{"title":"Thomas Nagel","description":"Thomas Nagel is University Professor in the Department of Philosophy and the School of Law at New York University. His books include The Possibility of Altruism, The View from Nowhere, and What Does It All Mean?: A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. In 2008, he was awarded the Rolf Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy and the Balzan Prize in Moral Philosophy.","products":[{"product_id":"mind-and-cosmos-why-the-materialist-neo-darwinian-conception-of-nature-is-almost-certainly-false-hardcover","title":"Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False - Hardcover","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe 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. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eSince 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. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eNagel's skepticism is not based on religious belief or on a belief in any definite alternative. In \u003cem\u003eMind and Cosmos\u003c\/em\u003e, 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. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn 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.","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51377322197215,"sku":"9780199919758","price":75.22,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/Ty9334ufBM9780199919758.webp?v=1789232797"},{"product_id":"what-does-it-all-mean-a-very-short-introduction-to-philosophy-hardcover","title":"What Does It All Mean: A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy - Hardcover","description":"\u003cp\u003eShould 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.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51377339924703,"sku":"9780195052923","price":56.41,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/DlvKvLZ9Wl9780195052923.webp?v=1789232840"},{"product_id":"the-view-from-nowhere-paperback","title":"The View from Nowhere - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eHuman beings have the unique ability to view the world in a detached way: We can think about the world in terms that transcend our own experience or interest, and consider the world from a vantage point that is, in Nagel's words, \"nowhere in particular.\" At the same time, each of us is a particular person in a particular place, each with his own \"personal\" view of the world, a view that we can recognize as just one aspect of the whole. How do we reconcile these two standpoints--intellectually, morally, and practically? To what extent are they irreconcilable and to what extent can they be integrated? Thomas Nagel's ambitious and lively book tackles this fundamental issue, arguing that our divided nature is the root of a whole range of philosophical problems, touching, as it does, every aspect of human life. He deals with its manifestations in such fields of philosophy as: the mind-body problem, personal identity, knowledge and skepticism, thought and reality, free will, ethics, the relation between moral and other values, the meaning of life, and death. Excessive objectification has been a malady of recent analytic philosophy, claims Nagel, it has led to implausible forms of reductionism in the philosophy of mind and elsewhere. The solution is not to inhibit the objectifying impulse, but to insist that it learn to live alongside the internal perspectives that cannot be either discarded or objectified. Reconciliation between the two standpoints, in the end, is not always possible.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51377341333727,"sku":"9780195056440","price":78.64,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/w0p37DlMIp9780195056440.webp?v=1789232844"},{"product_id":"what-is-it-like-to-be-a-bat-hardcover","title":"What Is It Like to Be a Bat? - Hardcover","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA 50th anniversary edition of one of the most widely influential articles of 20th Century philosophy\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable.\" So begins Thomas Nagel's classic 1974 essay \"What is it Like to be a Bat?\" Nagel's essay initiated the now widespread attention to consciousness as a central problem for philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience; it also influenced the recognition of the consciousness of nonhuman creatures as an important subject of study. Nagel argued that the essential subjectivity of conscious experience--what it is like for the creature undergoing it--means that reductionist theories of mind, which attempt to analyze it in physical terms, can never succeed. It follows that the physical sciences cannot provide a complete description of reality, and that the physical conception of objective reality must be transcended if science is going to comprehend the mind. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThis edition reissues this classic and widely influential article on its 50th anniversary, along with a new preface discussing the origins and influence of the essay, as well as \"Further Thoughts: The Psychophysical Nexus,\" a supplementary essay which describes Nagel's later thoughts about how to respond to the problem posed by \"What Is It Like to Be a Bat?\" This second essay suggests that the most promising path forward for the mind-body problem, if one accepts the irreducible subjectivity of consciousness, is to seek a necessary connection between mental and neurophysiogical states through a more fundamental type of state which is neither mental nor physical but necessitates them both as essential aspects. In other words, a state that is physical from the outside and mental from the inside, just as we are. This would be a form of monism, requiring the formation of new concepts, since our present concepts of the mental and the physical do not entail such a necessary connection. The essay explains why the relation between the mental and the physical may be necessary, even though our present concepts make it appear contingent.","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51377607311583,"sku":"9780197752791","price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/jGUcURpznd9780197752791.webp?v=1789236179"},{"product_id":"mortal-questions-canto-classics-paperback","title":"Mortal Questions (Canto Classics) - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eThomas Nagel's Mortal Questions explores some fundamental issues concerning the meaning, nature and value of human life. Questions about our attitudes to death, sexual behaviour, social inequality, war and political power are shown to lead to more obviously philosophical problems about personal identity, consciousness, freedom, and value. This original and illuminating book aims at a form of understanding that is both theoretical and personal in its lively engagement with what are literally issues of life and death.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eBack Jacket\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eThomas Nagel's Mortal Questions explore some fundamental issues concerning the meaning, nature and value of human life. Questions about our attitudes to death, sexual behavior, social inequality, war and political power are shown about personal identity, consciousness, freedom and value.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51377644699871,"sku":"9781107604711","price":22.68,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/8KsesXxuan9781107604711.webp?v=1789236274"}],"url":"https:\/\/blackandbarhe.com\/collections\/thomas-nagel.oembed","provider":"Black \u0026 Barhe Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}