Key insights from
Mind & Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False
By Thomas Nagel
Audio available
8 minute read
Published Sep 26, 2012
What you'll learn
NYU philosophy professor Thomas Nagel doesn’t march under the conventional banners of the naturalists or the supernaturalists. An atheist himself, Nagel argues that God need not be the default explanation, but the naturalist materialist position cannot be the explanation for the origins of life and mind either. Mind and Cosmos is an attempt to carve out a middle ground, an intellectual demilitarized zone between the warring naturalists and theists.
Key insights
- 1 Defenders of intelligent design have leveled forceful challenges against the naturalist worldview—and naturalists need to start taking them seriously.
- 2 It’s better to understand ourselves from the position we naturally occupy, rather than beginning from an external, top-down, transcendent view.
- 3 The theistic view of origins of life is comforting but incomplete, while the naturalistic view is comprehensive but not at all comforting.
- 4 Antireductionist claims that debunk naturalism are not enough—it’s time to start proposing alternative approaches to a theory of everything.
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