DANIEL SHAW On Being Philosophical and Being John Malkovich One of the most puzzling and intriguing ques- tions to emerge in the philosophical conver- sation about film is precisely what it means to say that a film can be philosophical. Alternatively, the question has been framed as follows: Can a film actually do philosophy, in some important sense of that term? As is often the case in such matters, adequately framing the question is the hardest part of the task. The following essay provides a summary of various ways films have been described as being philosophical (or as doing philosophy) by survey- ing articles that have appeared in the print journal Film and Philosophy since its inception over a decade ago. I will then propose that “being philo- sophical” admits of degrees, while offering an original reading of Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze, 1999) as a paradigmatic exemplar of what it is for a film to be capable of doing philosophy. I One of the many unfortunate consequences of the high art-low art divide is that while works of literature have long been considered capable of being philosophical, for most of the twentieth century the cinema was seldom seen as aspiring to such lofty goals, except for the art films directed by the likes of Ingmar Bergman or Jean-Luc Godard. Philosophers first started writing about such films in the 1960s, no doubt because of the intellectual respectability of their existential and/or political content. But, as Tho- mas Wartenberg observed in a recent edition of Film and Philosophy: “Not only has the art film been eclipsed as an avant garde film practice, but contemporary philosophic work on film has moved beyond it as well.”1 Philosophers are becoming increasingly more comfortable talking about popular Hollywood films. For example, an intriguing notion of what makes a film worthy of philosophical attention was proposed in the premiere edition of Film and Philosophy (1994) by Stephen Mulhall, whose recent book on the Alien quadrilogy plays such a central role in contemporary debates on the subject.2 He offered a reading of Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) that saw it as “explicitly concerned with what it is to be a human being,” and as self-consciously philo- sophical.3 However, the subgenre of science fiction that deals with robots and cyborgs char- acteristically raises such questions. The typical philosophical article on film pairs some philosopher’s theory with one (or more) of the author’s favorite films to demonstrate how the theory can enhance our understanding and appreciation of the films. Such pairings strike us as more or less convincing, as the parallels drawn seem more or less natural (or strained). Often, a film seems shoehorned into a model that does not really fit, especially when profound depth readings are proposed for pieces of mass entertainment that cannot sustain them. Here, the implicit assumption seems to be that if a film can be shown to instantiate a philo- sophical theor.

1. DANIEL SHAW
On Being Philosophical and Being John Malkovich
One of the most puzzling and intriguing ques-
tions to emerge in the philosophical conver-
sation about film is precisely what it means to say
that a film can be philosophical. Alternatively,
the question has been framed as follows: Can a
film actually do philosophy, in some important
sense of that term? As is often the case in such
matters, adequately framing the question is the
hardest part of the task.
The following essay provides a summary of
various ways films have been described as being
philosophical (or as doing philosophy) by survey-
ing articles that have appeared in the print journal
Film and Philosophy since its inception over a
decade ago. I will then propose that “being philo-
sophical” admits of degrees, while offering an
original reading of Being John Malkovich (Spike
Jonze, 1999) as a paradigmatic exemplar of what
it is for a film to be capable of doing philosophy.
I
One of the many unfortunate consequences of
the high art-low art divide is that while works of
literature have long been considered capable of
being philosophical, for most of the twentieth
century the cinema was seldom seen as aspiring

2. to such lofty goals, except for the art films
directed by the likes of Ingmar Bergman or
Jean-Luc Godard. Philosophers first started
writing about such films in the 1960s, no doubt
because of the intellectual respectability of their
existential and/or political content. But, as Tho-
mas Wartenberg observed in a recent edition of
Film and Philosophy: “Not only has the art film
been eclipsed as an avant garde film practice,
but contemporary philosophic work on film has
moved beyond it as well.”1
Philosophers are becoming increasingly more
comfortable talking about popular Hollywood
films. For example, an intriguing notion of what
makes a film worthy of philosophical attention
was proposed in the premiere edition of Film
and Philosophy (1994) by Stephen Mulhall,
whose recent book on the Alien quadrilogy
plays such a central role in contemporary
debates on the subject.2 He offered a reading of
Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) that saw it as
“explicitly concerned with what it is to be a
human being,” and as self-consciously philo-
sophical.3 However, the subgenre of science
fiction that deals with robots and cyborgs char-
acteristically raises such questions.
The typical philosophical article on film pairs
some philosopher’s theory with one (or more)
of the author’s favorite films to demonstrate
how the theory can enhance our understanding
and appreciation of the films. Such pairings
strike us as more or less convincing, as the
parallels drawn seem more or less natural (or
strained). Often, a film seems shoehorned into a

3. model that does not really fit, especially when
profound depth readings are proposed for pieces
of mass entertainment that cannot sustain them.
Here, the implicit assumption seems to be that if
a film can be shown to instantiate a philo-
sophical theory or principle, then the film can
be considered philosophical.
At another level of sophistication, and less
often, certain directors have made films with a
particular philosophy explicitly in mind, and
philosophers of film evaluate whether the film
in question is an adequate or inadequate embodi-
ment of that philosophy. Fyodor Dostoevsky
has long been praised for being a truly
philosophical writer, for example, in his rhetoric-
ally brilliant portrayals of the catastrophic
112 Thinking Through Cinema: Film as Philosophy
consequences of nihilism in The Possessed, or
of atheism in The Brothers Karamazov. Simi-
larly, in Volume 1 of Film and Philosophy,
Sander Lee identifies “Sartrean Themes in
Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives” and
praises Allen for his ability to embody them so
fully.4 Lee convincingly demonstrates how Allen
intentionally exemplified Jean-Paul Sartre’s
pessimistic views on love. Allen’s undergradu-
ate degree in philosophy, professed love for
Sartre, and recurrent allusions to Sartrean
themes makes this application of theory to film
far more convincing than if the director and/or
screenwriter were likely to be unfamiliar with

4. the philosopher in question.
For Lee, Husbands and Wives (Woody Allen,
1992) is a truly philosophical picture because
Allen chose Sartrean themes that he grasped
clearly and took personally and expressed them
successfully in a cinematic context. Similar
praise is offered in several of the articles on
Allen that were included in the special edition
of Film and Philosophy (2000) that was guest
edited by Lee. From this perspective, Allen’s
films can be described as philosophical because
they are explicitly informed by philosophical
concepts and theories.
So far, then, we have three answers to the
question of what makes a film philosophical:
(1) a film is philosophical if it furthers our
inquiries into philosophical questions and con-
cerns; (2) a film is philosophical if our under-
standing of it can be deepened (and/or our
appreciation of it can be enhanced) by applying
preexistent philosophical theories to it; and (3) a
film is philosophical if it self-consciously
mirrors a philosophical theory. The second and
third senses in which a film can be philosophi-
cal have been belittled recently by a proponent
of the first. Stephen Mulhall argues in On Film
that neither (2) nor (3) are adequate to earn a
film the honorific designation of doing philo-
sophy. On this view, for example, the mere fact
that Roland Barthes can offer us an enlightening
semiological analysis of fashion does not make
fashion philosophical, nor does Woody Allen’s
skillful depiction of Sartrean themes in Hus-
bands and Wives constitute doing philosophy.

