A Deep Dive into Thomas Nagel's Philosophy: Key Concepts and Arguments

This essay analyzes Thomas Nagel's philosophical exploration of life, based on his book "What Does It All Mean?" The essay delves into three key chapters: the nature of reality, the concept of free will, and the meaning of life. It examines Nagel's arguments on solipsism, questioning the existence of the external world and the limitations of subjective experience. The essay then explores Nagel's views on free will, discussing determinism and the ability to make choices. Finally, it tackles Nagel's controversial perspective on the meaning of life, examining the conflict between subjective and objective perspectives. The essay concludes by summarizing the main points and acknowledging the enduring philosophical questions that remain unanswered.

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Understanding Life from the Perspective of Thomas Nagel
What Does It All Mean? Is a book by Thomas Nagel about Philosophy for the people,
who do not know what philosophy is and what the reality about this world is. The book looks
towards answering various questions about life and world. The book look towards the questions
about what is right or wrong, what is the meaning of life, or is death the end of life? Nagel
presents the answers to the nine most significant philosophical questions about life, reality, death
and world. In every chapter of this book, author has tried to answer the philosophical questions
through various theories with explanations of the flaws of those theories. The first question will
be to understand that how people know things and perceive reality, second will be do mind and
soul of the humans work separately and third is the most important philosophical question that
what is the meaning of life.
Chapter 2: The ‘Real’ World
The author explains that whatever we experience in the world is understood through our
minds. The existence of the human body is based on the subjective experience, as well as the
sense, thoughts and feelings. The experience of the humans is based on the sensory stimuli of
their brains. SO, is this world real, or just the perception of mind? All the experiences and
evidences that humans go through, comes from their minds. Therefore, the knowledge about
perceiving the reality of the outside world, the knowledge has to be based on the evidences of
reality. This explains that the physical world what we perceive can’t be considered as real, and
the only reality, is what inside our minds. Therefore, the author states that “your mind is the only
thing that exists” (Nagel 11).

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This is the reason that first argument presented by Nagel is about solipsism. According to
Thornton Solipsism is “the doctrine that, in principle, "existence" means for me my existence and
that of my mental states” (Thornton 2). The author also provides the septic view about the
external world, as we know things according to what goes inside our mind and felt by our senses.
This is the reasons that we do not know anything about our past existence, because the memory
impressions are also the present contents of our mind (Nagel 12). But, the author argues that how
do we know that the external world exists? There are various conflicts with the arguments
presented by Nagel. According to him, the one’s own mind is all that a person knows or what is
considered to be reality for him. For example, if we think about our past or childhood, what can
we remember? Often people remember things from the age of 3 or 4, People could not probable
remember their experience before the age of 3. Then how could people know that they even
existed? What we know about ourselves before the age of 3 is from our parents. But, according
to Nagel’s view we even question the existence of our parents that how do we know that even
our parents existed before that. This concept presented by Nagel seems to be nonsensical.
It can be believed to be a possibility, but it cannot be extended to reality that only what
we remember in our mind ever exists. Because, if our parents have not existed then how could
we validate our existence. This is the reason that Thornton considers solipsism as foundationless
(Hedman 9). The ideas and assertions made by Nagel seem to be foundationless as well because
they lack logical rules and empirical evidences. Also the reality of the external world could not
be doubted on the fact that experiences of reality are sensory and not associated with mind
(Devitt). The views presented by Nagel can be considered as egocentric predicament. The
concept of solipsism can be considered as fascinating, but seems to be a false philosophical
theory, which is also incoherent. Also, “purification achieved through solipsism leads to an

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incomplete and misleading conception of Wittgenstein’s ethical vision” (Kremer 60). The thing
that we do not know the outer world does not reject the existence of the outer or external world.
What exists in our mind means ‘I am the only thing that exists in this world’ also displays the
“self-humbling of pride”, which is not an action, but the forced logic of ‘solipsism’.
Therefore, it is really difficult to accept that there is nothing beyond our own mind. We
experience the physical or external world through our sense of touch, feel, smell, hear and vision,
where the mind do not directly interact with physical world. Also, it is very difficult for the
solipsist to teach solipsism, because w\how they will explain to others that they are only
imagination of the author. The solipsist itself is rejecting the other reality. Therefore, the basic
argument solipsism suffers the logical explanation. For presenting validation of solipsism the
authors are required to have a language, so that they could affirm their thoughts. However,
explaining that ‘I am the only mind that exists” required to be expressed in public language,
where the existence of the language is itself validated as the social context, which means that
external world exists and it is not just the imagination (Thornton).
Chapter 6: Do We have A Free Will
In the chapter 6 Nagel makes the claim that humans depend on their choices, wants and
decisions (Nagel, 51). This means that human make their choices and decisions according to
their free will and there is no regularity that they will make particular choice in certain
circumstances. Nagel presents the example of choosing a chocolate cake instead of a peach and
also states that sun will rise every morning. Through these examples, Nagel illustrates that
humans are free wills they have the opportunity to make choices and decide whether they want to
eat a fruit or a cake. However, sun has no choice and it is a monotonous regularity that sun will

