Colin McGinn - Böcker

Shakespeare's plays are usually studied by literary scholars and historians and the books about him from those perspectives are legion. It is most unusual for a trained philosopher to give us his insight, as Colin McGinn does here. In his brilliant commentary, McGinn explores Shakespeare's philosophy of life and illustrates how he was influenced, for example, by the essays of Montaigne that were translated into English while Shakespeare was writing.In addition to chapters on the great plays, there are also essays on Shakespeare and gender and his plays from the aspects of psychology, ethics, and tragedy. As McGinn says about Shakespeare, "There is not a sentimental bone in his body. He has the curiosity of a scientist, the judgement of a philosopher, and the soul of a poet." McGinn relates the ideas in the plays to the later philosophers such as David Hume and the modern commentaries of critics such as Harold Bloom. The book is an exhilarating reading experience about one of the greatest writers in English.

In Minds and Bodies, one of philosophy's most dynamic and versatile thinkers gathers nearly forty review essays written over the past twenty years for non-specialized publications. They cover biography, particularly of Russell and Wittgenstein; philosophy of mind, especially consciousness; and ethics, with an emphasis on applied ethics. Taken together these essays form a vivid picture of contemporary philosophy for the general reader, and will be welcomed by those within the philosophical community for their crisp critical insights and rigorous assessments.

Ethics, Evil, and Fiction brings together moral philosophy and literary analysis in a way that offers original new insights for both. Its central aim is to enrich the domain of moral reflection, by showing the value of literary texts as sources of moral illumination. Colin McGinn starts by setting out an uncompromisingly realist ethical theory, arguing that morality is an area of objective truth and genuine knowledge. He goes on to address such subjects as the nature of goodness, evil character, and the meaning of monstrosity, in the context of an aesthetic theory of virtue, which maintains that goodness of character is the same thing as beauty of soul. Works discussed include Billy Budd, Lolita, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Frankenstein; and McGinn draws upon examples from film and painting as well as literature. The originality of his approach, the clarity and forthrightness of his writing, and his conviction that fiction and philosophy have much enlightenment to offer each other, make this a compelling and fascinating book.

Knowledge and Reality brings together a selection of Colin McGinn's philosophical essays from the 1970s to the 1990s, whose unifying theme is the relation between the mind and the world. The essays range over a set of prominent topics in contemporary philosophy, including the analysis of knowledge, the a priori, necessity, possible worlds, realism, mental representation, appearance and reality, and colour. McGinn has written a new postscript to each essay, placing it in its philosophical context by sketching the background against which it was written, explaining its relations to other notable work, and offering his current reflections on the topic. The volume thus traces the development of McGinn's ideas and their role in some central philosophical debates. Seen together the essays offer a many-sided defence of realism, while emphasizing the epistemological price that realism exacts.

Ethics, Evil, and Fiction brings together moral philosophy and literary analysis in a way that offers original new insights for both. Its central aim is to enrich the domain of moral reflection, by showing the value of literary texts as sources of moral illumination. Colin McGinn starts by setting out an uncompromisingly realist ethical theory, arguing that morality is an area of objective truth and genuine knowledge. He goes on to address such subjects as the nature of goodness, evil character, and the meaning of monstrosity, in the context of an aesthetic theory of virtue, which maintains that goodness of character is the same thing as beauty of soul. Works discussed include Billy Budd, Lolita, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Frankenstein; and McGinn draws upon examples from film and painting as well as literature. The originality of his approach, the clarity and forthrightness of his writing, and his conviction that fiction and philosophy have much enlightenment to offer each other, make this a compelling and fascinating book. 'A book which I hope will start a new fashion . . .it has all the qualities modern philosophical writing tends to lack. I found it substantial, absorbing and relevant.' Times Higher Education Supplement

This book investigates subjective and objective representations of the world. Analogies between secondary qualities and indexical thoughts are developed, and subjective representations are argued to be ineliminable.