5. Mulhall is at great pains to specify his para-
digmatic account of film as philosophy so that
he can contend that films should not be seen as
grist for one’s philosophical interpretive mill.
He is equally disdainful of directors who seek
merely to illustrate philosophical positions
(they fail to be true philosophers). Although I
agree with Mulhall that films can be philoso-
phical in his (overly demanding) sense of the term,
I think he has construed what is essentially a
matter of degree as a black-and-white situation.
Alternatively, I would like to propose the
following hierarchy: (1) a film is (minimally)
philosophical if it can fruitfully (and plausibly)
be interpreted from a philosophical perspective
that can enhance our understanding and appre-
ciation of it; (2) a film is more philosophical if
it is an explicit (and successful) attempt by a
director to illustrate a philosophical theory or
concept; and finally (3) the most profoundly
philosophical films are those that further the
conversation of mankind (to use Richard
Rorty’s apt phrase) about the topic in question,
that is, those that are capable of making a real
contribution to ongoing philosophical inquiries
into that issue. Films can ask genuinely philo-
sophical questions, as well as offer new ways of
viewing (and sometimes new answers to) such
questions. When they do, they can rightly be
praised for doing philosophy. One of the most
philosophically interesting films to find a sub-
stantial audience in recent years is Being John
Malkovich, which, as my paradigm of how

6. films can be philosophical, can help us under-
stand this difficult concept. Before turning to
my reading of that work, we need to examine
some further examples of how films have been
said to be “truly philosophical.”
II
Various writers have remarked that this or that
particular film asked genuinely philosophical
questions. Noël Carroll, in Interpreting the
Moving Image, comes up with a novel solution
to the ambiguity about the essence of the human
personality that emerges from Citizen Kane
(Orson Welles, 1941). According to Carroll,
rather than urging a particular theory, Welles
intended to raise the question, not solve it; to
problematize personal identity rather than
define it.5 It is for this reason, Carroll seems to
suggest, that Kane is one of the most profound
movies ever made in Hollywood. In the same
vein, Jerold J. Abrams, in an article for Volume
Shaw On Being Philosophical and Being John Malkovich 113
7 of Film and Philosophy, contends that Rear
Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954) is a sublime
film, in part because it “calls into question the
relation between the spectator and the object.” 6
In Volume 8 of the same publication, Herbert
Granger argues that Le Feu Follet (Louis Malle,
1963) is truly philosophical because its main
character is embroiled in a genuine existential

7. crisis that could go either way (despite the fact
that Alain (Maurice Ronet) ends up killing
himself, it is clear that he could have done-
otherwise had he concluded that his life was
worth living). Granger makes the following
observation, which is reminiscent of Mulhall’s
view: “If a film is used to illustrate philo-
sophical positions, or voice philosophical
arguments … [like the recent, disastrous The
Matrix Reloaded], it merely serves to reflect the
views of the director, and not those of his char-
acters.”7 Apparently, for Granger, one of the
best ways for a film to be philosophical is to
have its characters engaged in an existential
crisis or genuine philosophical inquiry, the
results of which do not come off as predeter-
mined by some prior theory.
Mulhall shares Granger’s antipathy for inter-
pretations that use films as fodder for theory,
and for directors that merely seek to exemplify
some theory or other. Woody Allen is doing
precisely that in Husbands and Wives. Much
like Sartre’s own plays,8 the film exemplifies
Sartre’s theory of love, but does not elaborate
on or develop it beyond the philosopher’s
original conceptions.9 Although I would argue
that Allen’s film is philosophical, in that it
accurately depicts Sartre’s challenging notions
at work in convincing existential situations (no
small accomplishment), it is not doing philo-
sophy, that is, it does not ask deeper questions
or propose new concepts or perspectives that
Sartre had not himself formulated previously.
In his response to critical reviews of On Film

8. first posted on the Film-Philosophy website,
and reprinted in a special edition of Film and
Philosophy (2005) on science fiction, Mulhall
acknowledges that one of the goals of publish-
ing his book was to convince us to “think of at
least some films as philosophy in action, and
hence of film as philosophizing rather than as
raw material or ornamentation for a philo-
sopher’s work.”10 He argues that entries in the
Alien series can usefully be seen as philosophiz-
ing, because they raise questions about what it
means to be human, to have a body, and to be
gendered. Furthermore, he contends that the
filmmakers self-consciously address questions
about the nature of the cinematic medium, the
aesthetic phenomenon of the sequel, and over-
lapping genre notions.
I do not share Mulhall’s apparent disdain for
the other ways a film can be interesting philo-
sophically, but I do agree with him that, on
extremely rare occasions, a film can be said to
be doing philosophy in the sense he prefers, that
is, by actually making a positive contribution to
the philosophical dialogue on the issue. As
Mulhall persuasively argues in the response to
his critics cited above, doing philosophy does
not require films to offer new reasons (in the
sense of deductive arguments) for philosophical
positions. Dostoevsky furthered our understand-
ing of the meaning of the death of God and the
threat of nihilism in the late nineteenth century
without offering many new arguments in
rational theology (Ivan Karamazov’s compel-
ling version of the problem of evil is perhaps

9. the only exception). Friedrich Nietzsche is
recognized as a profound philosopher (indeed,
as one of the most influential philosophers in
the last hundred years) despite the relative pau-
city of traditional arguments in his work. What
they both offered us were opposing gestalten,
that is, ways of viewing the world, rather than
deductively sound arguments that could com-
mand universal assent.11
To clarify what I mean by a film doing philo-
sophy, in the best sense of the term, consider the
following interpretation of Being John Malkovich,
which explains why I believe it is one of the
most intriguingly philosophical films to have
been made in recent years.
FIGURE 1. Is he Malkovich or Dr. Lester?
114 Thinking Through Cinema: Film as Philosophy
III
Being John Malkovich is unarguably one of the
most inventive films of the last decade and as
such it defies easy summary. Hence, I will not
attempt to offer one here, choosing instead to
focus on several crucial philosophical concepts
that the film mobilizes. The viewer must first
accept the fabulous premise that makes possible
the transformation to which the title refers: a
magical (and totally unexplained) portal exists
that allows one to be the noted actor John
Malkovich for a quarter of an hour (granting

10. such participants their own fifteen minutes of
fame!). When one enters the portal, he or she
has temporary access to John’s sensory stream,
seeing the world through what appears to be a
set of goggles. For that brief period of time, the
lucky individual gets to experience the world
through Malkovich’s senses, overhearing his
utterances from within (so to speak), enjoying
his pleasures, and undergoing his pains. Then
the subjects are physically ejected out into a
ditch adjacent to the New Jersey turnpike. Can
these individuals accurately be described as
having enjoyed being John Malkovich? And, if
so, in what sense of the term?
Two of the pivotal characters in the story,
Dr. Lester (Orson Bean), who apparently “owns”
the portal, and Craig Schwartz (John Cusack),
who mines it for his own personal gain, can do
much more. They can remain in the “Malkovich
vessel” permanently and manipulate the poor
man’s body to do their wishes. Lester has used the
portal before to somehow transfer his conscious-
ness out of his previous bodies (as they wore out)
into more youthful vessels, hence achieving a
kind of serial immortality. Malkovich is destined
(for whatever reason) to be his next incarnation.
Such miraculous transformations can occur only
before midnight on the day when the vessel is
ripe, the forty-fourth birthday of its original
inhabitant. If the appropriate moment is missed,
individuals seeking metamorphosis will end up in
a “larval vessel” (a newborn infant), and lose
themselves therein. Submerged in such a vessel,
the unlucky individual will be assimilated and, to
all intents and purposes, cease to be.

11. Being John Malkovich has already attracted
the attention of several philosophers. Mary
Litch, in her instructive undergraduate textbook
Philosophy Through Film, uses the film, along
with Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000), as
illustrative of various theories of personal iden-
tity and/or as challenges thereto.12 Rehearsing
the fundamentals of same-soul theories, and
both physical and psychological continuity theories,
Litch applies each in their turn to Malkovich.
Same-soul theories, embracing the spiritual sub-
stance of Cartesian dualism, identify individuals
by the presence of a spiritual consciousness
unique to them alone. Physical continuity theo-
ries ground personal identity in material sub-
stance, which seems much simpler and more
plausible; what makes us the same identifiable
person on this view is our continuing physical
presence over time (like Descartes’s ball of
wax). Besides the unfortunate drawback that
physicalism seems to imply determinism, how-
ever, this hypothesis cannot answer the question
of what it is to be John Malkovich, even if
updated to include our DNA; Malkovich’s body
presumably retains the same DNA no matter
how many personalities occupy (or even com-
mand) his “vessel.” Yet he is a very different
person by the end of the film. Besides, identical
twins have the same DNA but different personal
identities (except in Dead Ringers (David
Cronenberg, 1988)).
Long before Gilbert Ryle lampooned Des-
cartes’s view as “The Ghost in the Machine,”

