Knowledge Tree
Thomas Nagel
Also known as: Nagel, T.
Facts (73)
Sources
Hard problem of consciousness - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org 9 facts
claimThomas Nagel proposed the idea of devising a language that could explain to a person blind from birth what it is like to see, a proposal which the knowledge argument implies would be impossible.
claimIn his 1974 paper 'What Is It Like to Be a Bat?', philosopher Thomas Nagel argued that experiences are essentially subjective and accessible only to the individual undergoing them, whereas physical states are essentially objective and accessible to multiple individuals.
claimThomas Nagel argued that because experiences are subjective and physical states are objective, it is unclear what it means to claim that a felt state is identical to a functional state, making the concept of reductivism difficult to understand.
claimThe philosophical ideas of Thomas Nagel and Joseph Levine are categorized as weaker forms of new mysterianism, which allow for the possibility of future understanding of the mind-body problem.
claimDavid Chalmers defines consciousness using Thomas Nagel's concept of 'the feeling of what it is like to be something,' treating consciousness as synonymous with experience.
claimThomas Nagel, Galen Strawson, Philip Goff, and David Chalmers have revived interest in panpsychism and neutral monism in recent decades.
perspectiveThomas Nagel holds a physicalist position and disagrees with the knowledge argument in its stronger and/or weaker forms.
perspectiveWolfgang Fasching argues that the hard problem of consciousness is not about qualia, but about the 'what-it-is-like-ness' of experience in Thomas Nagel's sense, specifically the givenness of phenomenal contents.
quoteThomas Nagel stated: 'every 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.'
Panpsychism - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy plato.stanford.edu Jul 18, 2017 8 facts
claimThomas Nagel defines 'emergent' properties of a complex system as properties that cannot be intelligibly derived from the properties of the system's parts.
perspectiveThomas Nagel concludes that there must be non-physical properties of basic matter that, when combined, intelligibly imply the existence of mental states.
claimThomas Nagel argued that adopting a view like panpsychism is the only way to avoid what he termed 'emergence'.
claimBrian McLaughlin (2016) defends physicalism against Thomas Nagel’s argument by utilizing the phenomenal concept strategy.
perspectiveThomas Nagel is open to the possibility that there exists an unknown neutral vocabulary that could adequately describe both experiential and non-experiential features of reality.
claimThe term 'radical emergence' is used to express Thomas Nagel's notion of emergence, following the usage established by Galen Strawson in 2006.
claimThomas Nagel published an important form of the anti-emergence argument for panpsychism in 1979.
claimThomas Nagel's argument for panpsychism relies on four premises: Material Composition (living organisms are complex material systems with no immaterial parts), Realism (mental states are genuine properties of living organisms), No Radical Emergence (all properties of a complex organism are intelligibly derived from the properties of its parts), and Non-Reductionism (mental states are not intelligibly derived from physical properties alone).
Panpsychism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Fall 2015 Edition) plato.stanford.edu May 23, 2001 8 facts
perspectiveThomas Nagel argues that the only coherent form of emergentism is an epistemological doctrine regarding the limits of human understanding of complex system behavior.
claimThe argument presented by Thomas Nagel regarding panpsychism is criticized for lacking proof that a more radical form of emergentism is impossible.
claimThomas Nagel, in his 1979 article 'Panpsychism,' argues that emergentism fails as a metaphysical relation, which he links to the necessity of panpsychism.
claimThomas Nagel's denial of reductionism leads to the conclusion that mind must be associated with matter in its most fundamental forms, because enminded systems can be constructed from any matter.
quoteThomas Nagel remarked that panpsychism has “the faintly sickening odor of something put together in the metaphysical laboratory”.
quoteThomas Nagel stated in his 1979 article 'Panpsychism': 'there are no truly emergent properties of complex systems. All properties of complex systems that are not relations between it and something else derive from the properties of its constituents and their effects on each other when so combined.'
referenceThomas Nagel explored the objective and subjective nature of reality in his 1986 book 'The View from Nowhere'.
claimRoger Penrose (1989), John Searle (1991), Thomas Nagel (1979, 1986, 1999), and Noam Chomsky (1999) have all endorsed, suggested, or hinted at the idea that the problem of consciousness may necessitate a revolutionary change in physics.
