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Thomas Nagel

Thomas Nagel Quotes

Philosopher

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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
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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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“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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“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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