12. the “same-soul” theory of personal identity
had already taken its critical licks.13 Because
souls are, in Litch’s words, “enigmatic beasts”
(unobservable entities whose very existence is
unprovable), they do not allow us to do one of
the major tasks for which such criteria are
proposed: reidentify particular individuals over
time. When Craig takes over Malkovich’s body
and makes it do his bidding, was he a new ghost
in Malkovich’s machine? Were both present
simultaneously?
Perhaps for pedagogical purposes, Litch then
proceeds to oversimplify things by claiming
that the psychological continuity theory (which
defines personal identity in terms of the privacy
of memory, as well as long-standing disposi-
tions and continuing personality characteristics)
“meshes well” with the film, accounting for all
the major puzzles that it raises. While it is true
that certain aspects are adequately explained by
this approach (Malkovich looks and sounds a
lot like Craig soon after the puppeteer takes
over, and like Dr. Lester after seven years of
Shaw On Being Philosophical and Being John Malkovich 115
being inhabited by him and his geriatric
friends), a great many questions are left
unanswered.
The mechanics of the process, including how
the portal originated, how Dr. Lester obtained
ownership of it, how it accomplishes its miracu-

13. lous feat, and how particular individuals are
chosen as vessels ripe for occupation, can
remain unexplained. This, after all, is comic
fantasy, not science fiction. Several philosophic
questions seem to beg for our attention,
however. Near the end of the film, we are
shown a Malkovich who has been occupied by
Dr. Lester for seven years. Lester/Malkovich
has married his old secretary (Mary Kay Place)
and sounds a whole lot like his original self. If
he continues on with his previous mode of
operation, he will occupy Malkovich until the
body of the former actor breathes its last. If
anyone other than the original can truly stake
his claim to being John Malkovich, it is Lester.
So what has happened to the “real” John
Malkovich? If Lester exits the body only when
it breathes its last, can the original Malkovich
still be said to exist after all those years of such
total submersion? If so, where has he (the
original) gone? If he never regains control over
his body, can we say that he remains John
Malkovich? What about all the other personal-
ities that have transmigrated into Malkovich’s
body? They seem to be as lost as he is; they
(and he) are, at best, goggled observers of
Lester’s ongoing life.
After exiting Malkovich and giving him up to
Dr. Lester and his geriatric crew, Craig resolves
to reenter the portal and wrest control of the
Malkovich vessel. Doing so after midnight, he
instead enters into Emily (the newborn love
child of his wife Lotte (Cameron Diaz) and
business partner Maxine (Catherine Keener),

14. who is destined to become Lester’s next target).
In the finale, as the seven-year-old is shown
gazing adoringly at her two mothers, we get a
reverse shot from Craig’s goggled perspective,
ineffectually whimpering his undying love for
Maxine and wishing in vain that Emily would
turn her head away from her beloved parents.
Having migrated into a larval vessel, he is
destined to be a powerless observer for the rest
of his life.
When I first saw this film, I was convinced
that Jonze, and writer Charlie Kaufman, were
thinking of personal identity as defined by the
will as agent acting on the body as instrument.
The crucial point for me was when Craig took
control, transforming himself from just another
passive observer of Malkovich’s actions into
the internal puppeteer that pulled the strings.
Then, when Dr. Lester takes over even more
completely than Craig ever could, I thought the
answer to the puzzle was clear: the key to being
John Malkovich was to be the will behind the
actions of the Malkovich vessel. It would actu-
ally be a kind of existential theory of personal
identity: we are what we do, and the real
identity of Malkovich is defined by what he
does, and by the reasons and values that explain
why he chooses to do what he does.
Armed with my new explanatory hypothesis
(which I still believe has substantial philosophic
and textual merit), I looked up interviews with
Kaufman to confirm my theory. Here is what he
had to say.

15. Well, you are inside someone else’s skin, but Craig
doesn’t have the experience of being Malkovich, he
has the experience of using Malkovich. He uses him
to be with Maxine, and then he uses Malkovich’s
notoriety to get his own career going. So it’s “Using
John Malkovich.” Yeah, I’d say it’s “Using John
Malkovich.” [laughs]14
He made this point after having already
observed that the only time anyone ever gets a
glimpse of the real Malkovich is when (hilari-
ously) Lotte chases Maxine with a gun through
his unconscious mind. Kaufman’s remarks tend
to support the psychological continuity theory:
what makes John Malkovich who he is are his
memories, thoughts, desires, and so forth, to
which he alone has access.
The implications of that theory seem to be
clear. As Mary Litch saw, Craig continues to
exist, even after he enters the passageway. The
original Malkovich ceases to exist (or, at a mini-
mum, is suppressed), once Craig gets control
over the body. Hence, no one had truly suc-
ceeded in being John Malkovich, since no one
(save for the brief exception noted above) had
gained access to his thoughts and/or memories.
Following the lead of Thomas Nagel (in his
acclaimed article “What is it Like to Be a
Bat?”), I suggest that what it is like to be John
Malkovich would have to include accessing his
116 Thinking Through Cinema: Film as Philosophy

16. consciousness.15 Once others show themselves
capable of taking over Malkovich’s body, our
concerns shift from what it is like to be John
Malkovich to who this strangely amalgamated
creature truly is in the end.
Notice how the criteria for who John Malkovich
is in the later sections of the film seem to turn
on whose will commands the body over which
the protagonists are wrestling. Yet the psycho-
logical continuity theory cannot account for
who takes control of that body at various points
in the film. How does Craig succeed in reducing
Malkovich to the status of a marionette, when
all the other subjects could only stay for fifteen
minutes and only watch and listen? Craig’s
history as a puppeteer is alluded to as the basis
for his skill, but why would this be relevant?
For that matter, how does Dr. Lester manage to
take over each successive vessel, ensuring his
immortality? What is clear, it seems to me, is
that, after seven years of passively observing
someone else’s life, both Craig Schwartz and
the original John Malkovich have, to all intents
and purposes (an apt phrase), ceased to exist.
The choice of John Malkovich was not an
accidental one on the part of the writer and
director. Malkovich is an enigmatic chameleon,
both in his professional and in his personal life.
As Kaufman described the eponymous actor in
the above-referenced interview, “there’s some-
thing odd and completely unknowable about
him. You never really know what’s going on
behind his eyes, so it becomes fascinating, and

17. I think that works for this story.” Malkovich
seldom portrays strong-willed characters,
except when playing the occasional villain (for
example his pitiless depiction of the scheming
Gilbert Osmond in Jane Campion’s Portrait of
a Lady (1996)). In the present film, he does not
put up much of a fight before he is overwhelmed
by his occupiers. After seven years of being
submerged under Dr. Lester and his cronies,
one has to wonder if his psyche even continues
to exist. What about Lester’s previous incarna-
tion? We never see or hear another conscious-
ness peer out from behind Lester’s countenance.
True, seven years after merging with Emily,
Craig still exists. He still has longing thoughts
about Maxine, but he can have no further
effects on either Emily’s body or on the external
world. One doubts that Emily herself is even
aware of this other consciousness submerged
within her. If the personal identity of an indi-
vidual is defined as the will that governs the
actions of a particular body, Craig has dis-
appeared, never to be seen again. Similarly,
Malkovich ceases to exist when Lester takes
permanent control. Despite a continued friend-
ship with Charlie Sheen, Malkovich’s personal-
ity seems totally lost to Lester’s, to the point of
his having adopted the latter’s speech patterns
and romantic tastes. It makes no sense to talk
about the original Malkovich’s psychological
dispositions, since he has no way to operation-
alize them. We are never given any further
access to his thoughts.

