PHIL 101 Philosophy

The purpose of this assignment is three fold: (1) to demonstrate college level writing skills (Gordon Rule); (2) to demonstrate critical thinking skills (analysis/deductive reasoning), and (3) to demonstrate philosophical reasoning. The first goal is achieved through writing a grammatically sound essay that has a thesis, good sentences, and well developed paragraphs. And, the second goal is achieved through a critical analysis of an assigned topic. This involves presenting theory, explaining new concepts, using original illustrations, and finding interesting implications of the view under discussion. Students must apply critical thinking skills to successfully complete this component of this assignment. The word 'analysis' means a process of breaking something down to its smallest components. In an analytical essay, the aim is to explain the main issue/problem and the supporting or opposing arguments using original illustrations. And third, the last goal is achieved by assuming a first person position on one or some of the major issues raised during the analysis and then supporting this position with good reasons or arguments. Doing philosophy requires the philosopher to directly accept responsibility for the defense of his or her positions.

This assignment is a special writing project with specific requirements. It is not simply a summary essay nor is it simply an opinion paper. Students are asked to engage in philosophical reasoning. To be successful, they must follow this guideline.

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.

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).

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 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).

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 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 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.

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 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.

References

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.