What do you think?
Rate this book
Consciousness and Its Objects
Colin McGinn presents his latest work on consciousness in ten interlinked papers, four of them previously unpublished. He extends and deepens his controversial solution to the mind-body problem, defending the view that consciousness is both ontologically unproblematic and epistemologically impenetrable. He also investigates the basis of our knowledge that there is a mind-body problem, and the bearing of this on attempted solutions.
264 pages, Hardcover
First published March 25, 2004
36 people want to read
About the author
Colin McGinn
41 books75 followersColin 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.
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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 24, 2024
PAPERS CLARIFYING & EXTENDING HIS EARLIER BOOK ON CONSCIOUSNESS
Colin McGinn is a British philosopher who has taught at University College London, the University of Oxford, Rutgers University and the University of Miami.
He wrote in the Introduction to this 2004 book, “Intend this book to be a sequel to my 1991 book, ‘The Problem of Consciousness.’ Since writing that book I have produced a number of papers extending and clarifying my earlier position; it seemed a good idea to bring them together. In addition, there are papers on neighboring topics that act as an antidote to the theoretical pessimism of my writings on the mind-body problem. All the papers deal with consciousness in one way or another… The chief change during the last decade or so has been the inclusion of my position, under the label ‘mysterianism,’ in the canon of possible positions concerning the mind-body problem… As I reflect on these papers, I detect an implicit principle, or policy, that has guided me, which might be called ‘methodological radicalism.’ My approach has been to venture ideas and theories that say something surprising, heterodox, perhaps disconcerting… In my view, the philosophy of mind … has followed a policy of methodological conservatism, in the sense that it has tried to account for the mind in the most restricted and ‘kosher’ terms possible. The attempt to shoehorn the mind into a box shaped like the body is only the most conspicuous example of this tendency---behaviorism, functionalism, and central-state materialism.” (Pg. 1-2)
He points out, “we know the nature of consciousness by acquaintance but we cannot express that nature in the form of truths about consciousness… Thus we resort, helplessly, to metaphors to express what we antecedently know by acquaintance: that consciousness is like a mirror, a stream… or a theatre… We know quite well what consciousness is NOT, but we cannot say what it is about it that prevents it being those things… we have IMPLICIT knowledge of the problem, not EXPLICIT knowledge.” (Pg. 9-10) He adds, “I am saying… that the knowledge we have of consciousness … is of this acquaintance-based kind; it is not the kind that consists in specifying in propositional form exactly what it is about consciousness that makes it problematically related to the brain.” (Pg. 11)
He suggests, “this very way of knowing is what blocks us from solving it… It is almost as if we have been DESIGNED to be struck by a problem that we are constitutionally unable to solve: the very self-consciousness that makes us aware of the problem is (part of) what prevents us from solving it, because of the concepts that are generated by such self-consciousness. I can imagine a type of God for whom this would be an amusing irony---even an irresistible temptation. Let’s build a thinking being whose very way of thinking about itself made it opaque to itself; but let’s not make this too obvious to our creation. If that is what god set out to do, then I think he achieved his aim perfectly.” (Pg. 25)
He observes, “In my 1989 paper I answered the question that forms its title (‘Can we solve the mind-body problem’) with the words ‘No and Yes.’ No, in that we cannot identify the real basis of consciousness, so we cannot explain what it is about the brain that yields conscious states; but Yes, in that we can nevertheless solve the philosophical problem generated by the mind-brain nexus… We cannot answer the question on what the basis of consciousness it, but we can answer the question of how to respond to the philosophical perplexities raised by this difficulty.” (Pg. 60-61)
He states, “The impression that consciousness arises from the brain in the miraculous way the djinn emerges from the lamp is given a deflationary account: it is an artifact of our cognitive gaps, not a veridical indication of ontological oddity… the human mind is an evolved collection of biologically driven mechanisms and strategies, responsive to the usual evolutionary pressures. No doubt human reason is a remarkable product of evolution, permitting all sorts of adaptation-transcendent feats of thought; but that is not to exempt it from all biological constraints and bias.” (Pg. 69)
He suggests, “Consciousness... is really just a particular biological phenomenon, and quite a primitive one at that… It is a great mistake to suppose just because consciousness is especially problematic that it must therefore belong to what we deem the highest of human faculties; on the contrary, quite lowly species---bats, reptiles, birds---have consciousness in an equally problematic way, since they are conscious of their environment, feel pain, and so on. There would be a deep philosophical problem of consciousness even if evolution had never progressed beyond the dinosaurs. To my mind, this strongly suggests that our inability to solve the mind-body problem is the result of a quite specific BIAS in our faculties of comprehension…” (Pg. 71-72)
He says, “Physical atoms also exist in space and enjoy spatial relations to each other. It is doubtful that mental atoms can be conceived in this way… because the mind does not seem to be spatially describable … So we might expect that atoms of the mind can (be conceived to) exist in a detached form, pre- or post-consciousness. Where these atoms might exist, independently of constituting a full-blown mind, we cannot say… Is this panpsychism by another name?... It shares with panpsychism only the idea that there is a hidden theoretical level of specifically mind-generating properties---but unlike panpsychism… it does not identify these properties AS MENTAL, in the sense that the concepts that express them are anything like our concepts of the mind.” (Pg. 127)
