Thomas Nagel quotes

Thomas Nagel is an American philosopher known for his influential work in moral and political philosophy, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. Author of the famous essay "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?", his writings have generated widespread debate about consciousness and subjective experience. He has contributed significantly to contemporary philosophical thought and remains a respected figure in the field. Here are 13 of his quotes:

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. (Thomas Nagel)
Everyone is entitled to commit murder in the imagination once in a while, not to mention lesser infractions. View quote
Thomas Nagel
The problem is one of opposition between subjective and objective points of view. There is a tendency to seek an objective account of everything before admitting its reality. But often what appears to a more subjective point of view cannot be accounted for in this way. So either the objective conception of the world is incomplete, or the subjective involves illusions that should be rejected. View quote
Thomas Nagel
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. View quote
Thomas Nagel
We assume that our own advances in objectivity are steps along a path that extends beyond them and beyond all our capacities. But even allowing unlimited time, or an unlimited number of generations, to take as many successive steps as we like, the process can never be completed. ... What is wanted is some way of making the most objective standpoint the basis of action. View quote
Thomas Nagel
Life may be not only meaningless but absurd. View quote
Thomas Nagel
There is a tendency to seek an objective account of everything before admitting its reality. View quote
Thomas Nagel
Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable. View quote
Thomas Nagel
Absurdity is one of the most human things about us: a manifestation of our most advanced and interesting characteristics. View quote
Thomas Nagel
Ethics increases the range of what it is about ourselves that we can will-extending it from our actions to the motives and character traits and dispositions from which they arise. We want to be able to will the sources of our actions down to the very bottom. View quote
Thomas Nagel
I believe that there is a necessary connection in both directions between the physical and the mental, but that it cannot be discovered a priori. Opinion is strongly divided on the credibility of some kind of functionalist reductionism, and I won't go through my reasons for being on the antireductionist side of that debate. Despite significant attempts by a number of philosophers to describe the functional manifestations of conscious mental states, I continue to believe that no purely functionalist characterization of a system entails - simply in virtue of our mental concepts - that the system is conscious. (Thomas Nagel)
I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: 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. View quote
Thomas Nagel
I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that. View quote
Thomas Nagel