Quotes by Thomas Nagel

“[E]very subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inevitable that an objective physical theory will abandon that point of view.”

“Bats … present a range of activity and a sensory apparatus so different from ours that the problem I want to pose is exceptionally vivid (though it certainly could be raised with other species). Ev...”

“[T]he essence of the belief that bats have experience is that there is something that it is like to be a bat. Now we know that most bats (the microchiroptera, to be precise) perceive the external w...”

“Our own experience provides the basic material for our imagination, whose range is therefore limited. It will not help to try to imagine that one has webbing on one's arms, which enables one to fly...”

“Even if I could by gradual degrees be transformed into a bat, nothing in my present constitution enables me to imagine what the experiences of such a future stage of myself thus metamorphosed would...”

“I am not adverting here to the alleged privacy of experience to its possessor. The point of view in question is not one accessible only to a single individual. Rather it is a type. It is often poss...”

“The distance between oneself and other persons and other species can fall anywhere on a continuum. Even for other persons the understanding of what it is like to be them is only partial, and when o...”

“In speaking of the move from subjective to objective characterization, I wish to remain noncommittal about the existence of an endpoint, the completely objective intrinsic nature of the thing, whic...”

“We appear to be faced with a general difficulty about psychophysical reduction. In other areas the process of reduction is a move in the direction of greater objectivity, toward a more accurate vie...”

“Usually, when we are told that X is Y we know how it is supposed to be true, but that depends on a conceptual or theoretical background and is not conveyed by the 'is' alone. … But when the two ter...”

“That is what is meant, I think by the allegation that it is good simply to be alive, even if one is undergoing terrible experiences. The situation is roughly this: There are elements which, if adde...”

“I should not really object to dying if it were not followed by death.”

“All of us, I believe, are fortunate to have been born.”

“It is often remarked that nothing we do now will matter in a million years. But if that is true, then by the same token, nothing that will be the case in a million years matters now.”

“Leading a human life is a full-time occupation, to which everyone devotes decades of intense concern.”

“If we tried to rely entirely on reason, and pressed it hard, our lives and beliefs would collapse — a form of madness that may actually occur if the inertial force of taking the world and life for ...”

“[A]bsurdity is one of the most human things about us: a manifestation of our most advanced and interesting characteristics. … [I]t is possible only because we possess a certain kind of insight — th...”

“A person may be greedy, envious, cowardly, cold, ungenerous, unkind, vain, or conceited, but behave perfectly by a monumental effort of will.”

“All stages of sexual perception are varieties of identification of a person with his body. What is perceived is one's own or another's subjection to or immersion in his body. … In sexual desire and...”

“[With regard to] the rather common general distinction between good and bad sex …, bad sex is generally better than none at all. This should not be controversial: it seems to hold for other importa...”