Of what nature is the mind? So Colin McGinn starts his first chapter, and this is his guiding question. He pursues the answer with a boldness and provocativeness rarely encountered in philosophical writing. As he explains, my aim has been to give the reader something definite and stimulating to think about, rather than to present a cautious and disinterested survey of the state of the subject. The Character of Mind provides a general introduction to the philosophy of mind, covering all the main topics: the mind-body problem, the nature of acquaintance, the relation between thought and language, agency, the self. In particular, Colin McGinn addresses the issue of consciousness, and the difficulty of combining the two very different perspectives on the mind that arise from introspection and from the observation of other people. His aim throughout is to identify the recalcitrant problems clearly, and to suggest fruitful approaches to their solutions, always avoiding facile answers. The second edition of this classic book adds three completely new chapters on consciousness, mental content, and cognitive science, bringing it abreast of current developments. A distinctive viewpoint is adopted, stressing consciousness, but the intention is still to come to grips with the underlying philosophical problems, accessibly articulating the deep difficulties we face in theorizing about the mind. From the reviews of the first edition: `a very good introduction to the philosophy of mind. . . . written with confidence and authority . . . a fine text for an undergraduate course.' Jonathan Lear, The Times Literary Supplement`a lucid and impressive discussion . . . to be recommended to students and professionals alike . . . brilliant book.' Brian O'Shaughnessy, London Review of Books `clear, stimulating and thought-provoking.' Bernard Harrison, Philosophy `an impressive piece of worktough, elegant, ingenious, argumentative and controversial.' Nicholas Everitt, Times Higher Educational Supplement

The concepts of identity, existence, predication, necessity, and truth are at the centre of philosophy and have rightly received sustained attention. Yet Colin McGinn believes that orthodox views of these topics are misguided in important ways. Philosophers and logicians have often distorted the nature of these concepts in an attempt to define them according to preconceived ideas. Logical Properties aims to respect the ordinary ways we talk and think when we employ these concepts, while at the same time showing that they are far more interesting and peculiar than some have supposed. There are real properties corresponding to these concepts - logical properties - that challenge naturalistic metaphysical views. These are not pseudo-properties or mere pieces of syntax. Logical Properties is written with the minimum of formal apparatus and deals with logico-linguistic issues as well as ontological ones. The focus is on trying to get to the essence of what the concept concerned stands for, and not merely finding some established notation for providing formal paraphrases.

Knowledge and Reality brings together a selection of Colin McGinn's philosophical essays from the 1970s to the 1990s, whose unifying theme is the relation between the mind and the world. The essays range over a set of prominent topics in contemporary philosophy, including the analysis of knowledge, the a priori, necessity, possible worlds, realism, mental representation, appearance and reality, and colour. McGinn has written a new postscript to each essay, placing it in its philosophical context by sketching the background against which it was written, explaining its relations to other notable work, and offering his current reflections on the topic. The volume thus traces the development of McGinn's ideas and their role in some central philosophical debates. Seen together the essays offer a many-sided defence of realism, while emphasizing the epistemological price that realism exacts.

The concepts of identity, existence, predication, necessity, and truth are at the centre of philosophy and have rightly received sustained attention. Yet Colin McGinn believes that orthodox views of these topics are misguided in important ways. Philosophers and logicians have often distorted the nature of these concepts in an attempt to define them according to preconceived ideas. Logical Properties aims to respect the ordinary ways we talk and think when we employ these concepts, while at the same time showing that they are far more interesting and peculiar than some have supposed. There are real properties corresponding to these concepts - logical properties - that challenge naturalistic metaphysical views. These are not pseudo-properties or mere pieces of syntax. Logical Properties is written with the minimum of formal apparatus and deals with logico-linguistic issues as well as ontological ones. The focus is on trying to get to the essence of what the concept concerned stands for, and not merely finding some established notation for providing formal paraphrases.

Colin McGinn presents his latest work on consciousness in ten interlinked essays, 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.McGinn goes on to discuss the status of first-person authority, the possibility of atomism with respect to consciousness, extreme dualism, and the role of non-existent objects in constituting intentionality. He argues that traditional claims about our knowledge of our own mind and of the external world can be inverted; that atomism about the conscious mind might turn out to be true; that dualism is more credible the more extreme it is; and that all intentionality involves non-existent objects. These are all surprising positions, but he contends that what the philosophy of mind needs now is 'methodological radicalism' - a willingness to consider new and seemingly extravagant ideas.

