Contemplating the Meaning of Life: A Philosophical Discussion by Thomas Nagel

Running head: PHILOSOPHY
Philosophy
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1PHILOSOPHY
INTRODUCTION
In his book entitled ‘What does it all mean?’ Thomas Nagel contemplates probable
solutions to nine problems, i.e. knowledge that exists beyond our minds, knowledge of minds of
others, the problem of mind and body, the concept of predestined and free will, the underlying
principle of morality and ethics, the question of right and wrong, the concept of death, life and
the significance of life, and the meaning of words. Even though Thomas Nagel professes what he
truly feels and believes, he leaves these basic questions open, allowing students to think of other
solutions and encouraging them to think for themselves.
DISCUSSION
In the second section of the book, Nagel wonders if we at all know whether the universe
exists outside our own mind. According to Thomas Nagel, the inside of a person’s mind i.e.
one’s thoughts are the only thing that one can be sure of. Whatever one believes is based on
one’s thoughts, experiences and feelings. All the evidence about everything that exists has to
come through one’s mind and the understanding that nothing exists except the inside of one’s
mind. A person’s mind is the only thing that exists. The thought that only the mind exists is
known as Solipsism. Solipsism is the thought or belief that the mind of a person is the only
reality and the only thing that truly exists. It is based on the belief that all experiences are like a
big dream with no external world outside it. Solipsism comes from the Latin word ‘solus’ that
implies alone and ‘ipse’ meaning self. The idea or thought behind solipsism is that the only thing
that exists for real is the mind of a person. According to solipsism, knowledge or understanding

2PHILOSOPHY
of anything outside one’s own mind is unsure and that the external world, which human beings
perceive to be real, cannot be known and might not exist outside the internal framework of the
mind. In a larger context, according to solipsism, the world and the other mind does not exist.
According to Metaphysical solipsism the only thing that is real is the self and that every other
thing, including the world that we live in, and the inhabitants of the world, i.e. the people have
no separate identity of its own.
Nagel wonders if the inside of the mind is the only thing that exists. If these things are
indeed possible, does one have any way of proving to oneself that they are not actually true?
This belief however may be disproved as one can never know for certain that there is no
external world outside one’s own world. Nothingness cannot be observed if one was to define
reality by perception. Skepticism of the outside world is based on the belief that we do not have
any understanding or knowledge of the external world and it may exist or the external world may
not exist, we will never know for sure as we are only able to perceive things by ourselves.
The idea that only the things that we can observe are the ones that exist is at times called
verification. The concept of Verificationism, also called verification idea or verifiability criterion
of meaning is the doctrine that only statements that are empirically verifiable by the senses have
meaning or else they are tautologies. It is a doctrine which is fundamental to the school of
Logical Positivism that a declaration is only meaningful if it empirically verifiable or else
tautological. Verification arose during the 1920s when a group of philosophers decided to
combine science and philosophy under a common theory of knowledge.
In the chapter entitled, ‘Free Will’, Nagel wonders if human beings have free will or not.
The central idea that Nagel puts forward is that human beings are free to make their own