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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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Thomas Nagel
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: July 4
Philosopher
University Teacher
Writer
Belgrade
Serbia
Determined
Conditions
Thought
Everything
Feel
Feels
Trapped
Psychological
Condition

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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Perhaps the belief in God is the belief that the universe is intelligible, but not to us.
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fundamentally an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism--something it is like for the organism.
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The point is... to live one's life in the full complexity of what one is, which is something much darker, more contradictory, more of a maelstrom of impulses and passions, of cruelty, ecstacy, and madness, than is apparent to the civilized being who glides on the surface and fits smoothly into the world.
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Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable.
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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.
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Once we see an aspect of what we or someone else does as something that happens, we lose our grip on the idea that it has been done and that we can judge the doer and not just the happening.
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We are an episode between two oblivions.
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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.
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Altruism itself depends on a recognition of the reality of other persons, and on the equivalent capacity to regard oneself as merely one individual among many.
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Everyone is entitled to commit murder in the imagination once in a while, not to mention lesser infractions.
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Without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless.
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Life may be not only meaningless but absurd.
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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.
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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.
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The universe has become not only conscious and aware of itself but capable in some respects of choosing its path into the future--though all three, the consciousness, the knowledge, and the choice, are dispersed over a vast crowd of beings, acting both individually and collectively.
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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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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.
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There is a tendency to seek an objective account of everything before admitting its reality.
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