Nagel's Argument Research Articles

The priority of intentional action: From developmental to conceptual priority

Abstract Philosophical orthodoxy has it that intentional action consists in one's intention appropriately causing a motion of one's body, placing the latter (conceptually and/or metaphysically) prior to the former. Here, I argue that this standard schema should be reversed: acting intentionally is at least conceptually prior to intending. The argument is modelled on a Williamsonian argument for the priority of knowledge developed by Jenifer Nagel. She argues that children acquire the concept KNOWS before they acquire BELIEVES, building on this alleged developmental priority of knowledge to establish its conceptual priority. I start by taking a closer look at Nagel's argument, canvassing extant objections todo both with the empirical adequacy of her claims and their philosophical implications. Doing so allows me, in the second part of the paper, to draw lessons that inform the construction of a revamped parallel argument for the priority of ACTS INTENTIONALLY.

XI—Writing on the Page of Consciousness

I identify one particular strand of thought in Thomas Nagel's ‘What Is It Like to Be a Bat?’ (1974), which I think has helped shape a certain conception of perceptual consciousness that is still prevalent in the literature. On this conception, perceptual consciousness is to be explained in terms of a special class of properties perceptual experiences themselves exhibit. I also argue that this conception is in fact in conflict with one of the key ideas that supposedly animates Nagel's argument in ‘What Is It Like to Be a Bat?', which is the idea of an intimate connection between the idea of consciousness and that of a point of view.

Nagel on Public Education and Intelligent Design

In a recent article, Thomas Nagel argues against the court's decision to strike down the Dover school district's requirement that biology teachers in Dover public schools inform their students about Intelligent Design. Nagel contends that this ruling relies on questionable demarcation between science and nonscience and consequently misapplies the Establishment Clause of the constitution. Instead, he argues in favor of making room for an open discussion of these issues rather than an outright prohibition against Intelligent Design. We contend that Nagel's arguments do not succeed. First, we argue that Nagel's case trades on an ambiguity regarding the content of non-theological views and fails to engage adequately some of the problems of ID. Then we raise concerns about Nagel's conclusion ; specifically, we will point to three incongruities between Nagel's argument and his conclusion, and then we will raise a more general worry about the likely impact of Nagel's view.

Problem „nietoperza Nagel'a" w argumentacji Johna Hicka i Paula M. Churchlanda.

The article tries to show the relations between P. M. Churchland's and J. Hick's reference to T. Nagel's „bat and is based on Nagel's, Mortal questions, Chuchralnd's The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul. A Philosophical Journey into the Brain and J. Hick's The New Frontier of Religion and Science. Religious experience, neuroscience and the transcendent. The clue is that Churchland and Hick beg the main point of the Nagel's argument about the difference between mind and brain. Churchland agrees with Nagel in assuming of the self and only self knowledge about mind states. But the former author and Hick misunderstand that indeed Nagel argues that it is still impossible to identify subjective states as objective. Moreover, Hick avoids Churchland's counter-argument. Therefore, not all of the dispute concerns the same problem.

Revisiting Nagel on Altruism

In this paper, I pursue an interpretive goal and a critical goal. My interpretive goal is to offer a clear restatement of Nagel's argument for a requirement of altruism (as found in The Possibility of Altruism). My critical goal is to explain why this argument is unsuccessful, and to make a case for the thesis that any argument of its kind must fail.

Subjective character of experience in medical ethics: a reply to Atkins.

In a recent issue of this Journal Kim Atkins argued that Thomas Nagel's argument regarding a bat's phenomenal experience is important for understanding the value placed on patient autonomy in medical ethics. In this reply to her paper, I demonstrate that Atkin's argument (a) is based on her misinterpretations of Nagel's argument, and (b) can be established without appealing to such a controversial assumption as that which she makes.

Tax and the Philosopher's Stone

In the Myth of Ownership: Taxes and Justice (Oxford 2002), Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel discuss the relationship between tax policy and contemporary political philosophy. Murphy and Nagel essentially argue for the priority of political philosophy over tax policy. For them, there is little room for tax policy per se; they argue that tax policy ought to serve the ends of a philosophical conception of justice. They maintain that questions of fairness are, in and of themselves, irrelevant to tax policy, which should be understood as a slave to philosophical conceptions of justice. While we embrace Murphy and Nagel's central claim that it makes little sense to engage arguments over tax policy without an antecedently held conception of distributive justice and that questions of tax policy must be consistent with that conception, we argue that some aspects of their argument are ultimately too strong. Traditional metrics of tax policy analysis such as the benefit principle and the equal sacrifice principle are neither completely irrelevant to tax policy, nor inconsistent with all versions of political liberalism. We distinguish between "pre-institutional" and "post-institutional" conceptions of liberalism, and between "maximizing" and "non-maximizing" conceptions of distributive justice. We argue that while Murphy and Nagel's argument is powerful in the context of maximizing, post-institutional conceptions, it is less persuasive in the context of pre-institutional versions of liberalism and, perhaps, in the context of non-maximizing versions of post-institutional liberalism. Finally, we conclude by arguing that the central claims of Murphy and Nagel's argument are, to some extent, in tension with what they take to be their view's practical applications.

Concerning the Absurdity of Life

In a recent article1 in this journal, Jonathan Westphal and Christopher Cherry argue that life is not absurd. They criticize Thomas Nagel's theory of absurdity by denying the relevance of the external perspective in which our value-presuppositions are questioned. It seems to me, however, that Westphal and Cherry do not succeed in their argument against Nagel (see section I). But this does not entail that Nagel's argument for absurdity is sound; in fact, Nagel's argument is informally invalid (see section II).

Nagel's argument for altruism

Thomas Nagel has argued that the rationality of prudence is secured by the fact that reasoning about what to do necessarily involves the adoption of a standpoint which is temporally neutralJ He argues that a rational agent must regard practical matters from a standpoint which is neutral with respect to whether what is considered is past, present, or future. In short, the argument is supposed to issue in the conclusion that if it is true that a person has, had, or will have a reason to do something, then it is now true that person has a reason to desire the doing of that action. And thus if the possibility of action is present or future, he has reason to take steps which will aid in or constitute the performing of that action, or if it is past, to desire (wish) that the action was performed, or perhaps, to be glad that it was. Nagel also asserts that this conclusion can be equivalently stated in metaphysical terms; namely, that a rational agent must see himself as a temporally extended being for whom "the present is just a time among others, and that other times are equally real" (p. 88). In a recent article 2, Richard Kraut dissents from Nagel's conclusion and from his contention that having a conception of oneself as a being which exists throughout a series of times which are 'equally real' implies that in practical reasoning one must adopt a standpoint which is temporally neutral. In particular, Kraut argues that it is rational to prefer that a pain be in one's past rather than in one's future and thus that "Nagel is wrong in holding that a rational person regards all his reasons as being timeless." (p. 353) Furthermore, having this preference does not mean that one considers one's past any the less real than one's future. Kraut also suggests that a similar objection can be brought against Nagel's argument for altruism. Nagel argues (in absolute parallel to his argument for the rationality of prudence) that practical reasoning necessarily involves the adoption of an impersonal standpoint. That is, if one is to reason practically one must consider practical situations from