Jiaying’s Reviews > Criptiques > Status Update

Diagnoses empty people of agency, and imply that internal deficit rather than external context..."

Nagel posits: "...to deny the reality or logical significance of what we can never describe or understand is the crudest form of cognitive dissonance."

Keen to read up on Thomas Nagel's 1974 "What Is It Like To Be A Bat" theory - "the philosopher concludes that we cannot know what is it like to be a bat *for* a bat, because we're stuck with the experience of being singular human beings.

"What is this strange exceptionalism we are taught, as though the vulnerability of living in a body is reserved for others, but not for ourselves? This exceptionalism implies an astonishing cultural failure of empathy and imagination. Nondisabled people look at disabled folks and defend against the possibility of ever walking in their shoes, rolling in their chairs, holding their canes..."