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Thomas Nagel

Thomas Nagel Books

Philosopher

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“Are there any alternatives? Well, there is the hypothesis that this universe is not unique, but that all possible universes exist, and we find ourselves, not surprisingly, in one that contains life. But that is a cop-out, which dispenses with the attempt to explain anything. And without the hypothesis of multiple universes, the observation that if life hadn't come into existence we wouldn't be here has no significance. One doesn't show that something doesn't require explanation by pointing out that it is a condition of one's existence. If I ask for an explanation of the fact that the air pressure in the transcontinental jet is close to that at sea level, it is no answer to point out that if it weren't, I'd be dead.”

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Book:Mind & Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False
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“In every area of thought we must rely ultimately on our judgments, tested by reflection, subject to correction by the counterarguments of others, modified by the imagination and by comparison with alternatives. Antirealism is always a conjectural possibility: the question can always be posed, whether there is anything more to truth in a certain domain than our tendency to reach certain conclusions in this way, perhaps in convergence with others. Sometimes, as with grammar or etiquette, the answer is no. For that reason the intuitive conviction that a particular domain, like the physical world, or mathematics, or morality, or aesthetics, is one in which our judgments are attempts to respond to a kind of truth that is independent of them may be impossible to establish decisively. Yet it may be very robust all the same, and not unjustified. To be sure, there are competing subjectivist explanations of the appearance of mind-independence in the truth of moral and other value judgments. One of the things a sophisticated subjectivism allows us to say when we judge that infanticide is wrong is that it would be wrong even if none of us thought so, even though that second judgment too is still ultimately grounded in our responses. However, I find those quasi-realist, expressivist accounts of the ground of objectivity in moral judgments no more plausible than the subjectivist account of simpler value judgments. These epicycles are of the same kind as the original proposal: they deny that value judgments can be true in their own right, and this does not accord with what I believe to be the best overall understanding of our thought about value. There is no crucial experiment that will establish or refute realism about value. One ground for rejecting it, the type used by Hume, is simply question-begging: if it is supposed that objective moral truths can exist only if they are like other kinds of facts--physical, psychological, or logical--then it is clear that there aren't any. But the failure of this argument doesn't prove that there are objective moral truths. Positive support for realism can come only from the fruitfulness of evaluative and moral thought in producing results, including corrections of beliefs formerly widely held and the development of new and improved methods and arguments over time. The realist interpretation of what we are doing in thinking about these things can carry conviction only if it is a better account than the subjectivist or social-constructivist alternatives, and that is always going to be a comparative question and a matter of judgment, as it is about any other domain, whether it be mathematics or science or history or aesthetics.”

InfanticideCounterargumentsQuasi RealistQuestion Begging
Book:Mind & Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False
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“If a psychological Maxwell devises a general theory of mind, he may make it possible for a psychological Einstein to follow with a theory that the mental and the physical are really the same. But this could happen only at the end of a process which began with the recognition that the mental is something completely different from the physical world as we have come to know it through a certain highly successful form of detached objective understanding. Only if the uniqueness of the mental is recognized will concepts and theories be devised especially for the purpose of understanding it.”

IfsKnowsWorldMindMayDifferentEndsHappensFormPurposeCertainProcessUnderstandingSuccessfulTheoryConceptsObjectivesPsychologicalRecognitionUniquenessDetachedMaxwell
Book:The View From Nowhere
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“Once we have taken the backward step to an abstract view of our whole system of beliefs, evidence, and justification, and seen that it works only, despite its pretensions, by taking the world largely for granted, we are not in a position to contrast all these appearances with an alternative reality. We cannot shed our ordinary responses, and if we could it would leave us with no means of conceiving a reality of any kind.”

IfsWorldKindMeanWholeRealityBeliefViewsStepsTakenPositionOrdinaryEvidenceResponseAppearanceDespiteGrantedAlternativesAbstractContrastJustificationShedPretensionConceiving
Author:Thomas Nagel
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“The point is... to live one's life in the full complexity of what one is, which is something much darker, more contradictory, more of a maelstrom of impulses and passions, of cruelty, ecstacy, and madness, than is apparent to the civilized being who glides on the surface and fits smoothly into the world.”

WorldPassionFitMadnessSurfaceCrueltyImpulseComplexityCivilizedContradictoryMaelstrom
Book:Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament: Essays 2002-2008
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“I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, I hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.”

