Robert S. Cairns
The philosopher Thomas Nagel famously asked “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” In his essay, Nagel argues that if we agree that bats, like many other animals, are creatures with experiences, then there is a type of ‘batness’ to the bat that makes it distinctly itself. I could not help thinking about this while watching Ben Leonberg’s Good Boy (2025), which invites the viewer to imagine what it is like to be a dog. I also wondered to what extent a film was able to show me, even modestly, what this might be like.
