that you have just made was the best possible decision for you to make? An agent ’s relationship between responsibility and his decisions in life are affected by the alternative choices that were not taken as well as the choices that were made. Thomas Nagel believes that an agent ’s autonomy is always being threatened by the possibility of a viewpoint that is more objective than his own. His view on responsibility is such that in order to place responsibility on an agent‚ sufficient reflection about
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unless we changed our structure. And even then‚ we would not be able to explain what is it about being a bat by being a bat ourselves. As noted by Nagel (436): ‘I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat. Yet if I try to imagine this‚ I am restricted to the resources of my own mind‚ and those resources are inadequate to the task. I cannot perform it either by imagining additions to my present
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Nagel believes that we are ridiculous creatures in the sense that we can’t prove without a doubt that our projects or goals are valuable. We can’t prove that our pursuits and goals have any value due to the existence of a gap that separates how we perceive a situation and the actual reality of the given situation. By noticing that we are absurd in this sense‚ we can approach our pursuits and goals with a more spirited attitude in that we think that our pursuits and goals are valuable in order to
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The Journey to Death From the moment all life forms are born‚ a journey is begun to the mysterious quarters of the unknown and the unexplained. It is a journey to the one place all beings are not sure of and fear the most. Whether or not it comes from old age‚ death is a part of the natural cycle of life. In the essay "On Natural Death" by Lewis Thomas‚ death is the spectacle of human and animal existence. He explores the world of death using rhetorical writing style to effectively support his
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3) According to Nagel‚ Functionalism is the view that the brain is a physical substance but all its conscious states are not just physical states. It consists of mental processes as well. On the other hand‚ Dualism states that we consist of a body and a soul and the mental life takes place in our soul. Functionalism is a form of dualism because the core idea behind functionalism is that there are dual aspects of the brain as it is concerned with only the functional states of the brain. It solves
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Moral Luck Through Moral Luck‚ Nagel discusses the problem of moral luck and the conflict that arises between the common practice and intuition that most of society believes in regarding morality. Throughout his essay‚ Nagel defines intuition and the phenomenon of moral luck and claims that‚ despite having this intuition‚ people often make moral judgments about people based on factors that are beyond their control (for example‚ a drunk driver who kills a child). Nagel claims that the problem of moral
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2. Sexual bodies between nature and culture: a dualistic conception Morgan’s account filter out and problematize what he considers the most radical aspects of the analysis of Goldman and Nagel. Respectively regarding their approaches‚ in Morgan’s account sexual desire is not reduced to the unmediated bodily pleasure neither its is over-intellectualized by complex intentional and communicative inter-relation of the partners’ experiences. I argue that even if Morgan clearly gives more credit to the
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Is it a bad thing to die? In Death‚ Thomas Nagel focuses on this question and comes to a simple answer: yes. However‚ before he comes to this conclusion‚ he is speaking of death as a complete cessation of life with no conscious activity – permanent death. Nagel argues that is not the state of being dead that is bad‚ but because of what it deprives us of: life. He claims that life is all we have and that when we die‚ we suffer the greatest loss. Nagel clarifies that death is not bad because it strips
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Nagel and Epicurus have conflicting views on whether to fear death or not. Although Nagel and Epicurus agree that life is good they have three main arguments in which their view upon death differs which are: “what you don’t know can’t hurt you”‚ “who suffers?” and asymmetry”. This paper will focus on those three reasons and explain both philosopher’s views. The first argument the philosopher’s opinion contrast in is “what you don’t know can’t hurt you”. Epicurus believes in egotistic hedonism which
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do not have firsthand knowledge of what it is like to be that person‚ species‚ nationality‚ height or weight. Thomas Nagel uses an example very similar to this in his dualist view proposing that there is a gap between all the elements‚ descriptions and rules that are part of our concept of something‚ and the complete understanding by experiencing the sensations of being something. Nagel uses an example of being a bat as an example to show the difference between being and knowing about a bat. In
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