Thomas Nagel Quotes on Time
Thomas Nagel is an American philosopher long associated with New York University, whose work has shaped contemporary thinking in the philosophy of mind, ethics, and political philosophy. This page collects quotes attributed to Thomas Nagel on the topic of time, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
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“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). Even without the benefit of philosophical reflection, anyone who has spent some time in an enclosed space with an excited bat knows what it is to encounter a fundamentally alien form of life.”
p. 168. -
“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 be like. The best evidence would come from the experience of bats, if we only knew what they were like.”
p. 169. -
“Leading a human life is a full-time occupation, to which everyone devotes decades of intense concern.”
Mortal Questions(1979) | "The Absurd" (1971), p. 15. -
“Eventually, I believe, current attempts to understand the mind by analogy with man-made computers that can perform superbly some of the same external tasks as conscious beings will be recognized as a gigantic waste of time.”
The View From Nowhere(1986) | p. 16.