18. All this reminded me of the theory of the
individual as comprised of a hierarchy of
dominant and submissive drives, which was
proposed by Nietzsche in Beyond Good and
Evil. There, Nietzsche describes the individual
as a bundle of power drives, all vying for domi-
nance. The one that wins is the one that leads to
action. We are our actions, and the ability to
become who we are turns on our strength of
will, especially in facing the crucial challenge
of upholding a particular hierarchy of such
drives over time: “The Essential thing ‘in
heaven and upon earth’ seems … to be a pro-
tracted obedience in one direction: from out of
that there … has always emerged something for
the sake of which it is worthwhile to live on
earth.”16 Becoming who we are hence requires
resolute service to a self-made set of priorities,
a daunting prospect when we realize that there
are no grounds for our choices other than the
strength of our individual wills.
In Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of
Transformation, Tracy Strong comes up with as
clear a characterization of what Nietzsche
means by “Will” as any in the secondary liter-
ature: “Nietzsche is saying that if one looks at
people, in fact at organisms and matter in
general, their most basic characteristic is the
attempt to incorporate into themselves and
define all that they meet.”17 In the struggle for
domination, Craig temporarily triumphs, but
Dr. Lester is the ultimate victor. It is his will
that governs the Malkovich vessel in the long
run. And, in Nietzsche’s words: “‘Unfree will’
is a mythology: in real life it is only a question

19. of strong and weak wills.”18 Malkovich himself
was weak willed in the extreme, having trouble
deciding about bath towels and allowing
Shaw On Being Philosophical and Being John Malkovich 117
himself to be manipulated by Maxine into having
dinner with a total stranger. If nobody suc-
ceeded in truly being John Malkovich, it might
also be said that, by the end of the film, John
Malkovich has effectively (in the literal sense of
the term) ceased to be. Just as poor Craig is
assimilated by Emily, so, too, Malkovich’s
consciousness has been rendered impotent and
epiphenomenal.
Nietzsche’s theory of the “Will to Power,”
then, best answers the pivotal question of who
John Malkovich is at the end of the film seven
years after Lester has moved in. Though he con-
tains numerous other consciousnesses (all of
Lester’s friends, and his own original one, all
presumably with goggled views of the proceed-
ings), the Malkovich vessel is now firmly con-
trolled by Lester (who was, in turn, the first
reincarnation of the Captain who built the office
building and the quirky 7½ th floor that houses
the portal). Lester’s will commands the body
like the pilot of a ship, and John Malkovich
ends up being more like Lester than anyone
else.
Admittedly, neither Nietzsche, nor the
makers of Being John Malkovich, offer us much

20. help in accounting for which drive or which
personality becomes dominant in the struggle to
act. Yet both the philosopher and the film-
makers lead us along some novel paths in
thinking about the enigma of personal identity.
Their work serves to complicate traditional
dualistic conceptions of body and spirit, chal-
lenging our simpler and more comforting
notions of who and what we are, as well as
undermining accepted philosophical definitions
of personal identity. The film begs to be read in
light of a Nietzschean, existentialist theory of
personal identity, which sees the self as defined
by its actions and the projects and values to
which we dedicate ourselves. Jonze and
Kaufman were indeed doing philosophy, in the
sense that Mulhall privileges exclusively and
that I have argued is the paradigm of film at its
most philosophical. By this I mean that, after
several viewings of Being John Malkovich, my
understanding of the problem of personal iden-
tity was deepened and enhanced because the
filmmakers mapped out existentialist pathways
of thought, ones that seem to be fascinating
Hollywood more and more recently.19
Kaufman’s screenplay suggests an interesting
bridge between body and consciousness in its
treatment of the relationship between Maxine
and Lotte. Maxine pursues Malkovich and finds
that she is most excited by having sex with his
body when it is occupied by Lotte’s conscious-
ness. Before she switches her allegiance to
Craig (when he proves himself capable of
manipulating Malkovich’s body), she gets
pregnant from an early morning liaison with

21. Malkovich/Lotte. In declaring her love, Maxine
passionately suggests that the baby she carries
is Lotte’s, and that is why she decided to keep
it! Indeed, the daughter who results from their
amalgamated union looks rather like a cross
between the two women, without a trace of
Malkovich’s oddly distinctive features, lending
some credence to Maxine’s rather implausible
notion (given its implication that a transform-
ation had occurred at the level of DNA).
What I have been arguing, then, is that Spike
Jonze and Charlie Kaufman were (among other
things) doing philosophy in Being John
Malkovich. They were raising new questions
about and exploring various theories of personal
identity. Having no preconceived notion of
representing some one theory or other as the
answer that their work was intended to illus-
trate, they opened the way to intriguing new
possibilities. As Kaufman described his creative
process in the interview cited above:
If I put disparate things together, then I have to figure
out what to do with them, so it puts me in a position
of challenging myself and having to surprise myself.
I’d like to clarify something. I’ve discussed my
writing process before as working without a map, and
people seem to misunderstand what I meant. I do
explore without a plan, but that isn’t what ends up on
the screen, although it’s completely a result of that
process.
This eloquently captures the ideal of artistic
creation championed by Robin George
Collingwood, but it also characterizes an inquir-

22. ing philosophical attitude.20 Perhaps a theory of
personal identity based on a more adequate
account of the nature of the human will can yet
be formulated, offering the “genuine physio-
psychology” that Nietzsche called for but only
gestured at in Beyond Good and Evil.
118 Thinking Through Cinema: Film as Philosophy
DANIEL SHAW
Department of Communications and Philosophy
Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania
Lock Haven, Pennsylvania 17745
USA
INTERNET: [email protected]
1. Thomas Wartenberg, “Looking Backward: Philosophy
and Film Reconsidered,” Film and Philosophy 8 (2004): 140.
2. Stephen Mulhall, On Film (New York/London:
Routledge, 2002), especially the introduction.
3. Stephen Mulhall, “Picturing the Human (Body and
Soul): A Reading of Blade Runner,” Film and Philosophy 1
(1994): 87.
4. Mulhall, “Picturing the Human (Body and Soul),”
pp. 40–51.
5. Noël Carroll, Interpreting the Moving Image
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 153–165.
6. Jerold J. Abrams, “Cinema and the Aesthetics of the
Dynamical Sublime,” Film and Philosophy 7 (2003): 70.

23. 7. Herbert Granger, “Cinematic Philosophy in Le Feu
Follet: The Search for the Meaningful Life,” Film and
Philosophy 8 (2004): 75–76.
8. And unlike Nausea, where Sartre often seems to be
exploring new philosophical avenues, which were only to
be mapped out explicitly in subsequent theoretical treatises
such as Being and Nothingness. For another discussion of
Sartre’s ideas in relation to film, see András Bálint Kovács,
“Sartre, the Philosophy of Nothingness, and the Modern
Melodrama,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
64 (2006): 135–145.
9. In that regard, Crimes and Misdemeanors (Woody
Allen, 1989) goes beyond its source in Dostoevsky, and is
hence more philosophic than Husbands and Wives.
Raskolnikov could not avoid being paralyzed with guilt.
Judah in Crimes seems capable of going on with his life
without confessing his crime to the powers that be.
Dostoevsky intended Crime and Punishment as a tale of
spiritual redemption; Allen’s intentions are less clear, and
more intriguing.
10. Stephen Mulhall, “Ways of Thinking: A Response to
Andersen and Baggini,” reprinted in Special Interest Edition
on Science Fiction and Philosophy, Film and Philosophy 9
(2005): 24–29.
11. Mulhall invokes both Martin Heidegger and Stanley
Cavell in order to clarify the sense in which he thinks films
can philosophize, by (paraphrasing Heidegger) “opening
new paths for thought” and (quoting Cavell) suggesting
“directions to answers.” Mulhall, “Ways of Thinking,”
p. 28. The latter characterization is excerpted from Cavell’s

24. essay, “The Thought of Movies,” in Themes Out of School
(San Francisco: North Point Press, 1984), p. 9.
12. Mary Litch, Philosophy Through Film (New York/
London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 67–86.
13. Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (University of
Chicago Press, 1949, reprinted 1984), pp. 11–24.
14. Interview for the Being Charlie Kaufman website,
originally posted in 2000, available at <http://
www.beingcharliekaufman.com/index.ht m?movies/
malkovich.htm&2>.
15. Thomas Nagel, “What is it Like to Be a Bat?” Philo-
sophical Review 84 (1974): 435–450.
16. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans.
R. J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin Books, 1973), § 188.
17. Tracy Strong, Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of
Transformation (University of California Press, 1975),
p. 234.
18. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, § 21.
19. See, for example, I ♥ Huckabees (David O. Russell,
2004), Closer (Mike Nichols, 2004), and Eternal Sunshine
of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004), for which
Kaufman was recently honored with the Academy Award
for Best Original Screenplay.
20. R. G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1958), pp. 111–119.

