While I do not stand to make the argument for determinism here, it should suffice to say that if there is only the illusion of free-will, then death has deprived us of nothing in Nagel's view (because there is not even the possibility of continued life) and, thus, would not be evil. If we do not have an infinite amount of life that death steals from us (but rather a finite amount already determined), then it would be necessary to regard the time after one's death the same way as the time before one's birth. The second problem is that of time and duration of life (and death). It would seem that humans have a finite capacity to care of about time (and life). For example, while it imaginable to live (or what to live) for an addition 50 or 100 years, it seems unimaginable to live (or want to live) for another 4.5 billion. Yes, people say "I want to live forever," but the statement has little meaning (since humans do not have the cognitive ability to understand infinity). We cannot, therefore, conclude that death after 4.5 billion years would be necessarily bad (as there is no point of reference). We simply would not know what circumstances would be like after living 4.5 billion years. We would not know, for example, that we would even still experience pleasure and pain. Nagel is using our own lifespan as a point of reference to make his claim that death is bad, but once one goes beyond those limits too far, it would be hard to even fathom what "life" would be....
Such an unbounded timeframe of life would seem to have huge implications on how life (and death) is valued (i.e., what makes life "good") if for no other reason than the fact that everything (e.g., our biology, our experiences of the world) is intricately tied to our lifespan.
Nagel's Sexual Perversions "About multiple combinations," Nagel says of orgies and presumably other many-person sexual encounters, "the least that can be said is that they are bound to be complicated" (Nagel, 1969). [All references in this piece come from Nagel's original on the subject of Sexual Perversion.] While this is appealing as an opening line, it seems a bit disingenuous, given what he thinks about average, ordinary, non-perverted sexuality. He defines sexuality
However, when looking more closely at the specific philosophy suggested by Socrates, a more specific view appears to suggest itself. Socrates appears to favor the view that true knowledge is only possible once the soul separates itself from the body. For Socrates, the sense, i.e. touch, hearing, sight, taste, and smell only distract what he refers to as the "soul" from truly experiencing the nature of the external world. According
Nagel's Model of Inter-Theoretic Reduction Nagel's Model of Inter-Theoretical Reduction Reductionism has to do with the classification of knowledge, particularly the classification of scientific knowledge. Many philosophers, such as Nagel, believe that the all current scientific knowledge can be broken down into discrete theories. Accordingly, progress in science is measured by the development of new theories. These theories are used to explore and control the phenomena in their domains and to systematise, organise
Nagel is telling us that if the one universal thing in imagining something is you, complete with all the character that make up you, and if one were to take those things away to try to imagine what it would be like to be something else, you would no longer exist. Works Cited Bechtel, William. & Graham, George. A Companion to Cognitive Science. Wiley- Blackwell, 1999. Conscious Entities. "Bats." Conscious Entities. 2004. Accessed on
Yet, the studies on animal consciousness show that they are conscious, and they are capable of thought, and so, whatever they feel, they are feeling something and reacting to that feeling. Their brains are involved, and brains involve thought, in addition to mere stimulus. As author Saigel says about petting his cat, "Certainly, it seems that my rubbing my cat's head has no advantage to it other than the
Moral Luck" by admitting defeat: he informs the reader that he will be assessing "a fundamental problem about moral responsibility to which we possess no satisfactory solution" (450). The problem is essentially one about ethical judgment, and he begins it with an illustration from Kant. Kant's view of the ethical will, in the quotation offered by Nagel at the outset, is one in which goodness is not determined by
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