He observes, “The trouble we have… is that our concepts of consciousness are geared directly to the way consciousness strikes us introspectively and through its behavioral expression, which might be but the final result of a complex process of natural construction… Our concepts seem to represent many conscious states… but these concepts may not do justice to the underlying natural structure of the phenomena. Our concepts of consciousness might be deeply superficial… limited by the manner in which our brains serve conscious states up to us.” (Pg. 165-166)
He suggests, “Can the brain states that prompt introspective knowledge ‘I-states’… and call those that are known about perceptually ‘P-states’; then the question is whether I-states COULD be known perceptually and P-states COULD be known introspectively. That is, could the causal pathways leading from the underlying brain states be inverted in such a way that the corresponding mental state is known perceptually and the (merely) neural state is known introspectively? Might we be able to know our sensations by means of perception and our (non-mental) brain states by means of introspection?” (Pg. 201)
He summarizes, “What I have basically argued is that mind and matter cannot be epistemologically defined: that is, we cannot define matter as what is known about by perception and mind as what is known about by introspection… The idea that matter can be defined as what is imperfectly known and mind as what is perfectly known is wrong… How else mind and matter may be defined is a separate question, and one that may not have a good answer.” (Pg. 216-217) He concludes, “consciousness presents its (existent0 objects in such a way that were they not to exist consciousness itself would not change its intrinsic character. It is as if the existent object fills a slot already prepared for it by consciousness, and this slot consists in reference to a non-existent object. When it comes to the essence of consciousness, then, non-existence is dominant over existence. In its intrinsic nature consciousness is primarily directed to what is not.” (Pg. 247-248)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying the philosophical implications of consciousness.
Colin McGinn is a British philosopher who has taught at University College London, the University of Oxford, Rutgers University and the University of Miami.
He wrote in the Introduction to this 2004 book, “Intend this book to be a sequel to my 1991 book, ‘The Problem of Consciousness.’ Since writing that book I have produced a number of papers extending and clarifying my earlier position; it seemed a good idea to bring them together. In addition, there are papers on neighboring topics that act as an antidote to the theoretical pessimism of my writings on the mind-body problem. All the papers deal with consciousness in one way or another… The chief change during the last decade or so has been the inclusion of my position, under the label ‘mysterianism,’ in the canon of possible positions concerning the mind-body problem… As I reflect on these papers, I detect an implicit principle, or policy, that has guided me, which might be called ‘methodological radicalism.’ My approach has been to venture ideas and theories that say something surprising, heterodox, perhaps disconcerting… In my view, the philosophy of mind … has followed a policy of methodological conservatism, in the sense that it has tried to account for the mind in the most restricted and ‘kosher’ terms possible. The attempt to shoehorn the mind into a box shaped like the body is only the most conspicuous example of this tendency---behaviorism, functionalism, and central-state materialism.” (Pg. 1-2)
He points out, “we know the nature of consciousness by acquaintance but we cannot express that nature in the form of truths about consciousness… Thus we resort, helplessly, to metaphors to express what we antecedently know by acquaintance: that consciousness is like a mirror, a stream… or a theatre… We know quite well what consciousness is NOT, but we cannot say what it is about it that prevents it being those things… we have IMPLICIT knowledge of the problem, not EXPLICIT knowledge.” (Pg. 9-10) He adds, “I am saying… that the knowledge we have of consciousness … is of this acquaintance-based kind; it is not the kind that consists in specifying in propositional form exactly what it is about consciousness that makes it problematically related to the brain.” (Pg. 11)
He suggests, “this very way of knowing is what blocks us from solving it… It is almost as if we have been DESIGNED to be struck by a problem that we are constitutionally unable to solve: the very self-consciousness that makes us aware of the problem is (part of) what prevents us from solving it, because of the concepts that are generated by such self-consciousness. I can imagine a type of God for whom this would be an amusing irony---even an irresistible temptation. Let’s build a thinking being whose very way of thinking about itself made it opaque to itself; but let’s not make this too obvious to our creation. If that is what god set out to do, then I think he achieved his aim perfectly.” (Pg. 25)
He observes, “In my 1989 paper I answered the question that forms its title (‘Can we solve the mind-body problem’) with the words ‘No and Yes.’ No, in that we cannot identify the real basis of consciousness, so we cannot explain what it is about the brain that yields conscious states; but Yes, in that we can nevertheless solve the philosophical problem generated by the mind-brain nexus… We cannot answer the question on what the basis of consciousness it, but we can answer the question of how to respond to the philosophical perplexities raised by this difficulty.” (Pg. 60-61)
He states, “The impression that consciousness arises from the brain in the miraculous way the djinn emerges from the lamp is given a deflationary account: it is an artifact of our cognitive gaps, not a veridical indication of ontological oddity… the human mind is an evolved collection of biologically driven mechanisms and strategies, responsive to the usual evolutionary pressures. No doubt human reason is a remarkable product of evolution, permitting all sorts of adaptation-transcendent feats of thought; but that is not to exempt it from all biological constraints and bias.” (Pg. 69)
