Hi vblott,
Thank you for your question.
Traders Log - The View From Nowhere
http://www.traderslog.com/cgi-bin/apf4/amazon_products_feed.cgi?Operation=ItemLookup&ItemId=0195056442
Editorial Review:
Book Description:
"Human beings have the unique ability to view the world in a detached
way: We can think about the world in terms that transcend our own
experience or interest, and consider the world from a vantage point
that is, in Nagel's words, 'nowhere in particular'. At the same time,
each of us is a particular person in a particular place, each with his
own 'personal' view of the world, a view that we can recognize as just
one aspect of the whole. How do we reconcile these two
standpoints--intellectually, morally, and practically? To what extent
are they irreconcilable and to what extent can they be integrated?
Thomas Nagel's ambitious and lively book tackles this fundamental
issue, arguing that our divided nature is the root of a whole range of
philosophical problems, touching, as it does, every aspect of human
life. He deals with its manifestations in such fields of philosophy
as: the mind-body problem, personal identity, knowledge and
skepticism, thought and reality, free will, ethics, the relation
between moral and other values, the meaning of life, and death.
Excessive objectification has been a malady of recent analytic
philosophy, claims Nagel, it has led to implausible forms of
reductionism in the philosophy of mind and elsewhere. The solution is
not to inhibit the objectifying impulse, but to insist that it learn
to live alongside the internal perspectives that cannot be either
discarded or objectified. Reconciliation between the two standpoints,
in the end, is not always possible."
========
Prism-Perfect.net
http://www.prism-perfect.net/about/essays.php?id=16
Review of The View From Nowhere
"Thomas Nagel's book The View From Nowhere is certainly a landmark in
philosophical writing, if only for its breadth alone. Nagel tackles
difficult problems from all branches of philosophy as he explores
their relations to what he sees as a particularly fundamental problem:
the irreconcilable differences between the subjective and objective
viewpoints. As Nagel states it: This book is about a single problem:
how to combine the perspectives of a particular person inside the
world with an objective view of that same world, the person and his
viewpoint included."
(read article)
=========
http://www.shef.ac.uk/~ptpdlp/essays/bellotti2.html
Conclusion
"Nagel's The View From Nowhere presents the various problems that
exist in trying to bring the subjective and objective viewpoints
together. In doing this, it provides an alternative to the influential
physicalist accounts which attempt to reduce the subjective view to
the purely physical world, or deny its existence entirely. It is an
excellent overview of the many aspects of the problem, and of the
centrality of the problem in several areas of philosophy. Possibly its
only downside is that it is not radical enough. Nagel takes a very
realist line, and because of this, arguably, he analyses the problem
the wrong way round, placing the problem of consciousness in priority
above the problem of justifying our objective worldview."
=========
http://www.molbio.ku.dk/MolBioPages/abk/PersonalPages/Jesper/Surfaces.html
"I have come to see this as a very crucial question. 'A point of view'
is a very strange thing indeed if seen from the point of view of
science. The title of Thomas Nagel's famous book from 1986, The View
from Nowhere, captures well what I take to be the essence of the
scientific endeavour throughout the last few hundred years. What Nagel
criticises in his book is not the objectivistic strategy as such, but
the belief that reality is in a narrow sense identical to objective
reality: 'The fundamental idea behind the objective impulse is that
the world is not our world. This idea can be betrayed if we turn
objective comprehensibility into a new standard of reality. That is an
error because the fact that reality extends beyond what is available
to our original perspective does not mean that all of it is available
to some transcendent perspective that we can reach from here' (Nagel
1986: 18)."
=========
(cached page - Enter the Werewolfs Den) The View from Nowhere
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:jf_N9c3gRN8J:www.werewolfsden.com/item-0195056442.htm+Thomas+Nagel%27s+A+View+From+Nowhere+reviews&hl=en
(scroll to: Spotlight customer reviews)
=========
http://www.sewingbooks.ca/cgi-bin/amazon_products_feed.cgi?Operation=ItemLookup&myOperation=CustomerReviews&ItemId=0521406765#review_4
"New to Nagel? Read "The View From Nowhere" instead
Although this book is very interesting and readable, it is ultimately
a collection of largely unrelated essays by Nagel, most of which were
written in the 1970's. For the Nagel enthusiast, it is a must. For the
beginner, I would HIGHLY recomend Nagel's "The View From Nowhere". For
one, "Nowhere" is shorter and therefore, I think, more accessable to
the general reader. Like "Mortal Questions", it is also a collection
of essays on various topics in philosophy, but with a much broader
subject area. While Nagel's topics in "Mortal Questions" include war,
disobediance, gender equality and the politics of preference (all
matters of immanent concern in 1970's America), "Nowhere" tackles free
will, personal identity and the pursuit of objectivity in a lucid and
straightforward manner."
=========
Oxford University Press
http://www.us.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Philosophy/Epistemology/?ci=0195056442&view=usa
The View From Nowhere - Thomas Nagel
Description
"Human beings have the unique ability to view the world in a detached
way: We can think about the world in terms that transcend our own
experience or interest, and consider the world from a vantage point
that is, in Nagel's words, "nowhere in particular". At the same time,
each of us is a particular person in a particular place, each with his
own "personal" view of the world, a view that we can recognize as just
one aspect of the whole. How do we reconcile these two
standpoints--intellectually, morally, and practically? To what extent
are they irreconcilable and to what extent can they be integrated?
Thomas Nagel's ambitious and lively book tackles this fundamental
issue..."
[edit]
Reviews
"In writing this remarkable book, Thomas Nagel has succeeded in
combining qualities that are rarely found together. Its aims are
intellectually ambitious, and their achievement involves the
unqualified repudiation of cherished views held by many of Nagel's
more or less eminent contemporaries....He engages with precisely those
philosophical doubts and anxieties that the reflective nonprofessional
may be supposed to feel, and that are often inadequately dealt with by
those whose professional business is philosophy."--P. F. Strawson, The
New Republic
"Remarkable....All of his discussions are clear and insightful, but
some reach a level of originality and illumination that opens
genuinely new avenues of philosophical thought....A rare combination
of profundity and clarity, along with simplicity of expression. It
should be recommended to all those who are bored with or despair about
philosophy."--Charles Taylor, Times Literary Supplement
"At a time when so much philosophy is devoted to technical discussion
of esoteric questions, Nagel has written an original book, accessible
to any educated reader, on some of the largest questions about our
knowledge of the world and our place in it....Those who read it will
be made to question many of their deepest beliefs, to consider new
possibilities, and as a result to become more intellectually
awake."--Jonathan Glover, The New York Review of Books
"An illuminating book by one of the most provocative philosophers
writing today."--Religious Studies Review
"The clarity of [Nagel's] argument and the courage of his convictions
are admirable. Highly recommended."--Key Reporter
=========
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Thomas Nagel's A View From Nowhere book review
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=========
Best regards,
tlspiegel |