PeopleKnowsWantBelieveWellsMadeGodFactsUniverseBeliefReligiousAtheismIntelligentDon't BelieveAtheistBelieverBeing TrueBelieve In GodThere Is No GodUneasy
Author:Thomas Nagel
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“Reason is universal because no attempted challenge to its results can avoid appealing to reason in the end-by claiming, for example, that what was presented as an argument is really a rationalization. This can undermine our confidence in the original method or practice only by giving us reasons to believe something else, so that finally we have to think about the arguments to make up our minds.”

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Book:Other Minds: Critical Essays 1969-1994
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“The inclusion of consequences in the conception of what we have done is an acknowledgement that we are parts of the world, but the paradoxical character of moral luck which emerges from this acknowledgement shows that we are unable to operate with such a view, for it leaves us with no one to be.”

WorldDoneCharacterShowsActionViewsMoralPsychologyEthicsConsequenceLuckConceptionInclusionParadoxicalAcknowledgement
Book:Mortal Questions
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“The problem is one of opposition between subjective and objective points of view. There is a tendency to seek an objective account of everything before admitting its reality. But often what appears to a more subjective point of view cannot be accounted for in this way. So either the objective conception of the world is incomplete, or the subjective involves illusions that should be rejected.”

WorldWayShouldProblemRealityViewsIllusionAccountsPoint Of ViewObjectivesTendenciesOppositionConceptionRejectedSubjectiveIncompleteAdmitting
Book:Mortal Questions : Canto
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“The great cognitive shift is an expansion of consciousness from the perspectival form contained in the lives of particular creatures to an objective, world-encompassing form that exists both individually and intersubjectively. It was originally a biological evolutionary process, and in our species it has become a collective cultural process as well. Each of our lives is a part of the lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself.”

WorldWellsFormLife IsUniverseProcessConsciousnessOur LivesParticularBecomingCreaturesWake UpSpeciesObjectivesCollectivesWakingExpansionCognitiveLengthy
Author:Thomas Nagel
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“The universe has become not only conscious and aware of itself but capable in some respects of choosing its path into the future--though all three, the consciousness, the knowledge, and the choice, are dispersed over a vast crowd of beings, acting both individually and collectively.”

ChoicesUniverseThreeActingConsciousnessPathCapableConsciousCrowds
Book:Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False
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“Everything, living or not, is constituted from elements having a nature that is both physical and nonphysical - that is, capable of combining into mental wholes. So this reductive account can also be described as a form of panpsychism: all the elements of the physical world are also mental.”

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Book:Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False
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“Humans are addicted to the hope for a final reckoning, but intellectual humility requires that we resist the temptation to assume that tools of the kind we now have are in principle sufficient to understand the universe as a whole.”

HumansKindWholeUniversePrinciplesHumilityIntellectualToolsAssumingFinalsTemptationSufficientReckoningIntellectual Humility
Book:Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False
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“It seems to me that, as it is usually presented, the current orthodoxy about the cosmic order is the product of governing assumptions that are unsupported, and that it flies in the face of common sense.”

SeemsFacesOrderCommonProductsCurrentsCommon SenseAssumptionCosmicGoverningOrthodoxy
Book:Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False
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“It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection. We are supposed to abandon this naïve response, not in favor of a fully worked out physical/chemical explanation but in favor of an alternative that is really a schema for explanation, supported by some examples. What is lacking, to my knowledge, is a credible argument that the story has a nonnegligible probability of being true.”

KnowsStoriesTogetherNaturalResultsExampleArgumentResponseAccidentsFavorsBeing TrueAlternativesExplanationAbandonChemicalsMechanismLackingProbabilitySelectionSequenceNatural SelectionCredibleSchemas
Author:Thomas Nagel
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“What we take ourselves to be doing when we think about what is the case or how we should act is something that cannot be reconciled with a reductive naturalism, for reasons distinct from those that entail the irreducibility of consciousness. It is not merely the subjectivity of thought but its capacity to transcend subjectivity and to discover what is objectively the case that presents a problem....Thought and reasoning are correct or incorrect in virtue of something independent of the thinker's beliefs, and even independent of the community of thinkers to which he belongs. (p. 71)”

ThinkingShouldReasonProblemBeliefCommunityConsciousnessCasesVirtueCapacityIndependentReasoningThinkerSubjectivityNaturalism
Book:Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False
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