Thomas Nagel

A 50th anniversary edition of one of the most widely influential articles of 20th Century philosophy “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. This 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.

This volume presents two closely related essays by Thomas Nagel: “Gut Feelings and Moral Knowledge” and “Moral Reality and Moral Progress.” Both essays are concerned with moral epistemology and our means of access to moral truth; both are concerned with moral realism and with the resistance to subjectivist and reductionist accounts of morality; and both are concerned with the historical development of moral knowledge. The second essay also proposes an account of the historical development of moral truth, according to which it does not share the timelessness of scientific truth. This is because moral truth must be based on reasons that are accessible to the individuals to whom they apply, and such accessibility depends on historical developments. The result is that only some advances in moral knowledge are discoveries of what has been true all along.

This book collects Thomas Nagel's recent philosophical reflections on topics of fundamental interest: ethics, moral psychology, science and religion, death, the holocaust, and the metaphysics of mind. Among the figures discussed are Peter Singer, Alvin Plantinga, Christine Korsgaard, Tony Judt, Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Iris Murdoch, T. M. Scanlon, Ronald Dworkin, Samuel Scheffler, Daniel Kahneman, Jonathan Haidt, Joshua Greene, and Daniel Dennett. Nagel consistently defends a realist interpretation of moral truth and resists reductive attempts to subsume ethics to psychology and evolutionary theory. He also defends a pluralistic conception of the content of morality as opposed to utilitarianism, one that includes deontological elements such as rights and special responsibilities. A realist outlook also informs his discussion of metaphysical and epistemological questions. The book closes with tributes to a number of people Nagel has known over the course of his career. The essays are all addressed to a general audience, and should appeal not only to philosophers but to anyone interested in current attempts to understand human life, human values, and how we fit into the world.

Une conception cosmologique du tout qui ne prend pas en compte l'esprit, la conscience, la connaissance et la valeur est engagee dans une impasse: telle est l'affirmation centrale de ce court essai. Thomas Nagel revendique son atheisme; il n'adhere pas a une theorie du dessein intelligent, et encore moins a une explication creationniste. Toutefois, certaines positions philosophiques qui se reclament du darwinisme peuvent, elles aussi, conduire a une forme d'aveuglement sectaire. Les principes qui ont permis l'essor fantastique de la science moderne, loin de repondre a tout besoin d'explication, doivent alors etre completes ou modifies. Seule une alternative au reductionnisme physico-chimique dominant permettra d'acceder a une veritable intelligibilite du monde et de la vie: il faut inclure l'esprit resultat du developpement de la vie en tant qu'etat le plus recent de la longue histoire cosmologique dans une theorie du tout.

Bevidstheden er et besynderligt fænomen. Den er omnipotent, men kan ikke ses. Uanset mængden af forskning i synapser og kemiske tilstande i hjernen lader vi ikke til at nærme os nogen løsning på gåden om den. Men hvorfor er bevidstheden egentlig så svær at få styr på? I sin berømte flagermusartikel fra 1974 gør Thomas Nagel op med fysikalistiske teorier om sindet og hidtidige løsninger på sjæl-legeme-problemet. Bevidsthedsfilosofferne har nemlig altid løbet panden mod en mur, når de har overset de subjektive egenskaber ved bevidst erfaring, og dermed reduceret målet for deres undersøgelser med objektive tredjepersonsbeskrivelser efter naturvidenskabeligt forbillede. Men det vigtigste for enhver forståelse af bevidsthed er, at det at være en bevidsthed opleves på en bestemt måde, og det kan kun forstås fra et subjektivt perspektiv. Hvordan er det at være en flagermus? er en del af bogserien AFTRYK, der samler korte og vedkommende filosofiske tekster med en væsentlig virkningshistorie. Oliver Kauffmann har skrevet introduktion til teksten, der gør den relevant for studerende såvel som læsere, som ønsker at få indblik i kritikken af en verdensanskuelse “under evighedens synsvinkel”.

Thermochemical gas-solid reactions, as well as adsorption processes, are currently of significant interest for the design of heat storage systems. This book provides detailed models of these reactions and processes that account for heat and mass transport, chemical and physical reactions, and possible local thermal non-equilibrium. The underlying scientific theory behind the models is explained, laboratory tests are simulated, and methods for high-performance computing are discussed. Applications ranging from seasonal domestic heat storage to diurnally operating systems in concentrating solar power facilities are considered in these models, which are not available through any other sources. Finally, an outlook on future developments highlights emerging technologies.

