Mind and Cosmos

George Scialabba, Inference: International Review of Science Mind and Cosmos is ... extraordinarily ambitious. Nagel proposes not merely a new explanation for the origin of life and consciousness, but a new type of explanation: 'natural teleology.'

Simon Oliver, Studies in Christian Ethics Nagels book is provocative, interesting and important

Keith Ward, The Philosophical Quarterly Nagels arguments are forceful, and his proposals are bold, intriguing, and original. This, though short and clear, is philosophy in the grand manner, and it is worthy of much philosophical discussion.

W. Richard Bowen, ESSSAT News & Reviews 23:1 This is a challenging text that should provoke much further reflection. I recommend it to anyone interested in trying to understand the nature of our existence.

Leon Wieseltier, The New Republic [This] troublemaking book has sparked the most exciting disputation in many years... I like Nagel's mind and I like Nagel's cosmos. He thinks strictly but not imperiously, and in grateful view of the full tremendousness of existence.

Jim Holt, The Wall Street Journal A sharp, lucidly argued challenge to today's scientific worldview.

Science Nagel's arguments against reductionism should give those who are in search of a reductionist physical 'theory of everything' pause for thought... The book serves as a challenging invitation to ponder the limits of science and as a reminder of the astonishing puzzle of consciousness.

The New York Times Mind and Cosmos, weighing in at 128 closely argued pages, is hardly a barn-burning polemic. But in his cool style Mr. Nagel extends his ideas about consciousness into a sweeping critique of the modern scientific worldview.

National Review [This] short, tightly argued, exacting new book is a work of considerable courage and importance.

H. Allen Orr, The New York Review of Books Provocative... Reflects the efforts of a fiercely independent mind.

The Los Angeles Review of Books Challenging and intentionally disruptive... Unless one is a scientific Whig, one must strongly suspect that something someday will indeed succeed [contemporary science]. Nagel's Mind and Cosmos does not build a road to that destination, but it is much to have gestured toward a gap in the hills through which a road might someday run.

The Guardian A model of carefulness, sobriety and reason... Reading Nagel feels like opening the door on to a tidy, sunny room that you didn't know existed.

Alva Noe, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews Fascinating... [A] call for revolution.

Louis B. Jones, The Threepenny Review The book's wider questions -- its awe-inspiring questions -- turn outward to address the uncanny cognizability of the universe around us... He's simply doing the old-fashioned Socratic work of gadfly, probing for gaps in what science thinks it knows.

Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution [Attacks] the hidden hypocrisies of many reductionist...

<br>Thomas Nagel is University Professor in the Department of Philosophy and the School of Law at New York University. His books include The Possibility of Altruism, The View from Nowhere, and What Does It All Mean?: A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. In 2008, he was awarded the Rolf Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy and the Balzan Prize in Moral Philosophy.<br>

I. INTRODUCTION; II. ANTIREDUCTIONISM AND THE NATURAL ORDER; III. CONSCIOUSNESS; IV. COGNITION; V. VALUE; VI. CONCLUSION