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
elements world form
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....
reality views world
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.
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.
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.
world materialism conscious
Materialism is incomplete even as a theory of the physical world, since the physical world includes conscious organisms among its most striking occupants.
passion world maelstrom
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.
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.
occupation life-is intense
Leading a human life is a full-time occupation, to which everyone devotes decades of intense concern.
choices acting three
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.