Disgust has a strong claim to be a distinctively human emotion. But what is it to be disgusting? What unifies the class of disgusting things? Colin McGinn sets out to analyze the content of disgust, arguing that life and death are implicit in its meaning. Disgust is a kind of philosophical emotion, reflecting the human attitude to the biological world. Yet it is an emotion we strive to repress. It may have initially arisen as a method of curbing voracious human desire, which itself results from our powerful imagination. Because we feel disgust towards ourselves as a species, we are placed in a fraught emotional predicament: we admire ourselves for our achievements, but we also experience revulsion at our necessary organic nature. We are subject to an affective split. Death involves the disgusting, in the shape of the rotting corpse, and our complex attitudes towards death feed into our feelings of disgust. We are beings with a "disgust consciousness ", unlike animals and gods-and we cannot shake our self-ambivalence. Existentialism and psychoanalysis sought a general theory of human emotion; this book seeks to replace them with a theory in which our primary mode of feeling centers around disgust. The Meaning of Disgust is an original study of a fascinating but neglected subject, which attempts to tell the disturbing truth about the human condition.

In Basic Structures of Reality, Colin McGinn deals with questions of metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of mind from the vantage point of physics. Combining general philosophy with physics, he covers such topics as the definition of matter, the nature of space, motion, gravity, electromagnetic fields, the character of physical knowledge, and consciousness and meaning. Throughout, McGinn maintains an historical perspective and seeks to determine how much we really know of the world described by physics. He defends a version of "structuralism": the thesis that our knowledge is partial and merely abstract, leaving a large epistemological gap at the center of physics. McGinn then connects this element of mystery to parallel mysteries in relation to the mind. Consciousness emerges as just one more mystery of physics. A theory of matter and space is developed, according to which the impenetrability of matter is explained as the deletion of volumes of space. McGinn proposes a philosophy of science that distinguishes physics from both psychology and biology, explores the ontology of energy, and considers the relevance of physics to seemingly remote fields such as the theory of meaning. In the form of a series of aphorisms, the author presents a metaphysical system that takes laws of nature as fundamental. With its broad scope and deep study of the fundamental questions at the heart of philosophy of physics, this book is not intended primarily for specialists, but for the general philosophical reader interested in how physics and philosophy intersect.

What kind of subject is philosophy? Colin McGinn takes up this perennial question, defending the view that philosophy consists of conceptual analysis, construed broadly. Conceptual analysis is understood to involve the search for de re essences, but McGinn takes up various challenges to this meta-philosophy: that some concepts are merely family resemblance concepts with no definition in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions ("game", "language"); that it is impossible to provide sufficient conditions for some philosophically important concepts without circularity ("knowledge", "intentional action"); that there exists an unsolved paradox of analysis; that there is no well-defined analytic-synthetic distinction; that names have no definition; and that conceptual analysis is not properly naturalistic. Ultimately, McGinn finds none of these objections convincing: analysis emerges as both possible and fruitful. At the same time, he rejects the idea of the "linguistic turn", arguing that analysis is not directed to language as such, but at reality. Going on to distinguish several types of analysis, with an emphasis on classical decompositional analysis, he shows different philosophical traditions to be engaged in conceptual analysis when properly understood. Philosophical activity has the kind of value possessed by play, McGinn claims, which differs from the kind of value possessed by scientific activity. The book concludes with an analytic discussion of the prospects for traditional ontology and the nature of instantiation. McGinn's study of the nature of philosophy shows us how philosophy can maintain its connection to the past while looking forward to a bright future.

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. In elegant prose, McGinn explores the implications of this Mysterian position,such as the new value it gives to the power of dreams and introspection,and challenges the reader with intriguing questions about the very nature of our minds and brains.

