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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
Feels
Trapped
Psychological
Condition
Determined
Conditions
Thought
Everything
Feel

More quotes by Thomas Nagel

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I conceive ethics as a branch of psychology.
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Life may be not only meaningless but absurd.
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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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If you want the truth rather than merely something to say, you will have a good deal less to say.
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Humans are addicted to the hope for a final reckoning, but intellectual humility requires that we resist the temptation to assume that tools of the kind we now have are in principle sufficient to understand the universe as a whole.
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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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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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What is it like to be a bat? What is it like for a bat to be a bat?
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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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There is a tendency to seek an objective account of everything before admitting its reality.
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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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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.
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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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I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, I hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God I don't want the universe to be like that.
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Without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless.
Thomas Nagel
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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.
Thomas Nagel
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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.
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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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 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