Volume 49, Number 6 · April 11, 2002
In the Stream of Consciousness
By Thomas Nagel
Consciousness and the World
by Brian O'Shaughnessy
Oxford University Press, 705 pp., $55.00
Philosophy, unlike most other subjects, does not try to extend our knowledge by discovering new information about the world. It tries to deepen our understanding by reflection on what is already closest to us—the experiences, thoughts, concepts, and activities that make up our lives, and that ordinarily escape notice because they are so familiar. Philosophy begins by finding utterly mysterious the things that pervade our everyday lives, such as language, perception, value, and truth. For everyday purposes we don't have to know how these things are possible: we talk, we see what is in front of us, and we judge that this action is wrong or that assertion true. But it is possible, in the tradition deriving from Plato, to stop and think about what we are really doing, not for a practical purpose but just in order to understand what lies beneath the familiar surface of life.
Review, 4119 words
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