There is a tendency to seek an objective account of everything before admitting its reality. Thomas Nagel More Quotes by Thomas Nagel More Quotes From Thomas Nagel The more details we learn about the chemical basis of life and the intricacy of the genetic code, the more unbelievable the standard historical account becomes Thomas Nagel chemicalsdetailshistorical 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 common-senseorthodoxyorder The external view [of agency] forces itself on us at the same time that we resist it. One way this occurs is through the gradual erosion of what we do by the subtraction of what happens. Thomas Nagel erosionagencyviews A theory of motivation is defective if it renders intelligible behaviour which is not intelligible. Thomas Nagel psychologybehaviourmotivation Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable. Thomas Nagel bodyproblemmind Leading a human life is a full-time occupation, to which everyone devotes decades of intense concern. Thomas Nagel intenseoccupationlife-is 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 resultsnaturaltogether If you want the truth rather than merely something to say, you will have a good deal less to say. Thomas Nagel dealsifswant If a psychological Maxwell devises a general theory of mind, he may make it possible for a psychological Einstein to follow with a theory that the mental and the physical are really the same. But this could happen only at the end of a process which began with the recognition that the mental is something completely different from the physical world as we have come to know it through a certain highly successful form of detached objective understanding. Only if the uniqueness of the mental is recognized will concepts and theories be devised especially for the purpose of understanding it. Thomas Nagel understandingsuccessfulmind