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raise every morning. “The human act is one that is proper to a human being, an act that
proceeds from the free will of the man” (Libet 2). Nagel asserts the human acts that are
deliberately are done knowingly and through free will of the humans. Even if the actions are
predetermined, the action can chance with the change in circumstances. These changes in the
circumstances make the action inevitable. Nagel has called it as determinism.
Free will is a significant philosophical term that explains that rational agents have the
particular sort of capacity to choose the action among the various alternatives (O’Connor 7).
According to Fieser there is a difference between free will and determinism. The genuine free
will is “for at least some actions, a person has the ability to have done otherwise” (Fieser 2),
while determinism is “a person never has the ability to have done otherwise” (Fieser 2). The free
will allow the people to make their choices differently, while determinism holds that choices
can’t be made differently. Nagel believes that every action is determined according to
circumstances and even after the free will, humans make decisions according to determined
circumstances.
Determinism is in conflict with the concept of free will. For example, if in a hot summer
day, I am standing in front of an ice crème shop and I see a chocolate ice cream, which seems to
be very tempting. Then, I see vanilla ice cream that also appeals to me. Then I make a decision
that which ice cream can immediately satisfy my desire and I choose a chocolate ice cream.
Suppose that the time reverses for five minutes and again I am standing in front of an ice cream
shop and I do not have any recollection of my previous choices. However all the circumstances
and my psychological framework remains the same. I would have the ability to change the
decision and I could have ordered the vanilla ice cream instead of chocolate. Therefore, the
humans do have the ability to make different decisions and initiate the genuine free will that

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would be dependent of the ‘casual forces of the mental framework’ (Fieser 3). However,
according to determinism, choices could not be made differently with same setup and all the
events unfold in same manner as it happened earlier. Nagel, states that the freewill or freedom is
not threatened by determinism. However, the notion of genuine free will and determinism are
incompatible and both could not be endorsed together (Williams 8). According to Nagel the
human choices and will are exclusively the function of brain and the nature of humans are
constrained by the rigid laws of nature. Determinism is applicable in more complex decisions
which require different cognitive mechanism.
Chapter 10: The Real Meaning of Life
The final chapter presented by Nagel discusses the most significant and difficult question
that ‘what is the meaning of life?’ Nagel has discusses the meaning of life in more controversial
manner that ‘does it matters’ (Nagel, 97). Life is a simple four letter word, yet it has the
capability of raising many questions. For some the meaning of life could be to live their mark
behind or for others the meaning of life could be something else. However, Nagel explains that
meaning of life is not just restricted to performing the mundane functions of life, but it is
different from that.
Nagel asserts that every physical or material object will eventually disappear. There is a
contradiction with this idea that whatever is being done for the future generation becomes
meaningless with this notion. Nagel calls life as ‘absurd’, as the humans view their li9fe from the
subjective and objective perspectives. The objective perspective could not explain that why life
matters, while the subjective perspective explains that life is valuable and important to oneself
and others. Therefore, according to Nagel there is the conflict between both perspectives, which

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makes life absurd. However, Wolf believes that meaning of life arises from the subjective and
objective perspectives collectively. The fact cannot be denied that life is meaningful and
becomes more meaningful with objective factors as well as when subjective factors like
cognition emotion and affections is added to objectives (Starkey 91).
Conclusion
According to the analysis of these chapters, I can conclude that humans are the agents of free
will and have the capability to make their choices. What we experience is reality and what we
could not remember cannot be denied. Everything apart from our existence, exist in this world.
However, there are still some questions that could not be solved. Life is full of various questions
and analyzing the three main questions from Nagel’s discussion had been an attempt to find
answers for few of them. However, it has been found that there is no particular answer ot any
question and different people view life differently and have their own answers and own
meanings towards life.

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Works Cited
Devitt, Michael. Realism and truth. Princeton University Press, 1997.
Fieser, James. "Great Issues in Philosophy." 2008.
Hedman, Anders. "Philosophy from Socrates to Descartes." Consciousness from a Broad
Perspective. Springer International Publishing, 2017. 7-20.
Kremer, Michael. To What Extent is Solipsism a Truth?. na, 2004.
Libet, Benjamin. "Do we have free will." Conscious will and responsibility (2011): 1-10.
Nagel, Thomas. What does it all mean?: a very short introduction to philosophy. Oxford
University Press, 1987.
O’Connor, Timothy. "Free will." Free Will 1 (2005): 7-20.
Starkey, Charles. "Meaning and affect." The Pluralist 1.2 (2006): 88-103.
Thornton, Stephen P. "Solipsism and the Problem of Other Minds. The Internet Encyclopedia of
Philosophy." (2015).
Williams, Thomas. On free choice of the will. Hackett Publishing, 1993.
Wolf, Susan. "Happiness and meaning: two aspects of the good life." Social Philosophy and
Policy 14.1 (1997): 207-225.