Thomas Nagel

What Does It All Mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy

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 failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history, either. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such. Nagel's skepticism is not based on religious belief or on a belief in any definite alternative. InMind and Cosmos, he does suggest that if the materialist account is wrong, then principles of a different kind may also be at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic. In spite of the great achievements of the physical sciences, reductive materialism is a world view ripe for displacement. Nagel shows that to recognize its limits is the first step in looking for alternatives, or at least in being open to their possibility.

Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False

Mind and Cosmos

A noted philosopher ponders the issues of personal identity, consciousness, freedom, and value relating them to the fundamental distinction between individual human experience and objective, external reality

Mortal Questions : Canto

Thomas Nagel's timely and vigorous defence of reason has implications as wide-ranging as they are immense. Powerful erudition combined with an enviable clarity makes Nagel one of the most influential philosophers writing in English today.

The Last Word

Discusses the mind-body problem, knowledge, personal identity, free will, ethics, death, reality, values, and the meaning of life.

The View From Nowhere

What is it like to be a bat?

Bernard Williams

Christine M. Korsgaard

Raymond Geuss

Gerald Allan Cohen

Christine Marion Korsgaard

Korsgaard, Christine Marion Korsgaard

Korsgaard's discussion of the source of normativity is followed by commentary from four distinguished philosophers.

The Sources of Normativity

Just as there are rational requirements on thought, there are rational requirements on action. This book defends a conception of ethics, and a related conception of human nature, according to which altruism is included among the basic rational requirements on desire and action.

The Possibility of Altruism

Liam Murphy

Liam B. Murphy

In a capitalist economy, taxes are the most important instrument by which the political system puts into practice a conception of economic or distributive justice. This book aims to bring together the philosophical discussions of justice with the complex debates about tax policy that go on in practical politics, in economics, and in law.

Taxes and Justice

The Myth of Ownership

Felsefeye Kucuk Bir Giris

Her Sey Ne Anlama Geliyor

Was bedeutet das alles?

Este livro trata de um único problema - como combinar a perspectiva de uma pessoa particular, inserida no mundo, com uma visão objetiva desse mesmo mundo, em que a própria pessoa e seu ponto de vista estão inclusos. Esse é o problema que enfrenta toda criatura com impulso e a capacidade de transcender seu ponto de vista particular e conceber o mundo como um todo.

Visao a Partir de Lugar Nenhum

Eine ganz kurze Einführung in die Philosophie

La Ultima Palabra

Should the hard questions of philosophy matter to ordinary people? In this down-to-earth, nonhistorical guide, Thomas Nagel, the distinguished author of Mortal Questions and The View From Nowhere, brings philosophical problems to life, revealing in vivid, accessible prose why they have continued to fascinate and baffle thinkers across the centuries.Arguing that the best way to learn about philosophy is to tackle its problems head-on, Nagel turns to some of the most important questions we can ask about ourselves. Do we really have free will? Why should we be moral? What is the relation between our minds and our brains? Is there life after death? How should we feel about death? In a universe so vast, billions of light years across, can anything we do with our lives really matter? And does it matter if it doesn't matter? These are perennial questions we ask about the human condition, and Nagel probes them, and others like them, thoughtfully, clearly, and with humor. He states his own opinions freely but with refreshing modesty, always leaving it open to readers to entertain other solutions, encouraging them to think for themselves.Nagel is eminently qualified to introduce the uninitiated to the world of philosophical inquiry. Singled out by the Chicago Literary Review as "one of the sharpest analytic philosophers in America today," he has been praised in the New York Times Book Review for writing "sensitively and elegantly" and in the Times Literary Supplement for his ability, rare among philosophers, to combine "profundity with clarity and simplicity of expression."Never rarefied, What Does It All Mean? opens our eyes to a side of the world we rarely consider, demonstrating that philosophy is no empty study but an indispensable key to understanding our lives. It challenges us to think hard and clearly, to ask questions, to try out ideas and raise possible objections to them--in short, to become philosophers ourselves.

A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy

What Does It All Mean?:A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy

eine ganz kurze Einführung in die Philosophie

syntomē eisagōgē stē philosophia

Themeliōdē philosophika provlēmata

Essays based on Nagel's Locke Lectures, delivered at Oxford University in 1990, address the conflict between the claims of the group and those of the individual

Equality and Partiality

Introduction: The Philosophical Culture p. 3 I Philosophy of Mind 1. Freud's Anthropomorphism p. 13 2. Freud's Permanent Revolution p. 26 3. Wittgenstein: The Egocentric Predicament p. 45 4. Chomsky: Linguistics and Epistemology p. 56 5. Fodor: The Boundaries of Inner Space p. 65 6. Armstrong on the Mind p. 72 7. Dennett: Content and Consciousness p. 82 8. Dennett: Consciousness Dissolved p. 86 9. O'Shaughnessy: The Will p. 90 10. Searle: Why We Are Not Computers p. 96 II Ethics and Political Philosophy 11. Aristotle on Eudaimonia p. 113 12. Rawls on Justice p. 121 13. Nozick: Libertarianism without Foundations p. 137 14. Hare: Moral Thinking p. 150 15. Hare: The Foundations of Impartiality p. 156 16. Williams: One Thought Too Many p. 167 17. Williams: Resisting Ethical Theory p. 174 18. Schelling: The Price of Life p. 183 19. Schelling: Personal Identity and Self-Command p. 188 20. Dworkin: Interpretation and the Law p. 194 21. MacIntyre versus the Enlightenment p. 203 22. Kolakowski: Modernity and the Devil p. 210 Index p. 215.

Critical Essays 1969-1994

Other Minds

Thomas Nagel is widely recognized as one of the top American philosophers working today. Reflecting the diversity of his many philosophical preoccupations, this volume is a collection of his most recent critical essays and reviews. The first section, Public and Private, focuses on the notion of privacy in the context of social and political issues, such as the impeachment of President Clinton. The second section, Right and Wrong, discusses moral, political and legal theory, and includes pieces on John Rawls, G.A. Cohen, and T.M. Scanlon, among others. The final section, Mind and Reality, features discussions of Richard Rorty, Donald Davidson, and the Sokal hoax, and closes with a substantial new essay on the mind-body problem. Written with characteristic rigor, these pieces reveal the intellectual passion underlying the incisive analysis for which Nagel is known.

Thomas Nagel

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