The return to teleological explanations: Thomas Nagel and Aristotle
Keywords:
Aristotle. Nagel. Teleology. Materialism. Pampsychim.Abstract
In this paper I intend to show how Thomas Nagel’s confrontation with reductionist materialism and what made him return to defending teleological conceptions and explanations stemming from Aristotelian theory. Nagel argues that there must be a natural order as an attempt at intelligibility which, in addition to being explained through the lens of physical science, must contain other elements, in other words, he suspects that it must include teleological elements. And this is exactly where I want to compare the teleological notion in Nagel's and Aristotle's arguments. In addition, we will include some elements such as how Aristotle and Nagel understood pampsychistic ideas, and we will show that Aristotelian theory is not pampsychistic, as some people think.
References
ARISTÓTELES. Sobre a Alma. Tradução de Ana Maria Loio. Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional; Casa da Moeda, 2010.
ARISTÓTELES. Progression of Animals. Translated by A. S. L. Farquharson. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.
NAGEL, T. Pampsychism. In: Mortal Questions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
NAGEL, T. Mind and Cosmos. Why the materialist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
PUTNAM, H. Philosophy and our mental life. In: Mind, Language and Reality. Philosophical Papers. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.
STRAWSON, G. Realistic monism: why physicalism entails panpsychism. Journal of Consciousness Studies, v. 13, n.10-11, jan./2009.
STRAWSON, G. Mind and Being. The Primacy of Panpsychism. In: BRÜNTRUP, G.; JASKOLLA, L. (Eds.). Panpsychism: Contemporary Perspectives. Oxford University Press, 2016.
SKRBINA, D. Ancient Origins in Panpsychism in the West. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2017.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Kairós: Revista Acadêmica da Prainha
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
According to the Creative Commons International 4.0 License, it is possible to:
1) Distribute the published material in any format, as long as the publication and referencing credits are duly given to Revista Kairós.
2) The copyright on the articles, reviews and translations published are from Revista Kairós, as well as the rights of first publication.
3) Authors who want to publish their manuscripts published in Kairós in other media (book chapters, for example), must duly refer to the first publication in Revista Kairós.
4) Authors have full right to publish their manuscripts published in Revista Kairós on their personal pages, and it is recommended to mention the journal.
To check the provisions of the Creative Commons 4.0 License, access here.