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What is it like to be a bat?
Thomas Nagel
[From The Philosophical Review LXXXIII, 4 (October 1974):
435-50.]
Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really
intractable. Perhaps that is why current
discussions of the problem give it little attention or get it
obviously wrong. The recent wave of
reductionist euphoria has produced several analyses of mental
phenomena and mental concepts designed
to explain the possibility of some variety of materialism,
psychophysical identification, or reduction.
1
But
the problems dealt with are those common to this type of
reduction and other types, and what makes the
mind-body problem unique, and unlike the water-H2O problem
or the Turing machine-IBM machine

26. problem or the lightning-electrical discharge problem or the
gene-DNA problem or the oak
tree-hydrocarbon problem, is ignored.
Every reductionist has his favorite analogy from modern
science. It is most unlikely that any of these
unrelated examples of successful reduction will shed light on
the relation of mind to brain. But
philosophers share the general human weakness for explanations
of what is incomprehensible in terms
suited for what is familiar and well understood, though entirely
different. This has led to the acceptance of
implausible accounts of the mental largely because they would
permit familiar kinds of reduction. I shall
try to explain why the usual examples do not help us to
understand the relation between mind and
body—why, indeed, we have at present no conception of what
an explanation of the physical nature of a
mental phenomenon would be. Without consciousness the mind-
body problem would be much less
interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless. The most
important and characteristic feature of
conscious mental phenomena is very poorly understood. Most
reductionist theories do not even try to

27. explain it. And careful examination will show that no currently
available concept of reduction is
applicable to it. Perhaps a new theoretical form can be devised
for the purpose, but such a solution, if it
exists, lies in the distant intellectual future.
Conscious experience is a widespread phenomenon. It occurs at
many levels of animal life, though we
cannot be sure of its presence in the simpler organisms, and it is
very difficult to say in general what
provides evidence of it. (Some extremists have been prepared to
deny it even of mammals other than
man.) No doubt it occurs in countless forms totally
unimaginable to us, on other planets in other solar
systems throughout the universe. But no matter how the form
may vary, the fact that an organism has
conscious experience at all means, basically, that there is
something it is like to be that organism. There
may be further implications about the form of the experience;
there may even (though I doubt it) be
implications about the behavior of the organism. But
fundamentally an organism has conscious mental
states if and only if there is something that it is to be that
organism—something it is like for the
organism.

28. We may call this the subjective character of experience. It is not
captured by any of the familiar, recently
devised reductive analyses of the mental, for all of them are
logically compatible with its absence. It is not
analyzable in terms of any explanatory system of functional
states, or intentional states, since these could
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be ascribed to robots or automata that behaved like people
though they experienced nothing.
2
It is not
analyzable in terms of the causal role of experiences in relation
to typical human behavior—for similar
reasons.
3
I do not deny that conscious mental states and events cause
behavior, nor that they may be given
functional characterizations. I deny only that this kind of thing
exhausts their analysis. Any reductionist
program has to be based on an analysis of what is to be reduced.
If the analysis leaves something out, the

29. problem will be falsely posed. It is useless to base the defense
of materialism on any analysis of mental
phenomena that fails to deal explicitly with their subjective
character. For there is no reason to suppose
that a reduction which seems plausible when no attempt is made
to account for consciousness can be
extended to include consciousness. With out some idea,
therefore, of what the subjective character of
experience is, we cannot know what is required of physicalist
theory.
While an account of the physical basis of mind must explain
many things, this appears to be the most
difficult. It is impossible to exclude the phenomenological
features of experience from a reduction in the
same way that one excludes the phenomenal features of an
ordinary substance from a physical or chemical
reduction of it—namely, by explaining them as effects on the
minds of human observers.
4
If physicalism
is to be defended, the phenomenological features must
themselves be given a physical account. But when
we examine their subjective character it seems that such a result
is impossible. The reason is that every
subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single

30. point of view, and it seems inevitable that
an objective, physical theory will abandon that point of view.
Let me first try to state the issue somewhat more fully than by
referring to the relation between the
subjective and the objective, or between the pour-soi and the
en-soi. This is far from easy. Facts about
what it is like to be an X are very peculiar, so peculiar that
some may be inclined to doubt their reality, or
the significance of claims about them. To illustrate the
connection between subjectivity and a point of
view, and to make evident the importance of subjective features,
it will help to explore the matter in
relation to an example that brings out clearly the divergence
between the two types of conception,
subjective and objective.
I assume we all believe that bats have experience. After all,
they are mammals, and there is no more doubt
that they have experience than that mice or pigeons or whales
have experience. I have chosen bats instead
of wasps or flounders because if one travels too far down the
phylogenetic tree, people gradually shed
their faith that there is experience there at all. Bats, although
more closely related to us than those other

31. species, nevertheless present a range of activity and a sensory
apparatus so different from ours that the
problem I want to pose is exceptionally vivid (though it
certainly could be raised with other species). Even
without the benefit of philosophical reflection, anyone who has
spent some time in an enclosed space with
an excited bat knows what it is to encounter a fundamentally
alien form of life.
I have said that the essence of the belief that bats have
experience is that there is something that it is like
to be a bat. Now we know that most bats (the microchiroptera,
to be precise) perceive the external world
primarily by sonar, or echolocation, detecting the reflections,
from objects within range, of their own
rapid, subtly modulated, high-frequency shrieks. Their brains
are designed to correlate the outgoing
impulses with the subsequent echoes, and the information thus
acquired enables bats to make precise
discriminations of distance, size, shape, motion, and texture
comparable to those we make by vision. But
bat sonar, though clearly a form of perception, is not similar in
its operation to any sense that we possess,
and there is no reason to suppose that it is subjectively like
anything we can experience or imagine. This

32. appears to create difficulties for the notion of what it is like to
be a bat. We must consider whether any
method will permit us to extrapolate to the inner life of the bat
from our own case,
5
and if not, what
alternative methods there may be for understanding the notion.
Our own experience provides the basic material for our
imagination, whose range is therefore limited. It
will not help to try to imagine that one has webbing on one's
arms, which enables one to fly around at
dusk and dawn catching insects in one's mouth; that one has
very poor vision, and perceives the
surrounding world by a system of reflected high-frequency
sound signals; and that one spends the day
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hanging upside down by one's feet in an attic. In so far as I can
imagine this (which is not very far), it tells
me only what it would be like for me to behave as a bat
behaves. But that is not the question. I want to
know what it is like for a bat to be a bat. Yet if I try to imagine

33. this, I am restricted to the resources of my
own mind, and those resources are inadequate to the task. I
cannot perform it either by imagining
additions to my present experience, or by imagining segments
gradually subtracted from it, or by
imagining some combination of additions, subtractions, and
modifications.
To the extent that I could look and behave like a wasp or a bat
without changing my fundamental
structure, my experiences would not be anything like the
experiences of those animals. On the other hand,
it is doubtful that any meaning can be attached to the
supposition that I should possess the internal
neurophysiological constitution of a bat. Even if I could by
gradual degrees be transformed into a bat,
nothing in my present constitution enables me to imagine what
the experiences of such a future stage of
myself thus metamorphosed would be like. The best evidence
would come from the experiences of bats, if
we only knew what they were like.
So if extrapolation from our own case is involved in the idea of
what it is like to be a bat, the
extrapolation must be incompletable. We cannot form more than
a schematic conception of what it is like.

