Introduction To understand the idea of subjective and objective nature and how it functions in human experience, it becomes critical to understand that “greater objectivity” does us no good in understand subjectivity. I will explore this passage of Nagel and the rest of the reading to explain why subjectivity and physicalism do not correspond and how this influences Nagel’s thoughts on physicalism. Then, I will reflect on how I believe the world would become a better place if we really could access other’s subjective nature even though we are not capable of this task.
Analysis
In the following passage, Nagel discusses how objective experience and subjective character correlate: The idea of moving from appearance to reality seems to …show more content…
It actually reduces our chances of access. This relates to his idea of consciousness of “what it is like to be that organism,” since we as humans will never know what it is like to be another human, animal, or being because we cannot fundamentally change to another conscious (Nagel, What is it like to Be a Bat?, 221). Though objective experience may broaden our viewpoint of a particular subject, it does not allow us to access the truth to a subjective character. Nagel believes that the movement to reality from appearances would be pointless because of the mere fact that it would be moving towards the same thing just in a different way that is more objective. Moving towards greater objectivity is usually the aim to understanding things better since it gets us to how something actually is aside from how each person’s perspective perceives it. But, because this passage is pertaining to the subjective nature of experience, greater objectivity does, according to Nagel, us no good. He says, “that concerns the same thing” to prove his point. When we focus one one phenomenon and how we understand it, no matter how objective our viewpoints become, the phenomenon can still only be understood in the same manner as when we began discerning it. This is because the subjective nature is in the thing itself, thus we must become the entity …show more content…
As I was analyzing this passage I started to really ponder about this and I immediately thought of racism and how we treat people. Nagel completely disagrees with Physicalism because it does not take subjectivity into account and I feel like he would agree that physicalism creates discrimination. Blacks, latinos, asians, and other ethnicities are commonly thought of as minorities of the world to whites and only because of their physical differences. If humans were able to access other’s subjective point of view then maybe racism would not be such a prominent issue. Humans would see that every single person has the same subjective ability to feel and would finally understand that there are no superior races in the world. I am entirely on board with Nagel’s points against physicalism as it pertains to an issue that is important to me. Discrimination of any type is just wrong and I wish that people could “see” past physical differences to tackle this terrible
Analysis
In the following passage, Nagel discusses how objective experience and subjective character correlate: The idea of moving from appearance to reality seems to …show more content…
It actually reduces our chances of access. This relates to his idea of consciousness of “what it is like to be that organism,” since we as humans will never know what it is like to be another human, animal, or being because we cannot fundamentally change to another conscious (Nagel, What is it like to Be a Bat?, 221). Though objective experience may broaden our viewpoint of a particular subject, it does not allow us to access the truth to a subjective character. Nagel believes that the movement to reality from appearances would be pointless because of the mere fact that it would be moving towards the same thing just in a different way that is more objective. Moving towards greater objectivity is usually the aim to understanding things better since it gets us to how something actually is aside from how each person’s perspective perceives it. But, because this passage is pertaining to the subjective nature of experience, greater objectivity does, according to Nagel, us no good. He says, “that concerns the same thing” to prove his point. When we focus one one phenomenon and how we understand it, no matter how objective our viewpoints become, the phenomenon can still only be understood in the same manner as when we began discerning it. This is because the subjective nature is in the thing itself, thus we must become the entity …show more content…
As I was analyzing this passage I started to really ponder about this and I immediately thought of racism and how we treat people. Nagel completely disagrees with Physicalism because it does not take subjectivity into account and I feel like he would agree that physicalism creates discrimination. Blacks, latinos, asians, and other ethnicities are commonly thought of as minorities of the world to whites and only because of their physical differences. If humans were able to access other’s subjective point of view then maybe racism would not be such a prominent issue. Humans would see that every single person has the same subjective ability to feel and would finally understand that there are no superior races in the world. I am entirely on board with Nagel’s points against physicalism as it pertains to an issue that is important to me. Discrimination of any type is just wrong and I wish that people could “see” past physical differences to tackle this terrible