The Status of the Subject

Abstract

In his latest book The View from Nowhere, Nagel intensifies his attack on an “excessive objectification” that would demystify our everyday interpretation of behavior by viewing mind and consciousness as simply surface manifestations of microphysical structures. What I argue is that while Nagel alerts us to the inherent insensitivity of scientific thinking, and to its obvious limitations in dealing with consciousness and the individuation of the organism, his efforts in The View from Nowhere are not much of an improvement upon it; that is, that the subject that Nagel would give us has no unity of psychological function that can be explained simply by ownership.