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
psychology branches action
I conceive ethics as a branch of psychology.
motivation psychology behaviour
A theory of motivation is defective if it renders intelligible behaviour which is not intelligible.
real psychology special
equally real at all stages of his life; specifically, the fact that a particular stage is present cannot be regarded as conferring on it any special status.
believe psychology looks
To look for a single general theory of how to decide the right thing to do is like looking for a single theory of how to decide what to believe.
character views psychology
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.
common-sense psychology ordinary
Common sense doesn't have the last word in ethics or anywhere else, but it has, as J. L. Austin said about ordinary language, the first word: it should be examined before it is discarded.
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.
conceited psychology may
A person may be greedy, envious, cowardly, cold, ungenerous, unkind, vain, or conceited, but behave perfectly by a monumental act of the will.
cable few learning moving release soon start toward
We will soon start moving toward a release mindset. That's new for the cable industry. There'll be a new release every few months. This will be a learning process.
cable cell consumers create features home leverage media operators outside phone pushing services sprint whatever
We don't think of this as cable operators pushing a cell phone service. We want to leverage what Sprint has outside the home and create services and features so that consumers can take whatever media they have with them.
days involved joint progress surprised venture
I'm actually surprised how well we've done. We've made more progress in the first 100 days of this one than any other joint venture I've been involved in.
successful understanding mind
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.
want deals ifs
If you want the truth rather than merely something to say, you will have a good deal less to say.
believe want there-is-no-god
It isn't just that I don't believe in God, and naturally, hope there is no God. I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.