Nagel's case against Physicalism
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Pär Sundström
Abstract
This paper is an attempt to understand and assess Thomas Nagel's influential case against physicalism in the philosophy of mind. I show that Nagel has claimed that experience is “subjective”, or “essentially connected with a single point of view” in at least three different senses: first, in the sense that it is essential to every experience that there be something it is like to have it; second, in the sense that what an experience is like for its possessor cannot be understood by a radically different type of organism; and third, in the sense that an experience cannot be “apprehended” or “observed” from a third-person perspective. I also show that these three claims have entered into two different arguments for his view that experience cannot be accounted for in physicalist terms. By way of assessment, I suggest that physicalists have decent resources for responding to the second and third of Nagel's claims about the subjectivity of experience, but that they currently have less convincing things to say about the first claim.
© Philosophia Press 2002
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- Heidegger's Concept of Truth Revisited
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- From Saga to Hegel. Páll Skúlason: Saga & Philosophy and Other Essays. Introduction by Paul Ricœur. Reykjavik: The University of Iceland Press
- Logi Gunnarsson, Wittgensteins Leiter (Berlin & Vienna: Philo Verlagsgesellschaft, 2000). 119 pp.
Articles in the same Issue
- Rationality and emotion
- Computational Processes: A Reply to Chalmers and Copeland
- Real-self Accounts of Freedom
- Heidegger's Concept of Truth Revisited
- Nagel's case against Physicalism
- Det kunstneriske ved kunsten. Institusjonsteori og jakten på kunstens definisjon
- Curing The Liar Syndrome
- Doctor's Diagnosis Sustained
- McMahan, Jeff: The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2002
- When Self-Consciousness Breaks: Alien Voices and Inserted Thoughts. By G. Lynn Stephens and George Graham. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press 2000. Pp xii + 198)
- Peter Kemp: Praktisk visdom. Om Paul Ricœurs etik. Forum, Kbh. 2001. 150 sider incl. Litteraturliste, person- og emneregister. 188,- kr.
- From Saga to Hegel. Páll Skúlason: Saga & Philosophy and Other Essays. Introduction by Paul Ricœur. Reykjavik: The University of Iceland Press
- Logi Gunnarsson, Wittgensteins Leiter (Berlin & Vienna: Philo Verlagsgesellschaft, 2000). 119 pp.
