Plausibility and Common Sense : Mind and Cosmos by Thomas Nagel Jon

Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos, an analytic philosophical excursion into the meaning and implications of the mind-body problem, has striking parallels to Michael Polanyi’s thought, especially as it is captured in Personal Knowledge. Indeed, Nagel’s courageous and honest challenge to the evolutionary naturalistic orthodoxy that is currently ascendant in elite opinion is perhaps best understood, via Nagel’s emphasis on plausibility and common sense, in terms of the faith and commitment that Polanyi places at the center of his thought. But the relationship between the two philosophers moves in both directions: Study of Nagel casts useful light on Polanyi as well. Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. x + 130. ISBN 978-0-19991975-8. $24.95. “And so long as we can form no idea of the way a material system may become a conscious, responsible person, it is an empty pretence to suggest that we have an explanation for the descent of man.” Personal Knowledge, 390 In his own review of Mind and Cosmos, John Haldane, Chairman of the Council of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, states that Thomas Nagel “is rightly regarded as among the most significant philosophers writing today and one of the most acute and consistent authors in contemporary analytical philosophy.” But Haldane’s judgment is far from universal, as demonstrated by Mind and Cosmos receiving the 2012 award for “Most Despised Science Book of the Year” from The Guardian. What could occasion such radically divergent vehement opinion? In pursuing this question it will be necessary to identify Nagel’s intentions in writing this short yet important text. As we will see, there are numerous parallels between Nagel’s project and that of Michael Polanyi in Personal Knowledge. Among the rewards of reading Mind and Cosmos is a better understanding of the reception extended to Polanyi’s work by contemporary mainstream intellectual culture. Readers of this journal will find much in Mind and Cosmos that is familiar. Consider for example the following passages: 1. The hope is not to discover a foundation that makes our knowledge unassailably secure but to find a way of understanding ourselves that is not radically self-undermining, and that does not require us to deny the obvious. The aim [is] to offer a plausible picture of how we fit into the world (25; cf. 110). Tradition & Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical, 40:1 46 2. The essential character of [the hoped for] understanding would be to explain the appearance of life, consciousness, reason, and knowledge neither as accidental side effects of the physical laws of nature nor as the result of intervention in nature from without but as an unsurprising if not inevitable consequence of the order that governs the natural world from within (32-33). 3. Each of our lives is a part of the lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself (85). 4. Natural teleology would require...that the nonteleological and timeless laws of physics...are not fully deterministic. Given the physical state of the universe at any given moment, the laws of physics would have to leave open a range of alternative successor states... (92; cf. 66-67). 5. This is a revision of the Darwinian picture rather than an outright denial of it. A teleological hypothesis will acknowledge that the details of that historical development are explained largely through natural selection among the available possibilities on the basis of reproductive fitness in changing environments. But even though natural selection partly determines the details of the forms of life and consciousness that exist, and the relations among them, the existence of the genetic material and the possible forms it makes available for selection have to be explained in some other way. The teleological hypothesis is that these things may be determined not merely by valuefree chemistry and physics but also by something else, namely a cosmic predisposition to the formation of life, consciousness, and the value that is inseparable from them (123). 6. The best we can do is to develop the rival alternative conceptions in each important domain as fully and carefully as possible, depending on our antecedent sympathies, and see how they measure up. This is a more credible form of progress than decisive proof or refutation (127; cf. 126). Each of these six excerpts from Mind and Cosmos contains a theme that represents a bridge to Polanyi: 1. The fallibility of our conclusions (coupled with criticism of performative contradiction and respect for common sense); 2. Articulation of a third alternative to a) purposeless materialism and b) divine intervention; 3. A teleological unfolding of the universe, issuing in consciousness of that very process (cf. PK, 405: “the awakening of the world”); 4. Acknowledgement of authoritative impersonal laws of nature married to recognition that these laws may be enlisted in the service of other, superior forces (cf. Polanyi’s “boundary conditions”); 5. Retention of Darwinian evolution in a form subservient to operation of underlying teleological forces residing in the fundamental nature of the universe (cf. Polanyi’s “ordering principle” and its decisive role in evolution and the appearance of life in particular [PK, 384]); and