We use cookies to enhance your experience on our website. By continuing to use our website, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. You can change your cookie settings at any time. Find out more

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

Print Price: $43.95

Format:
Hardback
144 pp.
5.5" x 8.25"

ISBN-13:
9780199919758

Publication date:
September 2012

Imprint: OUP US


Mind and Cosmos

Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False

Thomas Nagel

In Mind and Cosmos Thomas Nagel argues that the widely accepted world view of materialist naturalism is untenable. The mind-body problem cannot be confined to the relation between animal minds and animal bodies. If materialism cannot accommodate consciousness and other mind-related aspects of reality, then we must abandon a purely materialist understanding of nature in general, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete.

And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such. No such explanation is available, and the physical sciences, including molecular biology, cannot be expected to provide one. The book explores these problems through a general treatment of the obstacles to reductionism, with more specific application to the phenomena of consciousness, cognition, and value. The conclusion is that physics cannot be the theory of everything.

Readership : Readers with an interest in the ongoing debate surrounding materialism and the mind-body problem.

1. Introduction
2. Antireductionism and the Natural Order
3. Consciousness
4. Cognition
5. Value
6. Conclusion

There are no Instructor/Student Resources available at this time.

Thomas Nagel is University Professor of Law and Philosophy at New York University.

Making Sense - Margot Northey and Joan McKibbin
Where the Conflict Really Lies - Alvin Plantinga
Grand Theories and Everyday Beliefs - Wallace Matson

Special Features

  • Author is a renowned philosopher.
  • Makes a controversial argument.
  • Engages in the heated contemporary debate over whether materialism and neo-Darwinism can explain the mind-body problem.