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In this thesis, I argue against a claim about pain which I call the "Minimization Thesis" or MT. According to MT, pain is objectively unconditionally intrinsically bad. Using the case of grief, I argue that although MT may be true of pain as such, it is not true of particular pains. I then turn to an examination of the justification provided by Thomas Nagle for offering the MT and find that his argument is inadequate because it depends on an implausible phenomenology of pain experience. I argue it is more plausible to claim, as Kant does, that pain has desire-conditional badness. Finally, I present a Nietzschean argument for the irreducible complexity of badness. I suggest we may be willing to concede pain's badness so readily only because it has not been specified what kind of badness it actually has.

Dans son œuvre, notamment dans The View From Nowhere, Thomas Nagel propose une réflexion unifiée sur certains problèmes philosophiques fondamentaux tels que la relation corps-esprit, l’identité personnelle, la liberté, la connaissance, la relation entre la raison et le réel. Il les comprend comme diverses formes d’un problème unique : le conflit entre certains aspects de notre conception subjective de la réalité, celle que nous développons spontanément depuis notre point de vue de créature particulière dans le monde, et certains aspects d’une conception objective de la réalité, indépendante de nos caractères particuliers, dont la recherche s’impose à nous et que nous tentons de développer. Nous avons mené un double travail : exposer les conceptions de Nagel à propos de la nature et de l’origine des problèmes philosophiques en question, prolonger ces réflexions. En effet, les conceptions de Nagel permettent de proposer une définition nouvelle et féconde de la métaphysique comme réflexion sur les conflits entre les points de vue interne et externe, d’élaborer une typologie a priori des solutions qui peuvent être apportées aux problèmes métaphysiques, de comprendre la nature et le ressort commun, de type idéaliste et anti-métaphysique, des courants dominants de la philosophie qu’ont été, durant la première partie du vingtième siècle, la phénoménologie et la philosophie de Wittgenstein. Enfin, cette typologie permet de clarifier la réflexion à propos des problèmes métaphysiques particuliers et de mesurer la portée des arguments en jeu. Nous avons établi ce point en abordant deux problèmes métaphysiques particuliers, celui de la relation corps-esprit et celui de la perception. / In his works, especially in The View From Nowhere, Thomas Nagel offers a unified reflection on some philosophical fundamental issues such as the mind-body link, the personal identity, the liberty, the knowledge and the relationship between reason and reality. He sees these matters as various forms of a sole issue: The conflict between certain aspects of our subjective understanding of reality - the one resulting from our spontaneous reflection as particular beings - and other aspects of an objective one - independent from our specific nature and which science facts imposed on us and that we try to develop. We have led a double task: first, to put forward Nagel’s conceptions of nature and of the origin of the philosophical issues at stake, then, to elaborate on these thoughts. Nagel’s conceptions allow, indeed, to give a new and fruitful definition of metaphysics as a reflection on the conflicts between the internal and external point of views. It also theoretically allows, to develop a typology of the possible solutions that can be brought to metaphysical concerns, to understand nature and the common responsibility - the idealistic and anti-metaphysical ones - of the main philosophical movements of the first part of the twentieth century. Wittgenstein’s phenomenology and philosophy that is. Eventually, this typology helps clarifying the reflection upon specific metaphysical issues and measuring the impact of the arguments at stake. We have came to this point by taking into consideration two specific metaphysical issues : the mind-body link and the perception.

