Free Nagel: Summary And Reflection Essay Example

Physicalism is a belief that everything in the world has a physical property. It posits that nothing can be other than the physical and everything that exists, such as ideas supervenes the physical. Nagel believes that it wrong to assume that physicalism is false. But though he does not believe that it should be false, he believes that we do not have a way to assume that it is true. Condition he points out, is a condition of understanding. It is true that everything—include things that we consider to be non-physical have a physical basis in the body. Mental states arise indeed from the physical. His argument is based on the fact that we must use language to gain understanding and even language is limited as a system in question of what it is capable of doing. Language is based on the referent, but this is the best system we have to mean something like “X” is “Y.” He points out that without this framework everything becomes a form of mysticism.
Science when new discoveries are absorbed by the general public because we understand propositions like “The climate is warming because of emissions that humans are putting in the atmosphere.” However, we understand the outcome of the process of analyzing big data sets that lead to this conclusion without actually understanding the nature of the mathematical models that lead us to such conclusions. Nagel uses the example of the recent discoveries that matter is energy. People understand this on a definitional level, but not a conceptual level.
He goes further to say that we can have evidence of things, which we really do not understand. This is because much of science rests on observation. The example that Nagle uses is anexample of a caterpillar and a butterfly. Someone without knowledge of how metamorphosis works could still conclude that a caterpillar turns into a butterfly after a time. If a caterpillar were locked in a safe for a week and then opened a butterfly emerges, then this would be sufficient proof for this conclusion without understanding what causes this.
Nagel cites Donald Davidson, who says, “if mental events have physical causes and effects, they must have physical descriptions (Nagel). To further address this issue, he sets it aside for a time and suggest that maybe we are stuck here because a different method must be employed in order to better get a grasp on this issue and “Objective phenomenology is not dependent on empathy or the imagination.” He thinks the problems of physicalism point to deeper problems of objective subjective. If we cannot completely account for consciousness in physical terms, I think metaphysical materialism is one perceptual account of reality, that rests on a subjective, not an objective, understanding. I believe Nagel is correct that the problems of physicalism rest on the problems of subjective objective. What seems to be the problem not just with physicalism, but with most ontological worldviews is that they (generally speaking) insist upon seeing the world a certain way. Human beings understand that perspective matter in understanding. The maxim “questions of meaning come before questions of understanding holds true in this instance. Before we can understand the outcomes and ideas that we get from the physical world, it is perhaps important to understand the conceptual nature of the universe. This is certainly easier said then done.
Ontological worldviews such as physicalism only get us have of the way there. It is perhaps useful to use a buffet type approach when entertaining these questions. Different ontological worldviews are useful in different situations. The goal should not to be to find The One, but instead to find the one that works or is most useful for certain questions, contexts, and situations.
Ideas certainly supervene from the mind. Few philosophers and thinkers believe in a Platonic realm of forms where ideas and ideal archetypes are floating around. However, the question of whether or not ideas exist in their own right or if they simple are the products of the physical body are also important. This question makes sense in a dualistic view, but it does not make sense in other worldviews. The Buddha would not have an answer to this question of whether or not ideas exist in their own right because in that worldview there is the belief that everything—physical, mental, emotional, and epistemological—are all just illusions and that focusing them masks the greater truths of the matter at hand. It is not that one worldview is right and another is wrong. It is simply that case that they take a different perspective in their understanding of the world. The universe simple is, it exists. As thinking people the best that we can do is develop models in which to see it. So I agree with Nagel that perhaps we are focusing on the symptoms of the problem and not getting to the underlying problem. Because the underlying problem is perspectival—subjective versus objective. And whether or not something is objectively true or subjectively true has to do with logic, but logic is just a system of understanding and no system can prove itself to be true.