Evenhanded review of Nagel:-http://tbsblog.thebestschools.org/2013/05/11/reviewer-on-thomas-nagels-mind-cosmos-a-flawed-thesis-but-still-a-valuable-contribution/#more-13337-The editorial comment for religiosity at the end is not intended by me as important.-"Apparently Dr. Nagel, wants to have his cake and eat it too. Read, for example, this sentence: "Those who have seriously criticized these arguments have certainly shown that there are ways to resist the design conclusion; but the general force of the negative part of the intelligent design position—skepticism about the likelihood of the orthodox reductive view, given the available evidence—does not appear to me to have been destroyed in these exchanges."
 
"Hard to track ?
 
"Definitely. And that's because "seriously criticized" and "certainly shown" are pumped up phrases which go flat when followed by swarming, confusing negatives like "negative part... skepticism of the likelihood... does not appear... to have been destroyed..."
 
"While we do get the point that the design argument deserves consideration, the gummy syntax of this sentence is representative of the style of much of the book.
 
"Nagel follows up this sentence with the limp observation, "At least, the question should be regarded as open." But, really, are there any worthwhile questions that are not open?"


> dhw: And as you have so often agreed in the past, it requires faith to believe in such a "mind". I have always accepted your argument against chance, which I regard as being just as unlikely as an eternal, organized, self-aware clump of energy that does not experience entropy. Your faith in God arises from the unlikelihood of chance. The atheist's faith in chance arises from the unlikelihood of God. Tweedledum and Tweedledee.-Either t-dum or t-dee is correct. On that we do agree. I've chosen my firm ground, you are still straddling on top of your fence. And there we stay. Ah, well, I tried.

dhw: but there are plenty of people who do believe in chance or different versions of panpsychism, with the first cause being unselfconscious energy, i.e. they do not have to assume that something came of nothing. By all means reject their beliefs on the grounds of complexity, but do not assume that the only alternative is something from nothing.-I'm not assuming 'something from nothing', you are. Where did the 'unselfconscious energy' come from? Was it eternal? If eternal, so is my self-aware God who is the UI. Something must be eternal. The base of everything is energy, so energy is eternal. Our disagreement is on whether that energy is organized or not and I do not think unorganized energy can become organized, except by chance and you and I have rejected chance as a likely possibility. I do not think unorganized energy can produce the reality we see. And I know you cannot explain how unorganized energy can advance to the organization we see today. It requires mind work or chance, so we are back to intellect.-
> 
> dhw;I do not reject the idea of God. It appears that I am even more open to different concepts of gods than you are. As I keep trying to explain, my form of agnosticism entails neither believing nor disbelieving ... I consider chance to be as unlikely a creator of life as an eternal, infinite, self-aware form of energy, and as an eternal, infinite, "intelligent" but not self-aware form of energy....... One of these concepts must be true, but I have no idea which one.I would suggest that the logical conclusion is: we don't know, we can't know, and therefore we shall have to keep an open mind.-And I disagree. Only one choice is logical, a planning self-aware mind. There is no way an amorphous clump of energy can do any more than degrade according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. An eternally organized UI most likely does not experience entropy or it would not, by definition, be eternal.


> dhw:You say God's personality was fixed at his beginning, but according to you he had no beginning. And the fact that we cannot truly know his personality doesn't mean he hasn't got one, or that it does not share the characteristics of his creations.-You are critically correct. It is hard for me to not to imagine a beginning for anything. I think we share His characteristics in a small way, but what that makes of Him we cannot know.-> dhw: And why should whatever personality he has be fixed? Maybe his basic characteristics are, in the same way that heredity fixes many of ours, but if he doesn't know the future, then he's going to learn something, and learning something automatically involves movement of some kind. So why assume that he had goals in mind, did all this planning, engaged in all this detailed scientific analysis and execution, and yet had no human-like reasons for doing so (e.g. boredom, entertainment, curiosity, education) and himself underwent no development?-It goes back to my complexity argument, Why create the complexity of life if there is no goal in mind? Why create life at all? I am not implying God is human-like or not human-like. I just don't know. The evidence strongly implies teleology. There is obvious directionality in creation of the universe and life. That requires a planner. One does not plan without analysis and introspection.
 -> dhw:If God exists, it makes perfect sense to me that our consciousness mirrors his, but self-awareness requires a self to be aware of, and so it also makes perfect sense to me that the attributes of the creature mirror the attributes of the creator. Perhaps rather than call it an anthropomorphic view of God, we should call it a deomorphic view of man.-You are very likely correct. We and God reflect each other,but it is always my point that we have no guide as to how far to carry that comparison.
> 
> dhw:I agree, and have always agreed, that nothing can come of nothing. I don't know why that makes God a necessary being. Your argument that life is too complex to have assembled itself by chance is fine with me, but that has no bearing on the "nothing" argument.-Yes, it does. We must have a planner for the complexity. We agree there is a first cause. By philosophic definition that is 'necessary'.-> dhw: If eternal, unselfconscious energy as "first cause" did come up with the magic formula by sheer luck or by "intelligent" cell-like experimentation, you wouldn't need God. I think you should stick to your complexity argument!-Your if, "the unselfconscious energy" (ue) as a first cause is an extremely unreasonable proposal for my 'planner' of complexity. 'Sheer luck' is chance in sheep's clothing. Your ue is a philosophic dead end, because it requires chance, which you, yourself, have rejected. -You've said you reject the idea of God because you cannot imagine such a being. I can't either. You have more imagination than I do. You are a playwright with lots of imagination behind your work, but you won't carry our agreements to a logical conclusion despite the imagination problem. God must exist to explain what we both see.

dhw:I clearly have more respect for anthropomorphic gods than you do. That is because I cannot imagine a self-aware God creating minds totally different from his own.- I think I have discovered one of our 'misunderstanding' differences. I think my mind is a part of the universal intelligence (God) and as such is exactly the same as His. I am self-aware and so is HE. Only much smaller in capacity and with less intellectual power. But I am similar to concepts of God in that I can know the past but not the future. This is the background of why we have evolution. God has/had goals in mind and He had to use evolution to get there. We cannot truly know His personality which was fixed at His beginning. It just IS. We, on the other hand, develop a personality based on inheritance, life experiences, etc. we therefore all differ and have different expectations. My assumption is there never was nothing, an absolute void. Something cannot appear from a true void of nothingness. God is a necessary being, from the beginning, whenever that was. I am made in the image of God in my brain's consciousness. Here the Bible is right on.