34. For example, we may ascribe general types of experience on the
basis of the animal's structure and
behavior. Thus we describe bat sonar as a form of three-
dimensional forward perception; we believe that
bats feel some versions of pain, fear, hunger, and lust, and that
they have other, more familiar types of
perception besides sonar. But we believe that these experiences
also have in each case a specific
subjective character, which it is beyond our ability to conceive.
And if there's conscious life elsewhere in
the universe, it is likely that some of it will not be describable
even in the most general experiential terms
available to us.
6
(The problem is not confined to exotic cases, however, for it
exists between one person
and another. The subjective character of the experience of a
person deaf and blind from birth is not
accessible to me, for example, nor presumably is mine to him.
This does not prevent us each from
believing that the other's experience has such a subjective
character.)
If anyone is inclined to deny that we can believe in the
existence of facts like this whose exact nature we

35. cannot possibly conceive, he should reflect that in
contemplating the bats we are in much the same
position that intelligent bats or Martians
7
would occupy if they tried to form a conception of what it was
like to be us. The structure of their own minds might make it
impossible for them to succeed, but we
know they would be wrong to conclude that there is not
anything precise that it is like to be us: that only
certain general types of mental state could be ascribed to us
(perhaps perception and appetite would be
concepts common to us both; perhaps not). We know they would
be wrong to draw such a skeptical
conclusion because we know what it is like to be us. And we
know that while it includes an enormous
amount of variation and complexity, and while we do not
possess the vocabulary to describe it adequately,
its subjective character is highly specific, and in some respects
describable in terms that can be understood
only by creatures like us. The fact that we cannot expect ever to
accommodate in our language a detailed
description of Martian or bat phenomenology should not lead us
to dismiss as meaningless the claim that
bats and Martians have experiences fully comparable in richness
of detail to our own. It would be fine if

36. someone were to develop concepts and a theory that enabled us
to think about those things; but such an
understanding may be permanently denied to us by the limits of
our nature. And to deny the reality or
logical significance of what we can never describe or
understand is the crudest form of cognitive
dissonance.
This brings us to the edge of a topic that requires much more
discussion than I can give it here: namely,
the relation between facts on the one hand and conceptual
schemes or systems of representation on the
other. My realism about the subjective domain in all its forms
implies a belief in the existence of facts
beyond the reach of human concepts. Certainly it is possible for
a human being to believe that there are
facts which humans never will possess the requisite concepts to
represent or comprehend. Indeed, it would
be foolish to doubt this, given the finiteness of humanity's
expectations. After all there would have been
transfinite numbers even if everyone had been wiped out by the
Black Death before Cantor discovered
them. But one might also believe that there are facts which
could not ever be represented or

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comprehended by human beings, even if the species lasted for
ever—simply because our structure does
not permit us to operate with concepts of the requisite type.
This impossibility might even be observed by
other beings, but it is not clear that the existence of such
beings, or the possibility of their existence, is a
precondition of the significance of the hypothesis that there are
humanly inaccessible facts. (After all, the
nature of beings with access to humanly inaccessible facts is
presumably itself a humanly inaccessible
fact.) Reflection on what it is like to be a bat seems to lead us,
therefore, to the conclusion that there are
facts that do not consist in the truth of propositions expressible
in a human language. We can be
compelled to recognize the existence of such facts without
being able to state or comprehend them.
I shall not pursue this subject, however. Its bearing on the topic
before us (namely, the mind-body
problem) is that it enables us to make a general observation
about the subjective character of experience.

38. Whatever may be the status of facts about what it is like to be a
human being, or a bat, or a Martian, these
appear to be facts that embody a particular point of view.
I am not adverting here to the alleged privacy of experience to
its possessor. The point of view in question
is not one accessible only to a single individual. Rather it is a
type. It is often possible to take up a point of
view other than one's own, so the comprehension of such facts
is not limited to one's own case. There is a
sense in which phenomenological facts are perfectly objective:
one person can know or say of another
what the quality of the other's experience is. They are
subjective, however, in the sense that even this
objective ascription of experience is possible only for someone
sufficiently similar to the object of
ascription to be able to adopt his point of view—to understand
the ascription in the first person as well as
in the third, so to speak. The more different from oneself the
other experiencer is, the less success one can
expect with this enterprise. In our own case we occupy the
relevant point of view, but we will have as
much difficulty understanding our own experience properly if
we approach it from another point of view

39. as we would if we tried to understand the experience of another
species without taking up its point of
view.
8
This bears directly on the mind-body problem. For if the facts
of experience—facts about what it is like
for the experiencing organism—are accessible only from one
point of view, then it is a mystery how the
true character of experiences could be revealed in the physical
operation of that organism. The latter is a
domain of objective facts par excellence—the kind that can be
observed and understood from many points
of view and by individuals with differing perceptual systems.
There are no comparable imaginative
obstacles to the acquisition of knowledge about bat
neurophysiology by human scientists, and intelligent
bats or Martians might learn more about the human brain than
we ever will.
This is not by itself an argument against reduction. A Martian
scientist with no understanding of visual
perception could understand the rainbow, or lightning, or clouds
as physical phenomena, though he would
never be able to understand the human concepts of rainbow,
lightning, or cloud, or the place these things

40. occupy in our phenomenal world. The objective nature of the
things picked out by these concepts could be
apprehended by him because, although the concepts themselves
are connected with a particular point of
view and a particular visual phenomenology, the things
apprehended from that point of view are not: they
are observable-from the point of view but external to it; hence
they can be comprehended from other
points of view also, either by the same organisms or by others.
Lightning has an objective character that is
not exhausted by its visual appearance, and this can be
investigated by a Martian without vision. To be
precise, it has a more objective character than is revealed in its
visual appearance. In speaking of the move
from subjective to objective characterization, I wish to remain
noncommittal about the existence of an end
point, the completely objective intrinsic nature of the thing,
which one might or might not be able to
reach. It may be more accurate to think of objectivity as a
direction in which the understanding can travel.
And in understanding a phenomenon like lightning, it is
legitimate to go as far away as one can from a
strictly human viewpoint.
9

41. In the case of experience, on the other hand, the connection
with a particular point of view seems much
closer. It is difficult to understand what could be meant by the
objective character of an experience, apart
from the particular point of view from which its subject
apprehends it. After all, what would be left of
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what it was like to be a bat if one removed the viewpoint of the
bat? But if experience does not have, in
addition to its subjective character, an objective nature that can
be apprehended from many different
points of view, then how can it be supposed that a Martian
investigating my brain might be observing
physical processes which were my mental processes (as he
might observe physical processes which were
bolts of lightning), only from a different point of view? How,
for that matter, could a human physiologist
observe them from another point of view?
10
We appear to be faced with a general difficulty about

42. psychophysical reduction. In other areas the process
of reduction is a move in the direction of greater objectivity,
toward a more, accurate view of the real
nature of things. This is accomplished by reducing our
dependence on individual or species-specific points
of view toward the object of investigation. We describe it not in
terms of the impressions it makes on our
senses, but in terms of its more general effects and of properties
detectable by means other than the human
senses. The less it depends on a specifically human viewpoint,
the more objective is our description. It is
possible to follow this path because although the concepts and
ideas we employ in thinking about the
external world are initially applied from a point of view that
involves our perceptual apparatus, they are
used by us to refer to things beyond themselves—toward which
we have the phenomenal point of view.
Therefore we can abandon it in favor of another, and still be
thinking about the same things.
Experience itself however, does not seem to fit the pattern. The
idea of moving from appearance to reality
seems to make no sense here. What is the analogue in this case
to pursuing a more objective
understanding of the same phenomena by abandoning the initial

43. subjective viewpoint toward them in
favour of another that is more objective but concerns the same
thing? Certainly it appears unlikely that we
will get closer to the real nature of human experience by leaving
behind the particularity of our human
point of view and striving for a description in terms accessible
to beings that could not imagine what it
was like to be us. If the subjective character of experience is
fully comprehensible only from one point of
view, then any shift to greater objectivity—that is, less
attachment to a specific viewpoint—does not take
us nearer to the real nature of the phenomenon: it takes us
farther away from it.
In a sense, the seeds of this objection to the reducibility of
experience are already detectable in successful
cases of reduction; for in discovering sound to be, in reality, a
wave phenomenon in air or other media, we
leave behind one viewpoint to take up another, and the auditory,
human or animal viewpoint that we leave
behind remains unreduced. Members of radically different
species may both understand the same physical
events in objective terms, and this does not require that they
understand the phenomenal forms in which
those events appear to the senses of members of the other

