Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagelis an American philosopher, currently University Professor of Philosophy and Law Emeritus at New York University in the NYU Department of Philosophy, where he has taught since 1980. His main areas of philosophical interest are philosophy of mind, political philosophy and ethics...
NationalityYugoslavian
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth4 July 1937
believe philosophical thinking
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.
wake-up world waking
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.
determined psychological feels
If I thought that everything I did was determined by my circumstancse and my psychological condition, I woudl feel trapped.
reality admitting tendencies
There is a tendency to seek an objective account of everything before admitting its reality.
ifs-and consciousness states
fundamentally an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism--something it is like for the organism.
dying should objects
I should not really object to dying were it not followed by death.
taken mean reality
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.
funny animal bats
What is it like to be a bat? What is it like for a bat to be a bat?
ideas judging psychology
Once we see an aspect of what we or someone else does as something that happens, we lose our grip on the idea that it has been done and that we can judge the doer and not just the happening.
views subjectivity consciousness
every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inevitable that an objective, physical theory will abandon that point of view.
giving world may
If we tried to rely entirely on reason, and pressed it hard, our lives and beliefs would collapse - a form of madness that may actually occur if the inertial force of taking the world and life for granted is somehow lost. If we lose our grip on that, reason will not give it back to us.
reality empathy recognition
Altruism itself depends on a recognition of the reality of other persons, and on the equivalent capacity to regard oneself as merely one individual among many.
belief belief-in-god universe
Perhaps the belief in God is the belief that the universe is intelligible, but not to us.
wake-up waking becoming
Each of our lives is a part of the lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself.