The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds In A Material World

by Colin McGinn

Is consciousness nothing more than brain tissue, as Daniel Dennett argues in his best-selling Consciousness Explained? Or, as others claim, is it a fundamental reality like space, time, and matter? In recent years the nature of consciousness—our immediately known experiences—has taken its place as the most profound problem that science faces. Now in this brilliant and thoroughly accessible new book Colin McGinn takes a provocative position on this perplexing problem. Arguing that we can never truly “know” consciousness—that the human intellect is simply not equipped to unravel this mystery—he demonstrates that accepting this limitation in fact opens up a whole new field of investigation. Indeed, he asserts, consciousness is the best place from which to begin to understand the internal make-up of human intelligence, to investigate our cognitive strengths and weaknesses, and to explore the possibility of machine minds. In elegant prose, McGinn explores the implications of this Mysterian position—such as the new value it gives to the power of dreams and of introspection—and challenges the reader with intriguing questions about the very nature of our minds and brains.

Genres: Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Nonfiction, Religion

256 pages, Hardcover

First published April 29, 1999

About the author

Colin McGinn is a British philosopher currently working at the University of Miami. McGinn has also held major teaching positions at Oxford University and Rutgers University. He is best known for his work in the philosophy of mind, though he has written on topics across the breadth of modern philosophy. Chief among his works intended for a general audience is the intellectual memoir The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey Through Twentieth-Century Philosophy (2002).

Colin McGinn was born in Blackpool, England in 1950. He enrolled in Manchester University to study psychology. However, by the time he received his degree in psychology from Manchester in 1971 (by writing a thesis focusing on the ideas of Noam Chomsky), he wanted to study philosophy as a postgraduate. By 1972, McGinn was admitted into Oxford University's B.Litt postgraduate programme, in hopes of eventually gaining entrance into Oxford's postgraduate B.Phil. programme.

McGinn quickly made the transition from psychology to philosophy during his first term at Oxford. After working zealously to make the transition, he was soon admitted into the B.Phil programme under the recommendation of his advisor, Michael R. Ayers. Shortly after entering the philosophy programme, he won the John Locke Prize in 1972. By 1974, McGinn received the B.Phil degree from Oxford, writing a thesis under the supervision of P.F. Strawson, which focused on the semantics of Donald Davidson.

In 1974, McGinn took his first philosophy position at University College London. In January 1980, he spent two semesters at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) as a visiting professor. Then, shortly after declining a job at University of Southern California, he succeeded Gareth Evans as Wilde Reader at Oxford University. In 1988, shortly after a visiting term at City University of New York (CUNY), McGinn received a job offer from Rutgers University. He accepted the offer from Rutgers, joining ranks with, among others, Jerry Fodor in the philosophy department. McGinn stayed at Rutgers until 2006, when he accepted a job offer from University of Miami as full time professor.

Although McGinn has written dozens of articles in philosophical logic, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language, he is best known for his work in the philosophy of mind. In his 1989 article "Can We Solve the Mind-Body Problem?", McGinn speculates that the human mind is innately incapable of comprehending itself entirely, and that this incapacity spawns the puzzles of consciousness that have preoccupied Western philosophy since Descartes. Thus, McGinn's answer to the hard problem of consciousness is that humans cannot find the answer. This position has been nicknamed the "New Mysterianism". The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World (2000) is a non-technical exposition of McGinn's theory.

Outside of philosophy, McGinn has written a novel entitled The Space Trap (1992). He was also featured prominently as an interviewee in Jonathon Miller's Brief History of Disbelief, a documentary miniseries about atheism's history. He discussed the philosophy of belief as well as his own beliefs as an atheist.

Reviews

[Philip Bardi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting idea, but shows a great lack of insight on the authors part. To base such theories on conclusions drawn from the premise that consciousness
MUST reside within the physical body is very limiting. I can't help but think that other very real possibilities exist. It seems as archaic and misguided as thinking that if one destroys a radio with a hammer, they have in some way destroyed the song that is playing. Obviously this is nonsense, we know that the song was only being picked up by the receiver which had been properly tuned.

[Jamey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've seen McGinn on youtube and found him an endearing, affable and capable person. What I didn't like about this book, apart from its repetitive style, is that whenever McGinn makes reference to some other discipline to illustrate his argument, he gets it wrong. Paleoanthropology, biology, history, physics---he draws on all of these without knowing much about them, and the results are disappointing.

[Bob · Rating 2 out of 5]

The fundamental argument of this book is that there is (or may be) a fundamental inability on the part of human beings how the brain (which is extended in space and time) gives rise to consciousness (which is not so extended). This fundamental inability he calls "cognitive closure."

This is an interesting idea, but there are a couple of problems with the way McGinn handles it. First of all, people have come up with this idea before; he's not really adding anything new, as far as I can tell. Schopenhauer already said the same thing: that consciousness is that which represents the world as it is extended in space and time, and therefore it itself cannot be known in terms of space and time (that which knows everything and is known by none, I believe he put it somewhere in the World as Will and Representation). Secondly, McGinn makes his own argument far less interesting than it could be by merely saying that the brain-mind problem may be insoluble, but may not be--the only argument for its insolubility is that we've not yet solved it. He likens it to other problems we may never be able to solve, like whether aliens exist (if I recall correctly). The problem with this is that he's denying the fundamental difference between the brain-mind problem, on the one hand, and all problems in space and time, on the other. The latter are all, in theory, soluble by us humans. The former not only may not be solved, it cannot be solved, because it is by the existence of a consciousness that time and space exist at all, and therefore we cannot know consciousness in terms of that which it enables to exist, i.e. time and space.

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

If naturalism is true, or at least the best metaphysical structure for going about solving certain perennial problems, or if we recognize at least that naturalism is superior to theism (it is), then this is probably the best book on the mind-body problem and its necessary intractability. Can robots ever be conscious, are there still 'selves' in alzheimer patients, can non-organic material be conscious, etc? The only current answer, and most likely indefinite answer, is agnosticism coupled with ruthless skepticism as McGinn argues. We do not know now, and probably never can. Revel in the mystery though because it's far more mysterious and intriguing than how many angels can dance on a pinhead, or how does Christ embody himself in your wafers and wine....

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

McGinn's central thesis is that the solution to the mind/body problem is cognitively closed to human beings. That is, due to the structure of our brains, we will never be able to understand the mind/brain link.

The motivation for this thesis--that materialistic explanations of consciousness have been thus far deeply and conceptually off-base--is interesting and correct, I think. However, McGinn's book is rife with inconsistencies and his line for what we do know and what we do not know seems rather arbitrary throughout.

Also, perhaps because he had to fill over 200 pages in a book with the main point that we have not solved the problem, McGinn rambles hopelessly, especially in the later chapters. He discusses a wide variety of problems related to the problem of consciousness and his conclusion is always that same: we do not know and we probably cannot know.

Yet, this book is a quick read and worthwhile because it does highlight a very important point: that consciousness is a mystery!

[Brian Bowers · Rating 2 out of 5]

I began reading this book knowing full well that the mystery of consciousness has not been solved, and most likely never will be. However, I was hoping to gain some insight as to way this is so. I found nothing in this book that could not be discovered through very basic introspection. The author contrives outlandish hypotheses, seemingly just for the sake of proving that it couldn't explain consciousness. This book rambles on, in what seemed like an eternity, to get to what most of us know anyway.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting and cleverly written book about the mind-body question. I don't agree with some of McGinn's ideas but he certainly made me think.

[David Chess · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wrote a long and somewhat scathing review of this for my weblog, but basically I was just (A) not convinced, and (B) annoyed in spots.

There is probably a case to be made that we just cannot know the relationship between mind and brain, but this book rather fails to make it, at most suggesting reasons that might be at least partly responsible for it being hard for us to figure out.

It also says a number of things that just don't make much sense, like that our genes "contain information which is such that if we were to know it we would know the solution to the mind-body problem", and "we know from introspection that [the brain] is unique among physical objects".

Nope nope nope. :)

To be fair, this was written almost 25 years ago now, and as it was intended for a popular audience the author may have been a bit careless. There may be a good book out there, by McGinn or someone else, laying out the case for the "mysterian" theory of the mind-body problem; but this one isn't it.

[Drenda]

A very entertaining read for a non-professional to catch up on perspectives on the ol' mind/body problem. Mr. Mc Ginn's own take on the issue is that if you take it at all seriously, meaning you don't collapse consciousness into a totally materialist base, then the problem probably will never be solved. This because the human brain has evolved to solve problems in space, with linguistic logic an added twist, and that kind of brain does not have the ability to think in such a way that it can conceive of a piece of meat providing consciousness. It is not that it is so complex, it is just in a different universe from the one that abides in the Homo Sapien cranium. He points out in passing that philosophy, unlike the sciences, never really advances because their problems are perhaps at the frontier of the human ability to comprehend and interpret. With some deep mutation in our brain structure, these confusions might disappear while others would surely take their place.

[Maggie Jones]

one of truest things I've read to date

[Ahmad · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not many arguments to engage with. One idea, not well argued, is cognitive closure—that we’ll never solve consciousness because our minds just aren’t capable, like animals that can’t grasp calculus.

[Chant · Rating 3 out of 5]

That's it, folks! We cannot make any progress on the question of consciousness! It's a complete mystery, and we should just go back to other philosophical problems!

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

McGinn addresses the problem of consciousness with regards to the connection between mind and body. By arguing against Materialist points of view McGinn's primary thesis argues that human beings can not truly reconcile the connection of mind and body.

Whether you agree or disagree with his argument, McGinn has put forth an exceptionally well written piece of work. The literature is accessible to both the philosophical scholar and the layman thus creating an enjoyable and thought provoking read.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

A persuasive argument against the materialist view of consciousness written in clear non-technical language. There is great virtue in communicating 'big' ideas without self-consciously employing 'big' words. A great many 'thinkers' should take note of McGinn's exemplary straightforwardness.

[Manny Cota · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting and entertaining read. I disagree entirely with his views and conclusion, but this is a book worth reading for those interested in naturalist attempts to explain away the problem of consciousness.

[Chris Naylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Colin McGinn is, I think, the only person in the philosophical and scientific community to have understood just how hard the mind-body problem really is, and to have seen that there is virtually no chance that we will ever solve it. McGinn is a mysterian, and I am also a mysterian, though I take issue with McGinn over some of the detail of his mysterianism.

One difference between us is this: McGinn thinks we are cognitively closed to the mind-body problem because our intelligence is not suited to the task of solving it. I think it is simply because we do not have access to the facts we need to solve it. (To be fair, McGinn sometimes puts it that way too. He is not always very clear about where he is placing the blame.) One difficulty with the theory that our intelligence is to blame is that it is unverifiable in principle and probably unfalsifiable in practice. If human intelligence is not up to solving the problem, then it is probably also not up to the task of understanding why, so we cannot verify the theory. The theory is in principle falsifiable, but only if we solve the mind-body problem first, which is not much help. This leads me to conclude that putting the blame on human intelligence is rather like blaming God for earthquakes: it might relieve our feelings, but it just gets in the way when we are trying to understand how the world works.

In any case, I see no reason to put the blame on human intelligence when there is a more obvious culprit to hand: lack of data. Ontically speaking, there are two possibilities: either the physical world is real, or it is an illusion. If it is an illusion (idealism), then the mind-body problem evaporates, because there is no body. McGinn mentions idealism only once, and does not consider at all whether it might be true. From a completist point of view this is slightly irritating, but McGinn is probably right to ignore idealism, because while it solves the mind-body problem, it does so at too high a price: if there is no physical world, then something else must be organising my sense-experience, something powerful, complex, altogether unseen by me, and outside my consciousness. This is why idealists tend to have a prior belief in God: idealism needs something like a deity to pull the phenomenal strings behind the scenes. But philosophers ought to be sceptical (and we ought all to be philosophers!), and we should not believe in God or anything like him without good evidence, which we clearly lack (at least in the public arena). So I am with McGinn in ruling out idealism, though I would rather prefer it to be done explicitly rather than silently as he does.

