Quotessence
Home / Authors / Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel

Thomas Nagel Quotes

Philosopher

Filter quotes by topic

AllIfsActionEthicsMoralPsychologyWorldConsciousnessUniverseBelieveBeliefMindObjectivesProblemTheoryViewsAccountsConsciousFormKnowsLife Is

Famous Thomas Nagel Quotes

“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
Create image

“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
Create image

“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
Create image