Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False
Oct 2012 · Oxford University Press
4.1star
8 reviewsreport
Ebook
144
Pages
family_home
Eligible
info
reportRatings and reviews aren’t verified Learn More
About this ebook
The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history, either. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such. Nagel's skepticism is not based on religious belief or on a belief in any definite alternative. In Mind and Cosmos, he does suggest that if the materialist account is wrong, then principles of a different kind may also be at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic. In spite of the great achievements of the physical sciences, reductive materialism is a world view ripe for displacement. Nagel shows that to recognize its limits is the first step in looking for alternatives, or at least in being open to their possibility.
Ratings and reviews
4.1
8 reviews
Charles Hachten
- Flag inappropriate
- Show review history
March 28, 2020
Book is fine, but the e-book is broken: Readers are not given easy access to original page numbers, so anyone hoping to use the book for any kind of scholarly work should look elsewhere. The integration with Google drive has been intentionally broken by the publisher, so your notes and highlights do not show up on your Google Drive notes. Neither Google or the publisher provide any warning prior to purchase that this is the case. Better to get a used book than to buy a broken e-book. I work with pdfs all the time and have no complaints, but this experience was not pleasant.
Jacob Frantz
- Flag inappropriate
April 4, 2015
I was hoping for the book to live up to its title and provide evidence against consciousness arising from known natural principles. It doesn't at all. It simply says consciousness couldnt derive from physical laws, often times after rattling off a line of reason that doesn't support the conclusion he draws.
About the author
Thomas Nagel is University Professor in the Department of Philosophy and the School of Law at New York University. His books include The Possibility of Altruism, The View from Nowhere, and What Does It All Mean?: A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. In 2008, he was awarded the Rolf Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy and the Balzan Prize in Moral Philosophy.
Rate this ebook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
