Thomas Nagel

Roderick Chisholm, Zeno Vendler, Thomas Nagel, Roger Penrose, Alastair Hannay, and J.R. Smythies.

…to Be a Bat?” (1974), Thomas Nagel pointed out that no matter how much someone might know about the objective facts about the brains and behaviour of bats and of their peculiar ability to echolocate (to locate distant or invisible objects by means of sound waves), that knowledge alone would…

The American philosopher Thomas Nagel was one of the first contemporary moral philosophers to challenge Hume’s thesis that reason alone is incapable of motivating moral action. In The Possibility of Altruism (1969), he argued that, if Hume’s thesis is true, then the ordinary idea of prudence—i.e., the idea…

According to the American philosopher Thomas Nagel, liberalism is the conjunction of two ideals: (1) individuals should have liberty of thought and speech and wide freedom to live their lives as they choose (so long as they do not harm others in certain ways), and (2) individuals in any society…