44. species. Thus it is a condition of their referring
to a common reality that their more particular viewpoints are
not part of the common reality that they both
apprehend. The reduction can succeed only if the species-
specific viewpoint is omitted from what is to be
reduced.
But while we are right to leave this point of view aside in
seeking a fuller understanding of the external
world, we cannot ignore it permanently, since it is the essence
of the internal world, and not merely a
point of view on it. Most of the neobehaviorism of recent
philosophical psychology results from the effort
to substitute an objective concept of mind for the real thing, in
order to have nothing left over which
cannot be reduced. If we acknowledge that a physical theory of
mind must account for the subjective
character of experience, we must admit that no presently
available conception gives us a clue how this
could be done. The problem is unique. If mental processes are
indeed physical processes, then there is
something it is like, intrinsically,
11
to undergo certain physical processes. What it is for such a
thing to be

45. the case remains a mystery.
What moral should be drawn from these reflections, and what
should be done next? It would be a mistake
to conclude that physicalism must be false. Nothing is proved
by the inadequacy of physicalist hypotheses
that assume a faulty objective analysis of mind. It would be
truer to say that physicalism is a position we
cannot understand because we do not at present have any
conception of how it might be true. Perhaps it
will be thought unreasonable to require such a conception as a
condition of understanding. After all, it
might be said, the meaning of physicalism is clear enough:
mental states are states of the body; mental
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events are physical events. We do not know which physical
states and events they are, but that should not
prevent us from understanding the hypothesis. What could be
clearer than the words 'is' and 'are'?
But I believe it is precisely this apparent clarity of the word 'is'
that is deceptive. Usually, when we are

46. told that X is Y we know how it is supposed to be true, but that
depends on a conceptual or theoretical
background and is not conveyed by the 'is' alone. We know how
both "X" and "Y " refer, and the kinds of
things to which they refer, and we have a rough idea how the
two referential paths might converge on a
single thing, be it an object, a person, a process, an event or
whatever. But when the two terms of the
identification are very disparate it may not be so clear how it
could be true. We may not have even a rough
idea of how the two referential paths could converge, or what
kind of things they might converge on, and
a theoretical framework may have to be supplied to enable us to
understand this. Without the framework,
an air of mysticism surrounds the identification.
This explains the magical flavor of popular presentations of
fundamental scientific discoveries, given out
as propositions to which one must subscribe without really
understanding them. For example, people are
now told at an early age that all matter is really energy. But
despite the fact that -'they know what 'is'
means, most of them never form a conception of what makes
this claim true, because they lack the

47. theoretical background.
At the present time the status of physicalism is similar to that
which the hypothesis that matter is energy
would have had if uttered by a pre-Socratic philosopher. We do
not have the beginnings of a conception of
how it might be true. In order to understand the hypothesis that
a mental event is a physical event, we
require more than an understanding of the word 'is'. The idea of
how a mental and a physical term might
refer to the same thing is lacking, and the usual analogies with
theoretical identification in other fields fail
to supply it. They fail because if we construe the reference of
mental terms to physical events on the usual
model, we either get a reappearance of separate subjective
events as the effects through which mental
reference to physical events is secured, or else we get a false
account of how mental terms refer (for
example, a causal behaviorist one).
Strangely enough, we may have evidence for the truth of
something we cannot really understand. Suppose
a caterpillar is locked in a sterile safe by someone unfamiliar
with insect metamorphosis, and weeks later
the safe is reopened, revealing a butterfly. If the person knows
that the safe has been shut the whole time,

48. he has reason to believe that the butterfly is or was once the
caterpillar, without having any idea in what
sense this might be so. (One possibility is that the caterpillar
contained a tiny winged parasite that
devoured it and grew into the butterfly.)
It is conceivable that we are in such a position with regard to
physicalism. Donald Davidson has argued
that if mental events have physical causes and effects, they must
have physical descriptions. He holds that
we have reason to believe this even though we do not—and in
fact could not—have a general
psychophysical theory.
12
His argument applies to intentional mental events, but I think
we also have some
reason to believe that sensations are physical processes, without
being in a position to understand how.
Davidson's position is that certain physical events have
irreducibly mental properties, and perhaps some
view describable in this way is correct. But nothing of which we
can now form a conception corresponds
to it; nor have we any idea what a theory would be like that
enabled us to conceive of it.
13

49. Very little work has been done on the basic question (from
which mention of the brain can be entirely
omitted) whether any sense can be made of experiences' having
an objective character at all. Does it make
sense, in other words, to ask what my experiences are really
like, as opposed to how they appear to me?
We cannot genuinely understand the hypothesis that their nature
is captured in a physical description
unless we understand the more fundamental idea that they have
an objective nature (or that objective
processes can have a subjective nature).
14
I should like to close with a speculative proposal. It may be
possible to approach the gap between
subjective and objective from another direction. Setting aside
temporarily the relation between the mind
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and the brain, we can pursue a more objective understanding of
the mental in its own right. At present we

50. are completely unequipped to think about the subjective
character of experience without relying on the
imagination—without taking up the point of view of the
experiential subject. This should be regarded as a
challenge to form new concepts and devise a new method—an
objective phenomenology not dependent
on empathy or the imagination. Though presumably it would not
capture everything, its goal would be to
describe, at least in part, the subjective character of experiences
in a form comprehensible to beings
incapable of having those experiences.
We would have to develop such a phenomenology to describe
the sonar experiences of bats; but it would
also be possible to begin with humans. One might try, for
example, to develop concepts that could be used
to explain to a person blind from birth what it was like to see.
One would reach a blank wall eventually,
but it should be possible to devise a method of expressing in
objective terms much more than we can at
present, and with much greater precision. The loose intermodal
analogies—for example, 'Red is like the
sound of a trumpet'—which crop up in discussions of this
subject are of little use. That should be clear to
anyone who has both heard a trumpet and seen red. But

51. structural features of perception might be more
accessible to objective description, even though something
would be left out. And concepts alternative to
those we learn in the first person may enable us to arrive at a
kind of understanding even of our own
experience which is denied us by the very ease of description
and lack of distance that subjective concepts
afford.
Apart from its own interest, a phenomenology that is in this
sense objective may permit questions about
the physically basis of experience to assume a more intelligible
form. Aspects of subjective experience
that admitted this kind of objective description might be better
candidates for objective explanations of a
more familiar sort. But whether or not this guess is correct, it
seems unlikely that any physical theory of
mind can be contemplated until more thought has been given to
the general problem of subjective and
objective. Otherwise we cannot even pose the mind-body
problem without sidestepping it.
NOTES:
1
Examples are J. J. C. Smart, Philosophy and Scientific Realism
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963); David K.

52. Lewis, 'An Argument for the Identity Theory', Journal of
Philosophy, LXIII (1966), reprinted with addenda in David
M. Rosenthal, Materialism & the Mind-Body Problem,
(Engelwood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice-Hall, 1971); Hilary Putnam,
'Psychological Predicates', in Art, Mind, & Religion, ed. W. H.
Capitan and D. D. Merrill (Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 1967), reprinted in Materialism, ed. Rosenthal,
as 'The Nature of Mental States'; D. M. Armstrong, A
Materialist Theory of the Mind (London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1968); D. C. Dennett, Content and Consciousness
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969). I have expressed
earlier doubts in 'Armstrong on the Mind', Philosophical
Review, LXXIX (1970), 394-403; a review of Dennett, Journal
of Philosophy, LXIX (1972); and chapter 11 above.
See also Saul Kripke, 'Naming and Necessity'. in Semantics of
Natural Language, ed. D. Davidson and G. Harman
(Dordrecht: Reidel, 1972), esp. pp. 334-42; and M. T. Thornton,
'Ostensive Terms and Materialism', The Monist, LVI
(1972), 193-214.
2
Perhaps there could not actually be such robots. Perhaps
anything complex enough to behave like a person would
have experiences. But that, if true, is a fact which cannot be
discovered merely by analyzing the concept of experience.

53. 3
It is not equivalent to that about which we are incorrigible,
both because we are not incorrigible about experience
and because experience is present in animals lacking language
and thought, who have no beliefs at all about their
experiences.
4
Cf. Richard Rorty, 'Mind-Body Identity, Privacy, and
Categories', Review of Metaphysics, XIX (1965), esp. 37-8.
5
By 'our own case' I do not mean just 'my own case', but rather
the mentalistic ideas that we apply unproblematically
to ourselves and other human beings.
6
Therefore the analogical form of the English expression 'what it
is like' is misleading. It does not mean 'what (in our
experience) it resembles', but rather 'how it is for the subject
himself'.
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7
Any intelligent extraterrestrial beings totally different from us.

