Neurodope Magazine

Philosophers have a way of asking questions and providing answers with concepts that sometimes blow your mind. This book by Thomas Nagel might do the same. It’s called “Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False.” It’s a book published in 2012.

He did the philosophical equivalent of kicking a hornet nest when he argued that the entire materialist, neo-Darwinian worldview misses something enormous. His claim isn’t about miracles—it’s about mind, and why consciousness demands a universe stranger than physics alone.

Thoughts are things

The book might seem a little too science, and that’s too bad, because any armchair philosopher could crack this nut, as a generalist is aware of art, politics, and humanities. He’s been criticized by the evolutionists, though, because, he says, Darwin was absolutely wrong. He’s gotten some knocks, too, from the religious right, too, as if he notched up some street cred with the like of Aristotle by pissing of the established establishment.

And here it is: Physics is the question of what matter is. Metaphysics is the question of what exists. Most people think that everything is physical. Then there are the people who swear by the existence of souls and point to religion.

This is why both Darwinian loyalists and religious literalists came at him swinging. To evolution purists, he’s undermining the sacred storyline of blind selection. To the religious right, he’s not spiritual enough. Nagel essentially pulls a philosophical middle-finger to both sides by saying neither camp explains consciousness, and neither can until they admit mind is its own category of reality.

Nagel’s heresy: consciousness isn’t an electrical trick—it's another dimension of reality. #Neurophilosophy #Nagel #MindAndCosmos share this

The author of this book says that there is a whole other realm of “stuff” that exists – namely the stuff in your brain: thoughts, feelings, concepts, perceptions..and the exist in a third reality, not just mere electrical synapse firing off.. thoughts are things just like chairs, dogs, atoms, and sunlight. In otherwords, if you were to map out the brain in say, a snap shot of a moment, the brain map would only explain how all of this realm is connected. Brain experiences are as real and unique as brain waves.

It’s a Separate Category of Science

In the same way that biology is a special realm of science itself, distinct from physics, one’s mental activity is separate and unique in life itself. Therefore, Darwin theory, that we all came from a chemical reaction with natural selection, does not account for the creation of the realm of the mind.

Physics asks what matter is. Metaphysics asks what exists. Most people reduce everything to physical stuff, others leap to souls, but Nagel says both camps are shortsighted. The realm of thoughts, feelings, concepts, perceptions—this entire inner world—exists in a category of its own, neither matter nor spirit.

He argues that if you took a perfect snapshot of your brain, the map would explain structure, not experience. The chemical circuits don’t describe what it’s like to feel grief, desire achievement, panic at 3 a.m., or imagine a better world. Nagel treats mental life as real as atoms, but governed by different laws and principles.

Thoughts aren’t brain noise. Thoughts are things. #Consciousness #Nagel #MindPhilosophy share this

Reason and Perception are Two Different Things

He also says that reason and perception are two different things in the realm. Any theory of the Universe, any comprehensive mesh of physics and biology will only succeed when a “natural order is disposed to generate beings capable of comprehending it” in the first place. This is the start of the theory of “teleology” – a preprogrammed, built in tendency toward the existence and creation of this whole other mental realm. “Each of our lives is part of a lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself.”

If evolution only selects survivors, why did it produce thinkers? #DarwinDebate #Nagel #MindAndCosmos share this

Reason and perception are different dimensions of mind, not evolutionary accidents but natural inevitabilities. This is the boldest point: “Each of our lives is part of a lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself.” Consciousness isn’t a glitch—it’s the cosmos opening its eyes.

Maybe consciousness isn’t an accident. Maybe it’s the universe waking up.

Illustration: SPL/Science Source: Brain antomy, 19th century artwork. Artwork from the 1886 ninth edition of Moses and Geology (Samuel Kinns, London). This book was originally published in 1882.

Sources:
Mind and Cosmos – Thomas Nagel
Teleology and Consciousness Studies
Philosophy of Mind: Reflexive Awareness