Mind and Cosmos
The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This ... » Go
Thomas Nagel
- Website
- Author Website
- Profile
Thomas Nagel on the Cosmological Argument
The existence of our universe might be explained by scientific cosmology, but such an explanation would still have to refer to features of some larger ... » Go
Thomas Nagel on Cosmic Reconciliation
Analytic philosophy as a historical movement has not done much to provide an alternative to the consolations of religion. This is sometimes made a cause ... » Go
Thomas Nagel on Why There is Anything
The existence of our universe might be explained by scientific cosmology, but such an explanation would still have to refer to features of some larger ... » Go
Thomas Nagel on Explanations
The reason we are led to the hypothesis of a designer by considering both the watch and the eye is that these are complex physical ... » Go
Thomas Nagel on Inferring Either Way
From the beginning it has been commonplace to present the theory of evolution by random mutation and natural selection as an alternative to intentional design ... » Go
Thomas Nagel on Scientific Orthodoxy
The political urge to defend science education against the threats of religious orthodoxy, understandable though it is, has resulted in a counterorthodoxy, supported by bad ... » Go
Thomas Nagel on the Insufficiency of Supervenience
I believe that the explanatory gap in its present form cannot be closed — that so long as we work with our present mental and ... » Go
Thomas Nagel on the Fear of Religion
In speaking of the fear of religion, I don’t mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of ... » Go
Thomas Nagel on Darwinism and Subjectivism
How is it possible that creatures like ourselves, supplied with the contingent capacities of a biological species whose very existence appears to be radically accidental, should have ... » Go
Thomas Nagel on Cosmic Authority
My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our ... » Go
Thomas Nagel on Ethics
[J]ust as there was no guarantee at the beginning of cosmological and scientific speculation that we humans had the capacity to arrive at objective truth ... » Go
Thomas Nagel on an Objective World
We begin from the idea that there is some way the world is, and this, I believe, is an idea to which there is no intelligible ... » Go
Thomas Nagel on Reason as a Court of Appeal
Reason, if there is such a thing, can serve as a court of appeal not only against the received opinions and habits of our community ... » Go
Thomas Nagel on Rationalization Presupposing Reason
The ordinary charge of “rationalization,” like the exposure of errors in reasoning, does not question the claims of reason itself but rather presupposes them. It ... » Go
Thomas Nagel on Truth and Relativism
Many forms of relativism and subjectivism collapse into either self-contradiction or vacuity — self-contradiction because they end up claiming that nothing is the case, or ... » Go
The View From Nowhere
Human beings have the unique ability to view the world in a detached way: We can think about the world in terms that transcend our ... » Go
Thomas Nagel on Free Will
The question “What is action?” is much broader than the problem of free will, for it applies even to the activity of spider and to ... » Go
Thomas Nagel on a Theory of Consciousness
What is needed is something we do not have: a theory of conscious organisms as physical systems composed of chemical elements and occupying space, which ... » Go