In this book, effective computational methods to facilitate those pivotal simulations using open-source software are introduced and discussed with a special focus on the coupled thermo-mechanical behavior of the rock salt. A cohesive coverage of applying geotechnical modeling to the subsurface storage of hydrogen produced from renewable energy sources is accompanied by specific, reproducible example simulations to provide the reader with direct access to this fascinating and important field. Energy carriers such as natural gas, hydrogen, oil, and even compressed air can be stored in subsurface geological formations such as depleted oil or gas reservoirs, aquifers, and caverns in salt rock. Many challenges have arisen in the design, safety and environmental impact assessment of such systems, not the least of which is that large-scale experimentation is not a feasible option. Therefore, simulation techniques are central to the design and risk assessment of these and similar geotechnicalfacilities.

Winner of New York University's Dean's Outstanding Dissertation AwardThis revolutionary treatise starts from one fundamental premise: that our phenomenal consciousness includes direct experience of value. For too long, ethical theorists have looked for value in external states of affairs or reduced value to a projection of the mind onto these same external states of affairs. The result, unsurprisingly, is widespread antirealism about ethics. In this book, Sharon Hewitt Rawlette turns our metaethical gaze inward and dares us to consider that value, rather than being something "out there," is a quality woven into the very fabric of our conscious experience, in a highly objective way. On this view, our experiences of pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, ecstasy and despair are not signs of value or disvalue. They are instantiations of value and disvalue. When we feel pleasure, we are feeling intrinsic goodness itself. And it is from such feelings, argues Rawlette, that we derive the basic content of our normative concepts-that we understand what it means for something to be intrinsically good or bad. Rawlette thus defends a version of analytic descriptivism. And argues that this view, unlike previous theories of moral realism, has the resources to explain where our concept of intrinsic value comes from and how we know when it objectively applies, as well as why we sometimes make mistakes in applying it. She defends this view against G. E. Moore's Open Question Argument as well as shows how these basic facts about intrinsic value can ground facts about instrumental value and value "all things considered." Ultimately, her view offers us the possibility of a robust metaphysical and epistemological justification for many of our strongest moral convictions.

Den moderne, materialistiske tilnærmingen til livet har åpenlyst feilet med hensyn til å forklare sentrale sinnsrelaterte egenskaper i vår verden - slik som bevissthet, intensjonalitet, mening og verdi. Og dette, argumenterer Nagel, er et betydelig problem som truer med å få hele det naturalistiske verdensbildet til å rakne. Problemet strekker seg ut til biologien, til evolusjonsteorien og til kosmologien. Nagels skeptisisme er ikke basert på en religiøs tro eller en tro på et definitivt alternativ. I Sinn og kosmos foreslår han at dersom den materialistiske forklaringen er feil, kan prinsipper av et annet slag også være i virksomhet i evolusjonen. Det gjelder prinsipper om en tilvekst i orden, som i sin logiske form er teleologiske heller enn mekanistiske. Til tross for de store prestasjoner som de fysiske vitenskaper har stått for, er den reduktive materialismen et verdensbilde som nå er modent for revisjon.

In Mind and Cosmos Thomas Nagel argues that the widely accepted world view of materialist naturalism is untenable. The mind-body problem cannot be confined to the relation between animal minds and animal bodies. If materialism cannot accommodate consciousness and other mind-related aspects of reality, then we must abandon a purely materialist understanding of nature in general, 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. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such. No such explanation is available, and the physical sciences, including molecular biology, cannot be expected to provide one. The book explores these problems through a general treatment of the obstacles to reductionism, with more specific application to the phenomena of consciousness, cognition, and value. The conclusion is that physics cannot be the theory of everything.

This volume collects recent essays and reviews by Thomas Nagel in three subject areas. The first section, including the title essay, is concerned with religious belief and some of the philosophical questions connected with it, such as the relation between religion and evolutionary theory, the question of why there is something rather than nothing, and the significance for human life of our place in the cosmos. It includes a defense of the relevance of religion to science education. The second section concerns the interpretation of liberal political theory, especially in an international context. A substantial essay argues that the principles of distributive justice that apply within individual nation-states do not apply to the world as a whole. The third section discusses the distinctive contributions of four philosophers to our understanding of what it is to be human--the form of human consciousness and the source of human values.

In a capitalist economy, taxes are the most important instrument by which the political system puts into practice a conception of economic and distributive justice. Taxes arouse strong passions, fueled not only by conflicts of economic self-interest, but by conflicting ideas of fairness. Taking as a guiding principle the conventional nature of private property, Murphy and Nagel show how taxes can only be evaluated as part of the overall system of property rights that they help to create. Justice or injustice in taxation, they argue, can only mean justice or injustice in the system of property rights and entitlements that result from a particular regime. Taking up ethical issues about individual liberty, interpersonal obligation, and both collective and personal responsibility, Murphy and Nagel force us to reconsider how our tax policy shapes our system of property rights.

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.