The Hard Problem of Consciousness | Springer Nature Link link.springer.com 7 facts
quoteThomas Nagel stated: “The less it depends on a specifically human viewpoint, the more objective is our description. […] If the subjective character of experience is fully comprehensible only from one point of view, then any shift to greater objectivity—that is, less attachment to a specific viewpoint—does not take us nearer to the real nature of the phenomenon: it takes us farther away from it”.
claimThomas Nagel's example regarding the impossibility of knowing what it feels like to be a bat supports the same rationale as the knowledge argument, suggesting that physical knowledge does not capture the subjective experience.
claimDavid Chalmers's definition of the 'hard problem of consciousness' was not entirely new, as René Descartes followed a similar rationale, and Thomas Nagel (1974) had previously pointed to the irreducibility of experience, specifically regarding 'what it is like to be a bat'.
claimThomas Nagel suggested that "objective phenomenology" might overcome the limitations of reductionism regarding the mind-body problem.
quote“We can say that a being is conscious if there is something it is like to be that being, to use a phrase made famous by Thomas Nagel. Similarly, a mental state is conscious if it has a qualitative feel—an associated quality of experience. These qualitative feels are also known as phenomenal qualities, or qualia for short. The problem of explaining these phenomenal qualities is just the problem of explaining consciousness. This is the really hard part of the mind–body problem”
claimThomas Nagel argued that the existence of conscious experience does not disprove physicalism but indicates that the theory requires further investigation.
claimDavid Chalmers defines a being as conscious if there is "something it is like to be that being," a phrase attributed to Thomas Nagel.
Consciousness (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Fall 2025 ... plato.stanford.edu Jun 18, 2004 7 facts
claimThomas Nagel (1974) defines a conscious creature as one where a mental state is conscious if there is something that it is like to be in that state, providing a first-person or internal conception of phenomenal or qualitative states.
claimThomas Nagel argues that bats are conscious because they experience their world through echo-locatory senses, creating a subjective experience that humans cannot empathetically understand from a human point of view.
claimPanpsychism is a perspective that regards all constituents of reality as having psychic or proto-psychic properties distinct from their physical properties, as noted by Thomas Nagel (1979).
claimThomas Nagel's "what it is like" criterion defines a conscious organism as a being for whom there is a subjective way the world seems or appears from that creature's mental or experiential point of view.
perspectiveThomas Nagel argued in 1974 that consciousness is resistant to physical explanation because humans cannot empathetically take on the experiential perspective of other species, such as a bat's echo-locatory auditory experience.
perspectiveSome philosophers, such as Nagel (1974) and Chalmers (1996), argue that qualitative consciousness—the 'what it is like' aspect—is philosophically and scientifically central, and that organisms lacking such qualia may only be conscious in a loose or non-literal sense.
perspectiveThomas Nagel argues that facts about what it is like to be a bat are subjective because they can be fully understood only from the bat-type point of view, and cannot be fully understood from an outside third-person point of view.
Non-physicalist Theories of Consciousness cambridge.org Dec 20, 2023 6 facts
claimThomas Nagel (1979) discusses but ultimately rejects the weak version of the argument from non-emergence, viewing the pan(proto)psychist conclusion as too implausible, despite being unable to identify the specific flaw in the argument.
claimThomas Nagel and Galen Strawson argue that consciousness cannot be constituted by the physical due to the epistemic gap or related considerations.
claimThomas Nagel and Galen Strawson argue that if consciousness emerges from the physical, it must occur through causal production or a dualist psychophysical law, but they reject this possibility by invoking the interaction problem, which posits that such causal relations are unintelligible and impossible.
claimCritics argue that Thomas Nagel's bat argument demonstrates a limit to human imagination rather than a limit to what is in principle deducible, because human brains are not configured to experience sonar.
claimThomas Nagel argues that humans cannot deduce what it is like to be a bat, despite knowing the physical characteristics of a bat's sensory system and brain, which implies that phenomenal facts are distinct from physical facts.
perspectiveThomas Nagel claims that it is unintelligible how any physical process can necessitate consciousness, asserting that causation must involve necessitation rather than effects merely following causes.
Hard Problem of Consciousness | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy iep.utm.edu 6 facts
referenceDefenders of dual aspect theory, such as Baruch Spinoza (1677/2005), P. Strawson (1959), and Thomas Nagel (1986), argue that the hard problem of consciousness necessitates a rethinking of basic ontology without necessarily entailing dualism.
claimThomas Nagel argues that objective data about a bat's brain mechanisms, biochemistry, and evolutionary history cannot provide knowledge of what it is like for the bat to hunt by echolocation, because humans do not share the bat's specific point of view.
claimThomas Nagel argues that conscious mental states are inherently subjective and can only be fully grasped from limited viewpoints, whereas scientific explanation requires an objective characterization that moves away from any particular point of view.
quoteThomas Nagel calls for a future 'objective phenomenology' which will 'describe, at least in part, the subjective character of experiences in a form comprehensible to beings incapable of having those experiences.'
referenceThomas Nagel authored 'The View from Nowhere', published in 1986 by Oxford University Press.
claimThomas Nagel asserts that the inherent subjectivity of conscious states makes the mind-body problem intractable for science.
