5 papers in the library · publishing 1997-2004
Consciousness and its Objects March 25, 2004 Colin Mcginn
Abstract The source and nature of the mind-body problem – the problem of relating consciousness and the brain – is diagnosed. With Russell’s distinction between knowledge by description and knowledge by acquaintance in mind, McGinn suggests that our knowledge of the essence of consciousness is acquired by acquaintance, and that this justifiably produces our sense of the problem. Since knowledge...
Consciousness and its Objects March 25, 2004 Colin Mcginn
Abstract The problem of consciousness is not that there are a number of competing explanatory theories, for which we lack the evidence that would enable us to choose between them; it is that we have no sense of what a possible explanation would even look like. Two senses in which consciousness might be mysterious to us are distinguished: an ontological or metaphysical sense in which...
Consciousness and its Objects March 25, 2004 Colin Mcginn
Abstract Against those who appeal to the necessary a posteriori in responding to the mind-body problem, it is argued that a solution to the problem must take the form of an analytic rather than an empirical identity statement, which is to say that a conceptual rather than an a posteriori reduction of consciousness must be provided. Frege showed that true identity statements need not link...
August 28, 1997 Colin Mcginn
Abstract To casual inspection, the history of the universe would appear to have been marked by three great upsurges. In the beginning, came matter in spaceparticles, planets, galaxies. Physics is the science of this primordial being: it seeks to say what the laws of matter are, and (if possible) how matter came to exist in the first place. After this initial upsurge, nothing essentially novel...
Minds and Bodies August 28, 1997 Colin Mcginn
Abstract Take our own nature as conscious beings—something of unique fascination to us all. We want to know, among other things, how our consciousness levers itself out of the body. We want, that is, to solve the mind-body problem, the deep metaphysical question about how mind and matter meet. But what if there is something about us that makes it impossible for us to solve this ancient...