A book examining and critically evaluating Ludwig Wittgenstein's views on meaning, understanding, and rules Wittgenstein on Meaning, ASM Volume 1, offers an in-depth interpretation of Wittgenstein's views regarding meaning, understanding and rules. Then, based upon this interpretation, the book shares a critical assessment of these views. The positions of the philosopher are discussed and evaluated, including his emphasis on rule-following behavior. The volume is part of the Aristotelian Society Series.

Aimed at philsophy graduates this book investigates mental content in a systematic way and advances a number of claims about how mental content states are related to the body and the world. Internalism is the thesis that they are; externalism is the theory that they are not.

Can consciousness be fitted into a naturalistic worldview or is it inherently mysterious? In virtue of what does a physical organism come to have an inner conscious life? This book argues that we are not equipped to understand the workings of conciousness, despite its objective naturalness. Introspection does not reveal the hiddent structure of consciousness and it is this that joins experience to the material world.

How to imagine the imagination is a topic that draws philosophers the way flowers draw honeybees. From Plato and Aristotle to Wittgenstein and Sartre, philosophers have talked and written about this most elusive of topics--that is, until contemporary analytic philosophy of mind developed. Perhaps it is the vast range of the topic that has scared off our contemporaries, ranging as it does from mental images to daydreams.The guiding thread of this book is the distinction Colin McGinn draws between perception and imagination. Clearly, seeing an object is similar in certain respects to forming a mental image of it, but it is also different. McGinn shows what the differences are, arguing that imagination is a sui generis mental faculty. He goes on to discuss the nature of dreaming and madness, contending that these are primarily imaginative phenomena. In the second half of the book McGinn focuses on what he calls cognitive (as opposed to sensory) imagination, and investigates the role of imagination in logical reasoning, belief formation, the understanding of negation and possibility, and the comprehension of meaning. His overall claim is that imagination pervades our mental life, obeys its own distinctive principles, and merits much more attention.

"A great resource for beginning ethics courses. The book is short and yet it richly embodies the methods of ethical thinking about practical moral problems that are hard for students to learn unless they see them in action. McGinn perspicuously sets out a small set of basic principles and then attacks the problems of our treatment of animals, abortion, sex, censorship, and so on, with a masterful blend of attention to real-life cases and imaginary thought experiments. McGinn hardly claims to have the last word on the complex issues he discusses, and students will find many exciting problems and points to take up." —Owen Flanagan, Duke University

Whether it's conkers in the schoolyard, kicking a football in the park, or playing tennis on Wimbledon Centre Court, sport impacts all of our lives. But what is sport and why do we do it? Colin McGinn, renowned philosopher (and kiteboarder), reflects on our love of sport and explores the value it has for us and the part it plays in a life lived well. Written in the form of a memoir, McGinn discusses many of the sports he has engaged in - from pole-vaulting and gymnastics to windsurfing and tennis - and describes the athletic experience from the inside, as a participant, articulating what is uniquely valuable about sport as an activity. Sport, argues McGinn, takes us to our fullest potential as human beings, it's what we fling at mortality to keep it at bay, a holiday from the Unbearable Heaviness of Being. "Sport" expresses our nature, it bears upon our self-realization. If a happy life consists in one that expresses fully our natural faculties, then sports must play an essential role in our lifes. Mind-body unity, the nature of practical knowledge and physical skill, success and failure, the ethics of competition, peak experiences, the spectacle of professional sport, aesthetics and death, McGinn discusses these and many other issues while telling of his own sporting mishaps and adventures. To use the vernacular of philosophy, "Sport" captures the phenomenology of sport - what it's like to do it - and in doing so shows how sport is a way of expressing and understanding who and what we are, way beyond whether we are a good sportsman, a bad loser or a team-player. For anyone who has ever thought that there must be less humiliating ways to enjoy yourself than being thrashed on the tennis court, "Sport" will reassure you that it's time not wasted.

This advanced introductory text offers a synoptic view of philosophical inquiry, discussing such topics as consciousness, the self, meaning, free will, the a priori, and knowledge. The emphasis is on the fundamental intractability of these questions, and a theory is proposed as to why the human mind has so much difficulty in resolving them. This theory turns upon a naturalistic picture of the scope and limits of human intelligence.