(no subject)

I'm not really sure what Nagel's deal is lately. Is "natural teleology" really any different than Dennett's "forced moves"? Beyond the ridiculously misleading repurposing of the concept of purpose - since all we have the right to infer about influences on phenomena outside of existing conceptions of materiality is that they're, y'know, outside. There's a difference between (e.g.) a potential for consciousness implicit in reality that the matchstick of matter randomly struck into life and an already somehow conscious force actively waiting for embodiment. I'm starting to think he's an agnostic in the worst sense, someone trying to convince himself he can eat his life and have it too.

At the least he's one of the many people who hates reductionism along a given line so much that he falls into a different reductionism - rounding slightly differing philosophical friends down to categorical enemies. A repulsion that not infrequently backs one into the arms of the real enemies of the good.