”, might be taken to support an anti-physicalist conclusion. I argue that it does not. The combination of nonreductive physicalism and teleo-pragmatic functionalism is not only consistent with such subjective facts but predicts their existence. The notion that conscious minds are self-understanding autopoietic systems plays a key role in the argument. Global Neuronal Workspace theory is assessed in terms of its potential to answer David Chalmers’ Hard Problem of consciousness. A suggestion is made for augmenting the theory that involves another sense in which facts about conscious experience are subjective. The idea of conscious minds as self-understanding systems again plays an important role. The existence of subjective facts in the epistemic sense defined by Thomas Nagel’s famous article, “What is it like to be a bat?” might be taken to support an anti-physicalist conclusion. I argue that it does not. The combination of nonreductive physicalism and teleo-pragmatic functionalism is not only consistent with such subjective facts but predicts their existence. The notion that conscious minds are self-understanding autopoietic systems plays a key role in the argument. Global Neuronal Workspace Theory is assessed in terms of its potential to answer David Chalmers’ Hard Problem of consciousness. A suggestion is made for augmenting the theory that involves another sense in which facts about conscious experience are subjective. The idea of conscious minds as self-understanding systems again plays an important role. https://pfk.qom.ac.ir/article_2877_385a85fa06b27c30ee8731f7a365cab7.pdf