Thomas Nagel on Reason - Two Lectures (1995)

[@Philosophy_Overdose]

00:00 Intro 00:31 Lecture 1 47:22 Q&A 1 55:19 Lecture 2 1:46:20 Q&A 2

[@arthurkyriazis]

Thomas Nagel is a giant in modern philosophy.

[@dereklondon9404]

This is Thomas Nagel at his best. Damn, 28 years ago! Nagel has gotta be one of the most careful and honest Atheists I’ve ever read. It’s easy to discount the mainstream religions. And, of course, if God exists, he would have to answer to reason, not the other way about. In other words, God is amenable to logic, not the source of it. So this phenomenon is clearly hostile to the concept of God as the most powerful or the greatest possible good. Nagel is right here that the infinite function of reason is a kind of religious, or at least, non-reductionist conundrum, which should give every thinking naturalist some pause. Doesn’t give us permission to “Jesus take the wheel.” In the interest of the self-criticism we wish of religion, however, naturalists should employ some of it themselves and recognize they’re not quite so skeptical as all their pretensions. Heady stuff.

[@lokayatavishwam9594]

"God is amenable to logic and not the source of it"? You're conflating epistemic conception of God with the ontology (of God as The Being). "Jesus take the wheel" tendency is a fideism that emanates from a culture of utilitarian aberrations (exemplified in theistic defenses like Pascal's wager which essentially boils down to a cost-benefit analysis). Nagel's atheism is a yearning to be immune from his own culture, not from the conceivability of God as such.

[@imadabou-hayt3872]

Thomas Nagel is great.

[@findbridge1790]

Good lectures. Thank you.

[@hanskung3278]

Is this going to be on the test?

[@johnmichaelcornett3598]

Thanks!

[@EdT.-xt6yv]

3:40 13:10

[@donmilland7606]

It was a packed house if you count the air molecules.

[@exalted_kitharode]

That's just first order astrological question, whether astrology is nonsense or not, and it must be proceeded in astrological terms and through its own methods.

[@findbridge1790]

the natural numbers are included in the language faculty itself

[@YodasPapa]

@@saimbhat6243 It wouldn't be a single mutation. It would almost certainly be polygenic. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "number in its abstract sense", but counting up to three has been shown in many wild animals, and up to four in some. Interestingly, this is the same number as in the parallel individuation system, which is basically the ability to perceive up to 3 or 4 distinct objects as such. For larger numbers, we and other animals have an approximate number sense. In order to count higher numbers precisely, we seem to have to add groups of 1-4 objects together, and I'd claim that this has to be learned. So basically I want to say we probably have an innate sense of number up to four, after which it becomes more like a sense of "more or less". Someone raised by wolves would be able to tell that 20 things are more that 10, but might not be able to distinguish 11 things from 10 things reliably. Citations can easily be found for everything in paragraphs 2 and 3. Oh while I'm at it I would say that the parallel individuation system is not linguistic, but arithmetic might be closely related to language. Arithmetic is very visual or spatial for some people though, so I'm not sure.

[@hanskung3278]

I'm sorry I fell asleep, did he ever get to the point?

[@waterkingdavid]

People like you, who know they're far more intelligent than these dunces like Nagel have better things to do than hang out here. Oh the desperate suffering of the exceptionally gifted!

[@donmilland7606]

no

[@joyceconklin4596]

Did you take notice that everything has a design even flowers who taught them to reach up to the sun n grow n when they die they reseed themselves to grow again l who taught them it's life that takes us in n life takes us out. As the flowers we to have design for we are extensions of God all of us including you were made in the image of God