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / In the present work, we seek to elucidate the relations between the problem of moral luck and our assignments of responsibility. The problem of moral luck emerges from two dimensions of human life. On the one side, we are autonomous and rational beings, we have control over our actions and are moral agents. On the other side, we are vulnerable to every sort of external contingency that eliminates the complete control we have over our actions and their results. The contingency, also, has a significant weight on the formation of our character and personality. Therefore, the problem of moral luck takes a real importance: how can we assign responsibility to the agents, given that a lot of what configures a moral action are contingent elements? The research was elaborated based on Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel s articles on Moral luck. Williams, in his article, seeks to show that morality, as we conceive it, is (in fact) distant from our moral evaluations. Williams introduces the role of regret and recognizes the need to understand moral justification as retrospective. Nagel, in turn, finds the center of the moral luck problem in the control principle. In trying to understand how we assign responsibility to an agent for things beyond his control, Nagel defines four methods in which luck influences our moral judgements, and lists the kinds of moral luck: resultant, circumstantial, constitutive and causal luck. Finally, we take a look at critiques pertinent to the moral luck and responsibility problem, both negating and accepting the influence of luck in moral responsibility. From the epistemic argument and Zimmerman s postulates to Walker s pure agency critique and Otsuka s strawsonian considerations about reactive attitudes. / No presente trabalho, buscamos elucidar as relações entre o problema da sorte moral e nossas atribuições de responsabilidade. O problema da sorte moral emerge a partir de duas dimensões da vida humana. Por um lado, somos seres autônomos e racionais, temos o controle sobre nossas ações e somos agentes morais. Por outro, somos vulneráveis a toda espécie de contingência externa que elimina o controle total que temos de nossas ações e de seus resultados. A contingência, também, tem um peso significativo na formação de nosso caráter e personalidade. Por isso, o problema da sorte moral assume importância real: como podemos atribuir responsabilidade aos agentes, visto que muito do que configura uma ação moral são elementos contingentes? Elaboramos esta pesquisa a partir dos artigos Moral luck de Bernard Williams e Thomas Nagel. Williams, em seu artigo, busca mostrar que a moralidade, como a concebemos, mostra-se distante de nossas avaliações morais. Williams introduz o papel do arrependimento e reconhece a necessidade de entendermos a justificação moral como retrospectiva. Nagel, por sua vez, encontra no princípio do controle o centro do problema da sorte moral. Na tentativa de entender como atribuímos responsabilidade a uma agente por coisas além de seu controle, Nagel define quatro meios pelos quais a sorte influencia nossos juízos morais e elenca os tipos de sorte moral: sorte resultante, circunstancial, constitutiva e causal. Por fim, procuramos as críticas pertinentes ao problema da sorte moral e responsabilidade, as quais neguem ou aceitem a influência da sorte na responsabilidade moral, indo do argumento epistêmico e os postulados de Zimmerman à crítica da agência pura de Walker e as considerações strawsonianas de Otsuka sobre as atitudes reativas.

This thesis presents a two part criticism to Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel’s book, The Myth of Ownership, in which they attempt to argue that it is logically impossible that one can have any entitlement to their pretax income. The first criticism addresses their claim that based on a politically charged understanding of human nature you cannot have property without government. Through the fields of psychology, biology and anthropology, an overlap is found that presents human nature in such a way that presents a serious hurdle to the Murphy and Nagel position. The second criticism addresses their failure to define the scope of government in their book. In light of cultures that have a strong conception of property, Murphy and Nagel are charged with equivocating on the definition of government in order to make their argument hold. The conclusion reached is that based on current research pertaining to human nature and a brief anthropological study, the existence of government is not needed in order to have property within a community.

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Thèse (M.A.)--Université Laval, 1998. / Bibliogr.: f. [143]-145. Publié aussi en version électronique.

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Compelling research in international relations and international political economy on global warming suggests that one part of any meaningful effort to radically reverse current trends of increasing green house gas (GHG) emissions is shared policies among states that generate costs for such emissions in many if not most of the world’s regions. Effectively employing such policies involves gaining much more extensive global commitments and developing much stronger compliance mechanism than those currently found in the Kyoto Protocol. In other words, global warming raises the prospect that we need a global form of political authority that could coordinate the actions of states in order to address this environmental threat. This in turn suggests that any serious effort to mitigate climate change will entail new limits on the sovereignty of states. In this book I focus on the normative question of whether or not we have clear moral reasons to bind ourselves together in such a supranational form of political association. I argue that one can employ familiar liberal arguments for the moral legitimacy of political order at the state level to show that we do have a duty to support such a global political project. Even if one adopts the premises employed by the most influential forms of liberal scepticism to the ideas of global political and distributive justice, such as those advanced by John Rawls and Thomas Nagel, it is clear that the threat of global warming has expanded the scope of justice. We now have a global and demanding duty of justice to create the political conditions that would allow us to collectively address our impact on the Earth’s atmosphere.