A morning of Nagel

I have had myself a nicely occupying day today. First I left the house at seven this morning and waited for transport down to the broadway with my bag containing two books, one to read and another for writing. The bus took several minutes in arriving but it did and walking from the stop I wished it would be warm. I walked to the coffee shop being that it is a Saturday morning and went in to order a large latte, whereupon it was served and I became seated to enjoy a quick look at Thomas Nagel’s Mortal questions, which I was nearly finished. I rolled up a cigarette and sipped coffee and read passages and I was fairly content to do so. The chapter I was reading was about the experience of being a bat, during which I found much well written information and much well thought out argument, and if I was not wrong the prose indicated to me similarity with what I feel I have previously experienced for myself in terms of what it is like to be me. I was generally largely impressed with what Nagel had written in clarity wondering at times what it must be like to think so clearly and thus the book taught me difference. The paragraph that Nagel had written on the idea that there is something to be gleaned from objective appearances in terms of experience fitted thinking I myself have thought. For example, I learned that if being a bat is anything the type of which it is to be a human then I can have claimed knowing that of the experience of the bat. It went on. I found myself agreeing in an amazed appreciation with many a sentiment expressed and continued dreaming of a book that one day may be written to contain similar ideas that I have. But this book of Nagel’s imparted his concepts both eloquently and with considered thought transcribing over to the reader who would do well to listen. Having read previous sections, such as that on freedom and politics and thinking and the absurd, understanding was gleaned far better in the latter portions, the language portraying thought clearly and with studied illumination. However, the passages introducing his Mortal Questions proved as illuminating and informed as expectation could have provided. I wanted to see the theory bare in form moving as it did from topic to ever interesting topic and lucid thinking on top of clear conceiving, but I have a diminished mind that prevented any stray thought from entering vision I may know. I was reading the passage on death and I realised that death itself may never come and that this is a possibility; I realised that there may not be such a glorious thing as death. And this idea I relished to see how it might befit my life and my response to it thus. When we are living we have just one moment to live, that is, the moment of now, which intuitions aside calls for a lacking of the past and an ignorance of the future. This leads the observer to find that there is neither a past nor a future and that there is only one moment, this moment. All an observer can do is using his functioning to elicit impressions that there is surely flux, which comes from some really clever mind and naturally ecstatic moral makeup, continue to learn. And I read also in this passage so completed in point about some curious hinting towards the mysterious connection of subjectivity and objectivity that produces a kind of third way created through use of intellect and conception. Nagel seemed to be subtly alluding to this wonderfully accessible theory by saying that, in a way, the very experience of the objective triumph presents humans with some knowledge of subjective occurrence. The points he made were never repeated, but some differences between dichotomous viewpoints were elucidated by an almost generated principle. He spoke about panpsychism, of which I have no idea as to what is meant, but which was quite fascinating anyway. And as I was reading about panpsychism I wondered fully what it could be trying to teach, and I just about gave up, but it was the related language use of the term ‘mental qua mental’ that had fascinated me into the engendered effort (God willing) to free my own mind and attempt an encouraged response. I found, on my accelerated journey, beyond the glaring fact that the paragraphs reflected ‘something he was trying to convey’ concisely and brilliantly, it was very exciting to be witness to this stripped bare philosophical prose and evidently poetical philosophy. This philosophy, recording situation as provided by conceived assumption, determined a viewpoint relating understanding and language so that education remembering moments where employing thought for certifying clarity assimilated transformation from mind to experience.

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