Thomas Nagel

Thomas Nagel
Nagel in 1978
Born	(1937-07-04) July 4, 1937 (age 86) Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now Serbia)
Nationality	American
Spouses	Doris G. Blum ​ ​ (m. 1958; div. 1973)​ Anne Hollander ​ ​ (m. 1979; died 2014)​
Awards	Balzan Prize (2008) Rolf Schock Prize (2008)
Academic background
Education	Cornell University (BA) Corpus Christi College, Oxford (BPhil) Harvard University (PhD)
Thesis	Altruism (1963)
Doctoral advisor	John Rawls
Other advisors	J. L. Austin
Academic work
Discipline	Philosophy
Sub-discipline	Epistemology ethics legal philosophy philosophy of mind political philosophy
School or tradition	Analytic philosophy
Institutions	New York University Princeton University University of California, Berkeley
Doctoral students	Marcelo Alegre [es] Rebecca Goldstein Shelly Kagan Samuel Scheffler Susan Wolf
Notable works	"What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" (1974) The View from Nowhere (1986) Mind and Cosmos (2012)
Notable ideas	Panpsychism[1][2] subjective character of experience what is it like to be a something

Thomas Nagel (/ˈneɪɡəl/; born July 4, 1937) is an American philosopher. He is the University Professor of Philosophy and Law Emeritus at New York University,^[3] where he has taught since 1980, retiring in 2016.^[4] His main areas of philosophical interest are legal philosophy, political philosophy, and ethics.^[5]

Nagel is known for his critique of material reductionist accounts of the mind, particularly in his essay "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" (1974), and for his contributions to liberal moral and political theory in The Possibility of Altruism (1970) and subsequent writings. He continued the critique of reductionism in Mind and Cosmos (2012), in which he argues against the neo-Darwinian view of the emergence of consciousness.