Thomas Nagel
American philosopher of science and major figure in logical positivism.
Thomas Nagel (born July 4, 1937) is an American postanalytic philosopher whose work spans political philosophy, ethics, and philosophy of mind. He is a University Professor of Philosophy and Law Emeritus at New York University, where he previously held the Fiorello LaGuardia Professorship of Law from 2001 to 2003. Nagel earned his doctorate at Harvard University under John Rawls, whom he later called the most important political philosopher of the twentieth century. As a doctoral student, he edited early drafts of Rawls’s *A Theory of Justice* and befriended Gilbert Harman and Saul Kripke. He taught at the University of California, Berkeley from 1963 to 1966, then at Princeton University from 1966 to 1980, training notable philosophers including Susan Wolf, Shelly Kagan, and Samuel Scheffler. In 1967, he co-founded the Society for Ethical and Legal Philosophy with Robert Nozick, and in the 1970s he co-founded the journal *Philosophy & Public Affairs*. Nagel is widely known for his critique of material reductionist accounts of the mind, especially in his 1974 essay “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” He argues that scientific understanding’s attempt at an objective “view from nowhere” necessarily leaves out the subjective point of view inherent to conscious experience. He continued this critique in *Mind and Cosmos* (2012), arguing against the neo-Darwinian view of consciousness’s emergence. His liberal moral and political theory is developed in *The Possibility of Altruism* (1970) and subsequent writings. Nagel holds that people instinctively seek a unified worldview through reason, but that no such unified view is possible for finite creatures, as more objective understandings are not always better. He distinguishes between primary qualities, which are mathematically describable independent of our senses, and secondary qualities like taste and color, which depend on our sensory apparatus. Nagel is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a corresponding fellow of the British Academy, and was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2006 and the French Académie des sciences morales et politiques in 2017. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and in 2008 was awarded the Rolf Schock Prize, the Balzan Prize, and an honorary Doctor of Letters fr
- born
- November 16, 1901
- field
- Philosophy of science
- nationality
- American (naturalized 1919)
- known_for
- Logical positivism, *The Structure of Science* (1961), *Gödel's Proof* (1958)
Lore & Background
Nagel was born in Nové Mesto nad Váhom (now in Slovakia, then Vágújhely and part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) to Jewish parents. His mother, Frida Weiss, was from the nearby town of Vrbové (or Verbo). He emigrated to the United States at the age of 10 and became a U.S. citizen in 1919. He received a BSc from the City College of New York (CCNY) in 1923, and earned his PhD from Columbia University in 1931, with a dissertation titled *On the Logic of Measurement*. Through the award of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he was able to spend a year in Europe (from August 1934 to July 1935) to learn about the new trends in philosophy on the continent. Except for one year (1966–67) at Rockefeller University, Nagel spent his entire academic career at Columbia. He became the first John Dewey Professor of Philosophy there in 1955, and then University Professor from 1967 until his retirement in 1970, after which he continued to teach. In 1977, he was one of the few philosophers elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Reader's Guide
Nagel's work concerned the philosophy of mathematical fields such as geometry and probability, quantum mechanics, and the status of reductive and inductive theories of science. His book *The Structure of Science* (1961) practically inaugurated the field of analytic philosophy of science. He expounded the different kinds of explanation in different fields, and was sceptical about attempts to unify the nature of scientific laws or explanations. He was the first to propose that by positing analytic equivalencies (or 'bridge laws') between the terms of different sciences, one could eliminate all ontological commitments except those required by the most basic science. He also upheld the view that social sciences are scientific, and should adopt the same standards as natural sciences. Nagel wrote *An Introduction to Logic and the Scientific Method* with Morris Raphael Cohen, his CCNY teacher, in 1934. In 1958, he published with James R. Newman *Gödel's Proof*, a short book explicating Gödel's incompleteness theorems to those not well trained in mathematical logic. He edited the *Journal of Philosophy* (1939–1956) and the *Journal of Symbolic Logic* (1940–1946). As a public intellectual, he supported a skeptical approach to claims of the paranormal, becoming one of the first sponsors and fellows of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry in 1976, along with 24 other notable philosophers like W. V. Quine. The committee posthumously inducted him into their 'Pantheon of Skeptics' in recognition of Nagel's contributions to the cause of scientific skepticism. Nagel was an atheist. He was an elected member of the American Philosophical Society (1962) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1981). He died in New York City. He had two sons, Alexander Nagel (professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin) and Sidney Nagel (professor of physics at the University of Chicago). Nagel's doctoral students include Morton White, Patrick Suppes, Henry Kyburg, Isaac Levi, and Kenneth Schaffner. A festschrift, *Philosophy, Science and Method: Essays in Honor of Ernest Nagel*, was published in 1969.
Did You Know?
- Nagel emigrated to the United States at age 10 and became a U.S. citizen in 1919.
- He was the first John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, appointed in 1955.
- In 1977, he was one of the few philosophers elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
- He co-founded the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry in 1976 and was posthumously inducted into its 'Pantheon of Skeptics'.
- Nagel's doctoral students included Morton White, Patrick Suppes, Henry Kyburg, Isaac Levi, and Kenneth Schaffner.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Thomas Nagel?
Thomas Nagel is an American postanalytic philosopher, born in 1937 in Belgrade and naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1944, who is best known for challenging materialist reductionism in the philosophy of mind. He also made significant contributions to liberal moral and political theory throughout his career.
What is 'What Is It Like to Be a Bat?' and why does it matter?
This 1974 essay argues that subjective conscious experience resists being fully explained by objective, physical descriptions of neural processes. It became a landmark in philosophy of mind because it shifted the mind-body debate toward the irreducible first-person character of awareness.
What are Thomas Nagel's main areas of philosophical work?
His scholarship centers on philosophy of mind, ethics, and political philosophy, with a recurring focus on the limits of reductionist explanations of consciousness. Key works include The Possibility of Altruism (1970) and Mind and Cosmos (2012).
Where and when was Thomas Nagel born?
He was born on July 4, 1937, in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and subsequently became a naturalized American citizen in 1944.
What is Thomas Nagel's academic position at NYU?
He serves as University Professor of Philosophy and Law Emeritus at New York University, having held appointments in both the philosophy and law departments.
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