Merging dolphin and human brains might let us “see” inside others’ bodies (Image: Kurt Amsler/Ardea)
I’VE spent years thinking about consciousness and my current obsession is whether we can know anything about what it is like is to be a dog, a dolphin, or a bat. The most influential answer came from philosopher Thomas Nagel in Unlike some of the era’s behaviourists, who saw animals as little more than automatons that respond to stimulus, Nagel didn’t doubt bats had experience, that it was “like something” being a nimble, echo-locating mammal swooping through the night.…
