An Analysis Of Thomas Nagel 's Issue Of Body And Mind

Since the modern philosopher Descartes,the relationship between body and mind has become a prominent issue in the history of philosophy.In the field of modern western philosophy of mind,physicalism and dualism have been debated with each other.The reductionists in physicalism emphasize that the mind can be restored to physical reality,while anti-physicalists argues that reductionism has its limitations in explaining physical and mental problems.Thomas Nagel was one of the first spiritual philosophers to set off anti-physicalism.He questioned the fact that consciousness could be restored to physics with the thought experiments of bat argument.And in his book the view from nowhere,a theory of how the subjective mind lies in the objective physics is constructed.For solving the problems of consciousness,his theories,subjective and objective ideas,the bat argument and two-dimensional theory of body and mind,challenged the dominant position of physicalism in explaining physical and mental problems,and caused a heated discussion in the academic circles.In?The View From Nowhere?,Nagel explains detailedly the relationship between subjective and objective views,and has dealt with the problems about metaphysics and philosophy of mind,such as the relationship between body and mind,the belonging of mind,the individual consciousness,etc.Since the 1950 s,physicalism had the predominance for explaining the physical and mental problems,but Nagel questioned it.He believed that the attempts using physicalism to explain psychological phenomena were unconvincing,because they didn't touch the key point of consciousness.He put forward two standpoints of subjectivity and objectivity to explain the characteristics of consciousness and the relationship between the mind world and the physical world.In his view,the subjectivity is not the pure subjectivity or idealism,but an objective existence;objectivity is also not a pure objectivity,because people always analysis things from their own needs and values.Therefore,objectivity is based on the needs of human beings,and is always contaminated with the individual perspective.Because of the irreducible existence between subjective and objective,and in order to avoid the "explanation gap" between body and mind caused by traditional body and mind dualism,Nagel constructed the two-dimensional theory which is believed that the same thing can have the irreducible properties both in physics and mind.After explaining his research methods on consciousness from a macro perspective,Nagel focused on the personal consciousness.He pointed out that the world was not created by the special perspectives of human beings or individual,and that the world in which people live was centreless.The world contained the perspectives of all species,not only human.Human perspectives didn't occupy the privileged position of metaphysics.If the world is centreless,there will be a sharp question of understanding subjective feelings and objective concepts: how can “I” be a special one in a world without center? For myself,I can think of myself as a person who has a perspective,but the centreless world is without a specific perspective.Then,there is a contradiction that whether the fact of “I” exists or not.For this reason,Nagel explored how the subjective “I” could integrate with the objective world.He believed we could have a more objective and transcendent understanding of our relationship with the world by reflecting it.So that we might continue to transcend individual perspectives and form an objective perspective that transcended personal views but integrated subjectivity and objectivity continually.The subjective and objective ideas of Nagel made a detailed analysis and explanation for the relationship between minds and matters,which was a revolution in the field of mind philosophy.However,there were many different views for Nagel's theories.Dennettt questioned whether his bat argument was rigorous and whether the premise was correct,while C.McGinn agreed.In addition,Nagel emphasized the irreducibility of individual perspectives and subjectivity,and drew the conclusion of two-dimensional theory of body and mind.But,in order to explain the origin of consciousness,a non-physical source was envisaged,that is,primordial psychological attribute,which led Nagel to panpsychism.