A professor of philosophy and law at New York University, Thomas Nagel made his name in the 1970s with a critique of scientific or “reductionist” theories of mind, as well as contributions to egalitarian political theory. In 2012, Nagel published Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False, in which he argued that the physical sciences are incapable of properly describing and explaining the “subjective” aspect of human experience. The book has been widely debated since its publication.
Further reading
Thomas Nagel is not crazy: The philosopher Thomas Nagel thinks the materialist scientific worldview cannot explain consciousness. Is he right, asks Malcolm Thorndike Nicholson
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