Panpsychism - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy plato.stanford.edu May 23, 2001 3 facts
perspectiveThomas Nagel argues that because we can build an enminded system out of any matter, mind must be associated with matter in general and in its most fundamental forms.
perspectiveThomas Nagel argues that there are no truly emergent properties of complex systems, asserting that all properties of complex systems derive from the properties of their constituents and their effects on each other.
referenceThomas Nagel wrote the article 'Conceiving the Impossible and the Mind-Body Problem', published in the journal Philosophy in 1999.
The Conscious Mind - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org 2 facts
Panpsychism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Fall 2025 Edition) plato.stanford.edu May 23, 2001 2 facts
Panpsychism - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org 2 facts
claimPanpsychism has seen a recent resurgence in the philosophy of mind, initiated by Thomas Nagel's 1979 article "Panpsychism" and spurred by Galen Strawson's 2006 article "Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism."
referenceIn the book 'Mortal Questions' (1979), Thomas Nagel argues that panpsychism follows from four premises: (P1) everything that exists is material, (P2) consciousness is irreducible to lower-level physical properties, (P3) consciousness exists, and (P4) higher-order properties of matter can be reduced to lower-level properties.
A harder problem of consciousness: reflections on a 50-year quest ... frontiersin.org 2 facts
referenceThomas Nagel (1974) identified that discussions on consciousness have traditionally focused on the emergence of qualia within the brain's neural architecture, a phenomenon often referred to as the alchemy of qualia.
claimThomas Nagel introduced the concept of qualia into mainstream philosophical discourse in his 1974 paper, 'What Is It Like to Be a Bat?', which articulated the difficulty of explaining subjective experience in objective terms.
Consciousness and Cognitive Sciences journal-psychoanalysis.eu 2 facts
claimThomas Nagel's expression 'what it is like to be' is widely accepted in the literature as capturing the essential nature of subjectivity, consciousness, qualia, and experience.
quoteThomas Nagel described the concern that cognitive science suffers from an 'explanatory gap' regarding certain mental phenomena.
Self-Consciousness - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy plato.stanford.edu Jul 13, 2017 1 fact
claimThomas Nagel discussed the nature of the reflective self in his 1996 essay 'Universality and the Reflective Self'.
David Chalmers Thinks the Hard Problem Is Really Hard scientificamerican.com Apr 10, 2017 1 fact
claimThomas Nagel asserted in his 1974 essay 'What is it like to be a bat?' that consciousness is the specific factor that makes the mind-body problem difficult.
Moving Forward on the Problem of Consciousness - David Chalmers consc.net 1 fact
claimThomas Nagel suggested that the structural properties of experience, such as the geometric structure of a visual field, might be the most amenable aspects of consciousness to formal expression.
Dualism, Physicalism, and Philosophy of Mind - Capturing Christianity capturingchristianity.com Dec 11, 2019 1 fact
quoteThomas Nagel stated: "there is 'something it is like' to be in a phenomenally conscious state–to see a patch of red in one’s visual field, for instance."
PANPSYCHISM (Philosophy of Mind Series) - Amazon.com amazon.com 1 fact
claimThomas Nagel argued in 1979 that if reductionism and dualism fail, and a non-reductionist form of strong emergence cannot be made intelligible, then panpsychism—the thesis that mental being is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the universe—might be a viable alternative.
(PDF) Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness - Academia.edu academia.edu 1 fact
referenceThomas Nagel discussed panpsychism in his 1979 work 'Panpsychism', published in 'Mortal Questions'.
(PDF) Levels of consciousness and self-awareness - Academia.edu academia.edu 1 fact
referenceNagel, T. (1974) published 'What is it like to be a bat' in Philosophical Review, 83, 435-450.
AI Sessions #9: The Case Against AI Consciousness (with Anil Seth) conspicuouscognition.com Feb 17, 2026 1 fact
quoteThomas Nagel defined consciousness as the state where "for a conscious organism, there is something it is like to be that organism."
Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence? A Framework for Classifying ... arxiv.org Nov 20, 2025 1 fact
claimThe authors of 'Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence? A Framework for Classifying Objections and Constraints' define consciousness as phenomenal consciousness, which Thomas Nagel described as the fact of there being 'something it is like' to be a system, involving qualia or subjective experience.