Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Nagel, Thomas

  • Sensus Divinitatis: Nagel Defends Plantinga Against Grayling

    Anthony Grayling writes: The problem with Alvin Plantinga’s defense of theism is a simple but wholly vitiating one [Where the Conflict Really Lies, reviewed by Thomas Nagel in “A Philosopher Defends Religion,” NYR, September 27, 2012]. It is that it rests on the fallacy of informal logic known as petitio principii. Plantinga wishes to claim…

  • The Sense of Contingency and the Sense of Absurdity

    The parallel is fascinating and worth exploring. According to David Hume, "Whatever we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as non-existent." (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion)  I've long believed Hume to be right about this.  I would put it this way, trading Latin for plain Anglo-Saxon: Our minds are necessarily such that, no matter what…

  • Can Life be Meaningless but not Absurd?

    Thomas Nagel suggests as much at the end of Chapter 10, "The Meaning of Life," of his little introductory text, What Does It All Mean? (Oxford UP, 1987): If life is not real, life is not earnest, and the grave is its goal, perhaps it's ridiculous to take ourselves so seriously.  On the other hand, if…

  • More Nagel Commentary

    If you haven't read enough already about Thomas Nagel's 2012 Mind and Cosmos, here are two more worthwhile articles. Nagel's Untimely Idea Thomas Nagel is not Crazy   Related articles Any Good Reviews Yet of Nagel's New Book? Should Nagel's Book Be on the Philosophical Index Librorum Prohibitorum? Plantinga Reviews Nagel Thomas Nagel Reviews Alvin…

  • The Absurd Again: Weak and Strong Nagelian Theses

    This post is a sequel to The Absurd: Nagel, Camus, Lupu.  See it for bibliographical details and for background. In his essay "The Absurd," Thomas Nagel maintains that "the philosophical sense of absurdity" arises from "the collision between the seriousness with which we take our lives and the perpetual possibility of regarding everything about which…

  • The Absurd: Nagel, Camus, Lupu

    I have been re-reading Thomas Nagel's seminal paper, "The Absurd," which originally appeared in The Journal of Philosophy, October 1971, and is collected in Nagel's Mortal Questions (Cambridge UP, 1979, 11-23.)  Damn, but it is good.  Nagel is one of our best philosophers.  He's the real thing. Nagel's central contention is that human existence is…

  • Kimball on the Philistinism of the Nagel Bashers

    A good article, except for Roger Kimball's excessive admiration for the positivist David Stove who is himself a philistine, or to employ a neologism of mine, a 'philosophistine.' See here which concludes: 4. The trouble with Stove is that he is a positivist, an anti-philosopher, someone with no inkling of what philosophy is about. He…

  • Should Nagel’s Book Be on the Philosophical Index Librorum Prohibitorum?

    Via Reppert's blog I came to an article by Simon Blackburn about Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos. The article ends as follows: There is charm to reading a philosopher who confesses to finding things bewildering. But I regret the appearance of this book. It will only bring comfort to creationists and fans of “intelligent design”, who will…

  • Thomas Nagel, Heretic

    Andrew Ferguson writes on the the explosion of hostility toward Thomas Nagel after the publication of his 2012 book, Mind and Cosmos.  Here is my overview of the book.  More detailed posts on the same book are collected under the Nagel rubric. For a non-philosopher, Ferguson's treatment is accurate.  Here are a couple of  interesting excerpts in…

  • Nagel Again

    I chose not to waste any words on the Leiter-Weisberg review of Thomas Nagel's 2012 Mind and Cosmos.  Keith Burgess-Jackson discusses it here, and links to Ed Feser's  critique: Ed Feser criticizes the Leiter-Weisberg review. In reading Feser's critique, one grasps the utter shallowness of Leiter and Weisberg. They know just enough philosophy to be…

  • Plantinga Reviews Nagel

    I am beginning to feel a little sorry for Thomas Nagel.  It looks as if the only favorable mainstream reviews he will receive for his efforts in Mind and Cosmos  will be from theists.  What excites the theists' approbation, of course, are not Nagel's positive panpsychist and natural-teleological suggestions, which remain within the ambit of naturalism, but his assault…

  • What is Reason? How Did it Arise? Nagel and Non-Intentional Teleology

    This is the sixth in a series of posts, collected here, on Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos (Oxford 2012).  In my last post I suggested that Nagel needs a principle of plenitude in order to explain the actual existence, as opposed to the mere possibility, of rational organisms.  But maybe not, maybe teleology will turn the…

  • Why Can’t Reason Be a Fluke? Intelligibility and the Existence of Rational Animals

    This is the fifth in a series of posts, collected here, on Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos.  The question that concerns me in this entry is whether we can forge a link between the intelligibility of nature and the existence of rational beings.  For Nagel, the existence of rational animals is not a brute fact…

  • Feser on Nagel

    This site got a nice surge yesterday pushing traffic  way over 2000 page views, an uptick that I attribute to Ed Feser's linkage to my recent Nagel posts.  (I've been averaging about 1200-1600 pageviews/day)  So today Ed gets a 'mavalanche' for his trouble.  Be sure to take a gander at Ed's First Things review of…

  • Elliot Sober on Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos

    This is the fourth in a series of posts on Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos (Oxford 2012).  The posts are conveniently collected under the rubric Nagel, Thomas. Before proceeding with my account of Chapter 4, I will pause in this entry to consider Elliot Sober's serious, substantial, and sober Boston Review review.  Sober's sobriety lapses…