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It seems to me that, as it is usually presented, the current orthodoxy about the cosmic order is the product of governing assumptions that are unsupported, and that it flies in the face of common sense.

Thomas Nagel

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Thomas Nagel
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: July 4
Philosopher
University Teacher
Writer
Belgrade
Serbia
Seems
Product
Assumptions
Products
Flies
Usually
Governing
Face
Presented
Common
Cosmic
Faces
Assumption
Sense
Current
Unsupported
Order
Currents
Orthodoxy

More quotes by Thomas Nagel

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I should not really object to dying were it not followed by death.
Thomas Nagel
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It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection.
Thomas Nagel
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Life may be not only meaningless but absurd.
Thomas Nagel
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If we tried to rely entirely on reason, and pressed it hard, our lives and beliefs would collapse - a form of madness that may actually occur if the inertial force of taking the world and life for granted is somehow lost. If we lose our grip on that, reason will not give it back to us.
Thomas Nagel
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I'm not sure I understand how responsibility for our choices makes sense if they are not determined.
Thomas Nagel
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If you want the truth rather than merely something to say, you will have a good deal less to say.
Thomas Nagel
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If I thought that everything I did was determined by my circumstancse and my psychological condition, I woudl feel trapped.
Thomas Nagel
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What is it like to be a bat? What is it like for a bat to be a bat?
Thomas Nagel
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Eventually, I believe, current attempts to understand the mind by analogy with man-made computers that can perform superbly some of the same external tasks as conscious beings will be recognized as a gigantic waste of time.
Thomas Nagel
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If sub specie aeternitatis [from eternity's point of view] there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair.
Thomas Nagel
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Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable.
Thomas Nagel
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To look for a single general theory of how to decide the right thing to do is like looking for a single theory of how to decide what to believe.
Thomas Nagel
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I conceive ethics as a branch of psychology.
Thomas Nagel
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The inclusion of consequences in the conception of what we have done is an acknowledgement that we are parts of the world, but the paradoxical character of moral luck which emerges from this acknowledgement shows that we are unable to operate with such a view, for it leaves us with no one to be.
Thomas Nagel
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Each of our lives is a part of the lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself.
Thomas Nagel
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A person may be greedy, envious, cowardly, cold, ungenerous, unkind, vain, or conceited, but behave perfectly by a monumental act of the will.
Thomas Nagel
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Everyone is entitled to commit murder in the imagination once in a while, not to mention lesser infractions.
Thomas Nagel
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We are an episode between two oblivions.
Thomas Nagel
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every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inevitable that an objective, physical theory will abandon that point of view.
Thomas Nagel
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Everything, living or not, is constituted from elements having a nature that is both physical and nonphysical - that is, capable of combining into mental wholes. So this reductive account can also be described as a form of panpsychism: all the elements of the physical world are also mental.
Thomas Nagel