Thomas Nagel's 'What Is It Like to Be a Bat?' establishes that phenomenal consciousness in distant species may be so alien that human introspection provides no reliable analogical bridge.

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Alien (in philosophical context)(as describing how different a bat's consciousness might be from ours): So fundamentally different or foreign that normal comparison or understanding becomes impossible or unreliable.
Analogical bridge(as what Nagel argues we lack between humans and other species): Using similarities between two things to transfer knowledge from one to the other—like understanding a bat's experience by comparing it to human experience.
Introspection(Contrasted with testimony-based belief about one's mental states): A way of gaining information about one's own mental states from the inside, which grounds immunity to error through misidentification for mental self-ascriptions.
Thomas Nagel(as the philosopher being referenced): An influential American philosopher known for writing about consciousness, ethics, and how we understand ourselves. He published 'The Possibility of Altruism' in 1970 to explore whether we can be genuinely motivated to help others.

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