Thomas Nagel Quotes About Consciousness

Quotes about: Consciousness

• Without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless.

  Thomas Nagel

  Science, Interesting, Mind

  Thomas Nagel (1991). “Mortal Questions : Canto”, p.166, Cambridge University Press

• What we take ourselves to be doing when we think about what is the case or how we should act is something that cannot be reconciled with a reductive naturalism, for reasons distinct from those that entail the irreducibility of consciousness. It is not merely the subjectivity of thought but its capacity to transcend subjectivity and to discover what is objectively the case that presents a problem....Thought and reasoning are correct or incorrect in virtue of something independent of the thinker's beliefs, and even independent of the community of thinkers to which he belongs. (p. 71)

  Thomas Nagel

  Independent, Thinking, Community

  Thomas Nagel (2012). “Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False”, p.72, Oxford University Press

• 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.

  Thomas Nagel

  Ifs And, Consciousness, States

  Thomas Nagel (2012). “Mortal Questions”, p.166, Cambridge University Press

• Any reductionist program has to be based on an analysis of what is to be reduced. If the analysis leaves something out, the problem will be falsely posed.

  Thomas Nagel

  Analysis, Problem, Consciousness

  Thomas Nagel (2012). “Mortal Questions”, p.167, Cambridge University Press

• 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

  Views, Subjectivity, Consciousness

  Thomas Nagel (2012). “Mortal Questions”, p.167, Cambridge University Press

• The great cognitive shift is an expansion of consciousness from the perspectival form contained in the lives of particular creatures to an objective, world-encompassing form that exists both individually and intersubjectively. It was originally a biological evolutionary process, and in our species it has become a collective cultural process as well. Each of our lives is a part of the lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself.

  Thomas Nagel

  Expansion, Wake Up, World

• 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

  Choices, Acting, Three

  Thomas Nagel (2012). “Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False”, p.124, Oxford University Press

• Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable.

  Thomas Nagel

  Mind, Body, Problem

  Thomas Nagel (1991). “Mortal Questions : Canto”, p.165, Cambridge University Press

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