Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Thomas Nagel (/ ˈ n eɪ ɡ əl /; born July 4, 1937) is an American philosopher. He is the University Professor of Philosophy and Law Emeritus at New York University , [ 3 ] where he taught from 1980 until his retirement in 2016. [ 4 ]
", Thomas Nagel famously argued that explaining subjective experience—the "what it is like" to be something—is currently beyond the reach of scientific inquiry, because scientific understanding by definition requires an objective perspective, which, according to Nagel, is diametrically opposed to the subjective first-person point of view ...
Objectivity requires an unbiased, non-subjective state of perception. For Nagel, the objective perspective is not feasible, because humans are limited to subjective experience. Nagel concludes with the contention that it would be wrong to assume that physicalism is incorrect, since that position is also imperfectly understood.
The View from Nowhere is a book by philosopher Thomas Nagel.Published by Oxford University Press in 1986, it contrasts passive and active points of view in how humanity interacts with the world, relying either on a subjective perspective that reflects a point of view or an objective perspective that takes a more detached perspective. [1]
Nagel argues that, because bats are apparently conscious mammals with a way of perceiving their environment entirely different from that of human beings, it is impossible to speak of "what is it like to be a bat for the bat" or, while the example of the bat is particularly illustrative, any conscious species, as each organism has a unique point ...
The root of the words subjectivity and objectivity are subject and object, philosophical terms that mean, respectively, an observer and a thing being observed.The word subjectivity comes from subject in a philosophical sense, meaning an individual who possesses unique conscious experiences, such as perspectives, feelings, beliefs, and desires, [1] [3] or who (consciously) acts upon or wields ...
According to Thomas Nagel, consequentialism need not be too demanding since it is possible to distinguish between 'agent-neutral' reasons and 'agent-relative' reasons. [ citation needed ] An agent-neutral reason is a reason that applies to anybody, regardless of their particular circumstances: for example, anybody has a reason to want any pain ...
The ideas of Thomas Nagel and Joseph Levine fall into the second category. [45] Steven Pinker has also endorsed this weaker version of the view, summarizing it as follows: [ 9 ] And then there is the theory put forward by philosopher Colin McGinn that our vertigo when pondering the Hard Problem is itself a quirk of our brains.