If, on the other hand, the physical world is real, then we have to look at the evidence and see where it points: and it points pretty clearly to the brain being the generator of consciousness. This is where lack of data comes in. Consciousness is private, and yet is apparently generated by something public - a lump of organic matter. We have a way of accessing data about private stuff - introspection - and we have a way of accessing data about public stuff - observation, either directly or using scientific instruments. What we do not have is a way of accessing what the publicly accessible brain is doing when it generates the privately accessible stuff in phenomenal consciousness. If you think about it, this is hardly surprising. Observation, whether directly or using instruments, is not going to give us access to something even partly private unless it is our own private thing rather than someone else's; but this is not how observation works: it works only on what is accessible publicly, to everyone. Observation is never going to give us access to the process by which the brain generates private experiences: it ain't going to happen, and we might as well accept it. As McGinn points out, if it is true that the brain generates consciousness, then it must be doing it using properties we are not aware of and can't detect. All we can say about these properties, vacuously, is that they are properties such as can enable a brain to generate consciousness. Which gets us no closer to solving the problem.

What about introspection? Here I seem to disagree again with McGinn, who thinks that introspection only gives us access to the surface of consciousness, and that the stuff that would enable us to understand how consciousness emerges from the brain is below the surface, like the part of an iceberg that is below the waterline. McGinn calls this 'the hidden structure of consciousness'. Personally I do not understand how consciousness can contain anything hidden from introspection. To me that sounds the same as something in consciousness hidden from consciousness, and I don't see how that is possible.

Well, forget that. The more important point is that introspection gives us access only to our private phenomenal data, and that that data is the result of evolution. There is not going to be any evolutionary value in an organism having phenomenal data relating to the generation of said phenomenal data by the brain - this is just going to get in the way in the battle for survival and reproduction. What organisms need to survive and reproduce is phenomenal data relating to external threats and opportunities, and so that is what we get. If any early organisms had phenomenal data relating to the generation of consciousness by the brain, those organisms will have lost out to organisms that didn't, and the genes that create the mechanisms that allow such access must have died out long ago.

Well, perhaps not entirely. One of the things MGinn says that I strongly disagree with is that we are cognitively closed to the true nature of space. His reason for saying this is that, like number, consciousness is necessarily non-spatial:

"Numbers and consciousness could not have spatial properties; they are not the kind of thing to be spatially qualified." (p.110)

Wrong, I'm afraid. I have the advantage over McGinn here of having had ("suffered" might be a better word) an experience late one night in 2006 when, for half an hour or so, I had, subjectively, two phenomenal selves - two subjective centres of consciousness - instead of the normal single centre. The reason why I had this experience is not important, and in any case was never identified, though I have my suspicions. (It wasn't recreational drugs, which I have never taken - not that it would have mattered, philosophically speaking, if it had been.) The interesting thing about this otherwise very unpleasant experience, as far as the present discussion is concerned, is that these two selves did have subjectively apparent spatial properties: I was conscious of one as being spatially to the left of the other, and I was conscious of the one to the left being spatially wider than the one to the right. So McGinn is wrong to hold that consciousness necessarily cannot have spatial properties. I suspect that, once again, early conscious organisms may have been conscious of their own consciousnesses as occupying physical space, but this would have been selected out in due course for the same reason as before - consciousness of what is happening inside one's body is a distraction from the more important stuff going on outside (except, of course, where what is going on inside needs some attention, i.e. is caused by an illness or injury).

What else is there to say about this book? There is an excellent chapter on robots: McGinn sees clearly that consciousness and intelligence are quite different, and that while we know how to give robots the latter, we have no idea how to give them the former, and probably never will have. He demolishes panpsychism in short order (good). He has some interesting thoughts on the self and on free will - he thinks we are cognitively closed to both of these. Well, perhaps. I think McGinn is a little too inclined to see cognitive closure in relation to issues which are merely difficult. In the last chapter he suggests that 'the subject we call "philosophy" might in general be characterized by cognitive closure problems', which is surely far too sweeping and pessimistic.

In sum, an excellent and thought-provoking book by one of the most original philosophers around. Essential reading.