He suggests, “Consciousness... is really just a particular biological phenomenon, and quite a primitive one at that… It is a great mistake to suppose just because consciousness is especially problematic that it must therefore belong to what we deem the highest of human faculties; on the contrary, quite lowly species---bats, reptiles, birds---have consciousness in an equally problematic way, since they are conscious of their environment, feel pain, and so on. There would be a deep philosophical problem of consciousness even if evolution had never progressed beyond the dinosaurs. To my mind, this strongly suggests that our inability to solve the mind-body problem is the result of a quite specific BIAS in our faculties of comprehension…” (Pg. 71-72)
He says, “Physical atoms also exist in space and enjoy spatial relations to each other. It is doubtful that mental atoms can be conceived in this way… because the mind does not seem to be spatially describable … So we might expect that atoms of the mind can (be conceived to) exist in a detached form, pre- or post-consciousness. Where these atoms might exist, independently of constituting a full-blown mind, we cannot say… Is this panpsychism by another name?... It shares with panpsychism only the idea that there is a hidden theoretical level of specifically mind-generating properties---but unlike panpsychism… it does not identify these properties AS MENTAL, in the sense that the concepts that express them are anything like our concepts of the mind.” (Pg. 127)
He observes, “The trouble we have… is that our concepts of consciousness are geared directly to the way consciousness strikes us introspectively and through its behavioral expression, which might be but the final result of a complex process of natural construction… Our concepts seem to represent many conscious states… but these concepts may not do justice to the underlying natural structure of the phenomena. Our concepts of consciousness might be deeply superficial… limited by the manner in which our brains serve conscious states up to us.” (Pg. 165-166)
He suggests, “Can the brain states that prompt introspective knowledge ‘I-states’… and call those that are known about perceptually ‘P-states’; then the question is whether I-states COULD be known perceptually and P-states COULD be known introspectively. That is, could the causal pathways leading from the underlying brain states be inverted in such a way that the corresponding mental state is known perceptually and the (merely) neural state is known introspectively? Might we be able to know our sensations by means of perception and our (non-mental) brain states by means of introspection?” (Pg. 201)
He summarizes, “What I have basically argued is that mind and matter cannot be epistemologically defined: that is, we cannot define matter as what is known about by perception and mind as what is known about by introspection… The idea that matter can be defined as what is imperfectly known and mind as what is perfectly known is wrong… How else mind and matter may be defined is a separate question, and one that may not have a good answer.” (Pg. 216-217) He concludes, “consciousness presents its (existent0 objects in such a way that were they not to exist consciousness itself would not change its intrinsic character. It is as if the existent object fills a slot already prepared for it by consciousness, and this slot consists in reference to a non-existent object. When it comes to the essence of consciousness, then, non-existence is dominant over existence. In its intrinsic nature consciousness is primarily directed to what is not.” (Pg. 247-248)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying the philosophical implications of consciousness.
January 18, 2009
This collection of papers presents a distinct take on the mind/body problem. McGinn suggests that this problem is a conceptual one, because we haven't developed the proper conceptual framework to address it. We are biased by our tendency to identify physical objects in space (indeed!), and so we try to explain our conscious experience (mind) through the biology of the brain (neurochemical circuitry). According to McGinn, we need a revised concept of space in order to understand the mind (which may seem like an extreme dualism, but I think he expects this mental space to be grounded in the physical). In addition, he suggests that the unity of consciousness is based on the “non-existent intentional objects” that are inherent to our perception of existent intentional objects. These non-existent objects help us produce a stable perception of world by maintaining a single (non-existent) reference to an object (existent) even when its properties may change. This implies that when we perceive and reference something in the world we are conjuring both an existent object and a non-existent object.
It is worth considering McGinn’s perspective on the mind/body problem even though his theories may sound a bit radical and certainly lack scientific support at the present (but this is philosophy after all). By recognizing the cognitive limitations that prevent us from understanding the mind, we can aim to develop tools that compensate for these limitations. Just as a microscope allows our limited visual system to view the structure of cells or other tiny objects, we still need the right tool that will allow us to identify the underlying processes of the mind (though fMRI research tries to be such a tool, it is still too coarse). Also, by thinking of consciousness as being primarily a consciousness of non-existent objects (that are concurrently tied to existent ones), we can attempt alternative approaches to the empirical study of the mind.
It is worth considering McGinn’s perspective on the mind/body problem even though his theories may sound a bit radical and certainly lack scientific support at the present (but this is philosophy after all). By recognizing the cognitive limitations that prevent us from understanding the mind, we can aim to develop tools that compensate for these limitations. Just as a microscope allows our limited visual system to view the structure of cells or other tiny objects, we still need the right tool that will allow us to identify the underlying processes of the mind (though fMRI research tries to be such a tool, it is still too coarse). Also, by thinking of consciousness as being primarily a consciousness of non-existent objects (that are concurrently tied to existent ones), we can attempt alternative approaches to the empirical study of the mind.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews