Other Minds: Critical Essays, 1969–1994

No, despite the title. Other Minds is a collection of Nagel's critical essays and book reviews on the work of other philosophers, not a sustained treatment of the epistemological problem of knowing other minds . The 'other minds' of the title are the minds Nagel engages with: Freud, Wittgenstein, Chomsky, Fodor, Armstrong, Dennett, Searle in philosophy of mind, and Rawls, Nozick, Hare, Williams, Dworkin, MacIntyre in ethics and political philosophy . The confusion is understandable, given Nagel's fame for 'What Is It Like to Be a Bat?', which does touch on the problem of other minds, but this volume is a different kind of book entirely.

The introduction, partly intellectual autobiography and partly a reflection on the state of the discipline, advocates a 'problem-centered style' of philosophical inquiry . Nagel endorses the view that there is a central core of distinctively philosophical problems best investigated through traditional philosophical methods. He explicitly rejects what he sees as the dominant Quine-Carnap approach, which treats philosophy as continuous with science, only more abstract and general . This methodological commitment explains the unity of the collection: whether he is reviewing Dennett on consciousness or Rawls on justice, Nagel is testing whether the author has done justice to the problem itself, rather than whether the author has constructed an elegant scientific theory.

The essays on philosophy of mind extend the anti-reductionist stance of 'What Is It Like to Be a Bat?' into critical engagement with specific philosophers. The reviews of Dennett and Searle are particularly relevant: Dennett's deflationary account of consciousness and Searle's Chinese Room argument both bear on the question of whether subjective experience can be captured by third-person explanation. Nagel's own view, stated in the introduction, is that he rejects both dualism and materialism and that 'a solution to the mind-body problem is nowhere in sight' . The collection shows Nagel applying his non-reductive convictions as a critic, pressing authors on whether their theories leave room for the subjective character of experience that his earlier essay had made central.

Robert Pasnau's review in the Journal of Philosophy identifies a structural problem: the essays span twenty-five years and were written for very different audiences, some for scholarly journals and others for publications like the New York Review of Books . This split provenance makes it unclear what sort of audience the collection serves. Pasnau also notes that some essays argue for positions Nagel no longer holds—for instance, an early review of David Armstrong displays considerable sympathy for eliminative materialism, a view Nagel later dismissed as 'ridiculous'—and that Nagel's brief introductions acknowledge these changes without explaining why his views shifted or directing readers to his more recent statements . The book is thus illuminating as a record of Nagel's development but frustrating as a statement of his settled positions.

Daniel Dennett reviewed the book in the Journal of Philosophy, and his assessment is notably generous given that he is one of the philosophers Nagel criticizes. Dennett observes that Nagel's book reviews and critical essays have 'played a major role, shaping opinion, and thereby shaping the field' over the previous quarter century . He praises Nagel's fairness: in every case Dennett can properly judge, Nagel 'gives a fair expression of the author's message and its motivation, even when he utterly disagrees with it' . Dennett also corrects a likely misimpression from the dust jacket's brain imagery, insisting that Nagel's interest in the mind is driven more by ethics than by neuroscience: he is a 'moral psychologist,' not a 'cognitive scientist' .

Other Minds: Critical Essays, 1969–1994 was published by Oxford University Press in New York in 1995 . The volume runs viii + 229 pages and contains twenty-two essays, divided equally between philosophy of mind and ethics and political philosophy . All but one of the essays had been previously published, and each is accompanied by a brief new introduction by Nagel. A paperback reprint was issued in 1999 . The collection won the PEN/Spielvogel-Diamonstein Prize for the Art of the Essay . It remains in print and is available in both hardcover and paperback editions.