"I believe that there is a necessary connection in both directions between the physical and the mental, but that it cannot be discovered a priori. Opinion is strongly divided on the credibility of some kind of functionalist reductionism, and I won't go through my reasons for being on the antireductionist side of that debate. Despite significant attempts by a number of philosophers to describe the functional manifestations of conscious mental states, I continue to believe that no purely functionalist characterization of a system entails — simply in virtue of our mental concepts — that the system is conscious."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Atheists from the United StatesAcademics from the United StatesEssayists from the United StatesHarvard University alumniCornell University alumni
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Thomas Nagel
46 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Thomas Nagel →
Related Quotes
"In speaking of the fear of religion, I don’t mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain establ…"
"Everyone is entitled to commit murder in the imagination once in a while, not to mention lesser infractions."
"Consciousness is what makes the mind–body problem really intractable."
"Without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless."
"Any reductionist program has to be based on an analysis of what is to be reduced. If the analysis leaves something ou…"
"[E]very subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inevitable that an o…"
"Bats … present a range of activity and a sensory apparatus so different from ours that the problem I want to pose is …"
"[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 …"
"Our own experience provides the basic material for our imagination, whose range is therefore limited. It will not hel…"
"We appear to be faced with a general difficulty about psychophysical reduction. In other areas the process of reducti…"