54. 8
It may be easier than I suppose to transcend inter-species
barriers with the aid of the imagination. For example, blind
people are able to detect objects near them by a form of sonar,
using vocal clicks or taps of a cane. Perhaps if one
knew what that was like, one could by extension imagine
roughly what it was like to possess the much more refined
sonar of a bat. The distance between oneself and other persons
and other species can fall anywhere on a continuum.
Even for other persons the understanding of what it is like to be
them is only partial, and when one moves to species
very different from oneself, a lesser degree of partial
understanding may still be available. The imagination is
remarkably flexible. My point, however, is not that we cannot
know what it is like to be a bat. I am not raising that
epistemological problem. My point is rather that even to form a
conception of what it is like to be a bat (and a fortiori
to know what it is like to be a bat) one must take up the bat's
point of view. If one can take it up roughly, or partially,
then one's conception will also be rough or partial. Or so it
seems in our present state of understanding.
9
The problem I am going to raise can therefore be posed even if
the distinction between more subjective and more

55. objective descriptions or viewpoints can itself be made only
within a larger human point of view. I do not accept this
kind of conceptual relativism, but it need not be refuted to make
the point that psychophysical reduction cannot be
accommodated by the subjective-to-objective model from other
cases.
10
The problem is not just that when I look at the Mona Lisa, my
visual experience has a certain quality, no trace of
which is to be found by someone looking into my brain. For
even if he did observe there a tiny image of the Mona
Lisa, he would have no reason to identify it with the experience.
11
The relation would therefore not be a contingent one, like that
of a cause and its distinct effect. It would be
necessarily true that a physical state felt a certain way. Saul
Kripke in Semantics of Natural Language, (ed. Davidson
and Harman) argues that causal behaviorist and related analyses
of the mental fail because they construe, e.g., 'pain' as
a merely contingent name of pains. The subjective character of
an experience ('its immediate phenomenolocal quality'
Kripke calls it (p. 340)) is the essential property left out by
such analyses, and the one in virtue of which it is,
necessarily, the experience it is. My view is closely related to
his. Like Kripke, I find the hypothesis that a certain

56. brain state should necessarily have a certain subjective
character incomprehensible without further explanation. No
such explanation emerges from theories which view the mind-
brain relation as contingent, but perhaps there are other
alternatives, not yet discovered.
A theory that explained how the mind-brain relation was
necessary would still leave us with Kripke's problem of
explaining why it nevertheless appears contingent. That
difficulty seems to me surmountable, in the following way.
We may imagine something by representing it to ourselves
either perceptually, sympathetically, or symbolically. I shall
not try to say how symbolic imagination works, but part of what
happens in the other two cases is this. To imagine
something perceptually, we put ourselves in a conscious state
resembling the state we would be in if we perceived it.
To imagine something sympathetically, we put ourselves in a
conscious state resembling the thing itself. (This method
can be used only to imagine mental events and stares—our own
or another's.) When we try to imagine a mental state
occurring without its associated brain state, we first
sympathetically imagine the occurrence of the mental state: that
is,
we put ourselves into a state that resembles it mentally. At the
same time, we attempt perceptually to imagine the

57. nonoccurrence of the associated physical state, by putting
ourselves into another state unconnected with the first; one
resembling that which we would be in if we perceived the
nonoccurrence of the physical state. Where the imagination
of physical features is perceptual and the imagination of mental
features is sympathetic, it appears to us that we can
imagine any experience occurring without its associated brain
state, and vice versa. The relation between them will
appear contingent even if it is necessary, because of the
independence of the disparate types of imagination.
(Solipsism incidentally, results if one misinterprets sympathetic
imagination as if it worked like perceptual
imagination: it then seems impossible to imagine any experience
that is not one's own.)
12
See 'Mental Events' in Experience and Theory, ed. Lawrence
Foster and J. W. Swanson (Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 1970); though I do not understand the
argument against psychophysical laws.
13
Similar remarks apply to my paper 'Physicalism', Philosophical
Review, LXXIV (1965), 339-56, reprinted with
postscript in Modern Materialism, ed. John O'Connor (New
York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1969).

58. 14
This question also lies at the heart of the problem of other
minds, whose close connection with the mind-body
problem is often overlooked. If one understood how subjective
experience could have an objective nature, one would
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understand the existence of subjects other than oneself.
15
I have not defined the term 'physical'. Obviously it does not
apply just to what can be described by the concepts of
contemporary physics, since we expect further developments.
Some may think there is nothing to prevent mental
phenomena from eventually being recognized as physical in
their own right. But whatever else may be said of the
physical, it has to be objective. So if our idea of the physical
ever expands to include mental phenomena, it will have
to assign them an objective character—whether or not this is
done by analyzing them in terms of other phenomena
already regarded as physical It seems to me more likely,
however, that mental-physical relations will eventually be
expressed in a theory whose fundamental terms cannot be

59. placed clearly in either category.
General Summary of What You Are to Do:
You will pick one film from those we have watched in class and
one reading selection that goes along with that film. You will
then write a paper based on this reading and film PLUS another
film (that you choose and watch on your own). You will
supplement the reading with an additional source that you
research on your own that connects to the reading provided in
some relevant way. This additional reading can be in
philosophy, in film theory, in film criticism, or in cultural
studies. If you are unsure whether or not a source you’d like to
use will meet the requirements for this paper please email me
for approval.
Clarification on acceptable sources:
1) One of the required sources used must be a reading assigned
for class.
2) The second required source must be a primary source – which
means that it must be by the original author and not a book
about that author.
a. Website blogs, Wikipedia, etc. do not count as primary
sources, although they may be used to guide your thinking
provided you do not plagiarize from them. In general .edu sites
for information on authors is better than .com sites. Also
scholarly encyclopedia articles.
b. scholarly journals: EBSCO or JSTOR. Philosophy, literary
theory, film theory and studies, and film criticism are all sub-
fields from which you can choose sources.
Format:
- 2500-3000 words, based on the course material, and class
discussion.
- Single-spaced with a blank line between paragraphs.
- 12-point font with 1 inch margins.
- You will need to include a Bibliography or Works Cited List
and use MLA style both for this and for in-text citations.

60. Don’tforget that films need to be listed in the Works Cited page
as well as all sources used.
Paper Content:
I. Introduction
[Thesis statement, overview of paper in connection to the two
films chosen including which theories you will use and how you
will apply them to the films chosen.]
II. Body of Paper [you can organize this in your own way to
follow your thesis]
a. Set forth the theories you are using and explain what claims
they make that you will compare and contrast your chosen films
with, including appropriate in-text citations. You MAY NOT
use a source without citation or represent another author’s work
as your own. If your paper does this it will receive a grade of F.
Both direct quotations and close paraphrases must be cited. You
can use some of what we discussed in class discussion as part of
your analysis and there is no need to cite to that or to me.
b. Analyze the features of the movies you have selected in
connection with the theories you have provided in a, above.
How do they fit? How do they not fit? What might this mean?
c. What happened as a result of this analysis? Do the theories
stand? If not, why not? What alternative theory is suggested
instead that would fit better? Here is where you may feel free to
provide your own, improved theory that covers your genre!
Don’t be afraid to be a philosopher!
III. Conclusion
This should summarize the findings of your paper plus suggest
how or why this change (or additional support for the theory
provided if it has not changed) is relevant to how we understand
the theory of film under discussion.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Do not waste a lot of time on plot synopses of movies
- Do not plagiarize. If you “borrow” a movie description or
critical review without citing it your paper will fail. All papers
will be run through the “Turnitin” plagiarism detection system
so be on guard against this

61. - Getting the philosophy right is the hardest part of these papers
for most students. This is first and foremost an upper-level
philosophy class so the biggest component of your grade will be
based on your understanding of and application of the
philosophy at issue. Take a lot of care on this aspect of your
paper and email me/consult me if you’re not sure about your
take on something.