Western Philosophy Contemporary philosophy
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Name:	Colin McGinn
Birth:	1950 (United Kingdom)
School/tradition:	analytic philosophy
Main interests:	philosophy of mind, philosophy of literature, logic
Notable ideas:	New Mysterianism
Influences:	Noam Chomsky, P.F. Strawson, Donald Davidson

Colin McGinn (born 1950) is a British philosopher currently working at the University of Miami. McGinn has also held major teaching positions at Oxford University and Rutgers University. McGinn 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 general audience is the intellectual memoir The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey Through Twentieth-Century Philosophy (2002). This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Image File history File links Mcggin_fat. ... Analytic philosophy is the dominant philosophical movement in University philosophy departments in English-speaking countries and in Scandinavia, although one of its founders, Gottlob Frege, was German, and many of its leading proponents, such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rudolf Carnap, Kurt Gödel, Karl Popper, Hans Reichenbach, Herbert Feigl, Otto Neurath... A Phrenological mapping of the brain. ... Philosophy and literature is the literary treatment of philosophers and philosophical themes, and the philosophical treatment of issues raised by literature. ... Logic, from Classical Greek λόγος (logos), originally meaning the word, or what is spoken, (but coming to mean thought or reason) is the study of criteria for the evaluation of arguments, although the exact definition of logic is a matter of controversy among philosophers. ... New Mysterianism is a philosophy proposing that certain problems (in particular, consciousness) will never be explained or at the least cannot be explained by the human mind at its current evolutionary stage. ... Avram Noam Chomsky, Ph. ... Peter Frederick Strawson (born November 23, 1919 in London) is a philosopher associated with the ordinary language philosophy movement within analytical philosophy. ... There are two Donald Davidsons: Donald Davidson (poet) Donald Davidson (philosopher) This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... 1950 (MCML) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... The University of Miami is a private university founded in 1925 with its main campus in the city of Coral Gables in metropolitan Miami, Florida, in the United States. ... The University of Oxford, located in the city of Oxford in England, is the oldest university in the English-speaking world. ... Rutgers redirects here. ... A Phrenological mapping of the brain. ...

Biography

Colin McGinn was born in 1950 in West Hartlepool, England. In 1968, he became the first McGinn to attend university as 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 program, in hopes of eventaully gaining entrance into Oxford's B.Phil. program (which, despite appearances, is a postgraduate program). Avram Noam Chomsky, Ph. ... Bachelor of Philosophy (B.Phil. ...

McGinn quickly made the transition from psychology to philosophy during his first term at Oxford. After working arduously to make the transition, he was soon admitted into the B.Phil program under the recommendation of his current advisor, Michael Ayers. Shortly after entering the philosophy program, he won the prestigious 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. Peter Frederick Strawson (born November 23, 1919 in London) is a philosopher associated with the ordinary language philosophy movement within analytical philosophy. ... Donald Davidson (March 6, 1917 – August 30, 2003) was an American philosopher and the Willis S. and Marion Slusser Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. ...

In 1974, McGinn took his first philosophy position at University College London. In January of 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 (USC), 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. Gareth Evans (12 May 1946 – 10 August 1980) was a British philosopher at Oxford University during the 1970s. ... Jerry Alan Fodor (born 1935) is a philosopher at Rutgers University, New Jersey. ...

Work

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. René Descartes René Descartes (IPA: , March 31, 1596 – February 11, 1650), also known as Cartesius, worked as a philosopher and mathematician. ... Various formulations: Why does awareness of sensory information exist at all? Why do qualia exist? Why is there a subjective component to experience? Why arent we philosophical zombies? Categories: Stub | Philosophy of mind ... New Mysterianism is a philosophy proposing that certain problems (in particular, consciousness) will never be explained or at the least cannot be explained by the human mind at its current evolutionary stage. ...

Outside of philosophy, McGinn has written a novel entitled The Space Trap (1992).

Books

A partial list of books by Colin McGinn:

• The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey Through Twentieth-Century Philosophy (2002). HarperCollins, ISBN 0-06-019792-7 (first edition). (Reprint edition, 2003, Harper Perennial, ISBN 0-06-095760-3.)
• Logical Properties: Identity, Existence,Predication, Necessity, Truth (2001). Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-924181-3.
• The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World (1999). Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-01422-4.
• Knowledge and Reality: Selected Papers (1998). Oxford University Press.
• Ethics, Evil and Fiction (1997). Oxford University Press.
• Minds and Bodies: Philosophers and Their Ideas (1997). Oxford University Press.
• Problems in Philosophy: the Limits of Inquiry (1993). Blackwell.
• The Space Trap (1992). Duckworth.
• Moral Literacy: Or How To Do The Right Thing (1992). Duckworth, 1992; Hackett, 1993.
• The Problem of Consciousness (1991). Basil Blackwell.
• Mental Content (1989). Basil Blackwell.
• Wittgenstein on Meaning (1984). Basil Blackwell.
• The Subjective View: Secondary Qualities and Indexical Thoughts (1983). Oxford University Press.
• The Character of Mind (1982). Oxford University Press, 1982. (Second edition, 1997.)

Selected articles

A partial list of articles by Colin McGinn (emphasis on scholarly philosophical articles):

• "Another Look at Colour" (1996). Journal of Philosophy.
• "Consciousness and Space" (1995). Journal of Consciousness Studies.
• "The Problem of Philosophy" (1994). Philosophical Studies.
• "Must I Be Morally Perfect?" (1992). Analysis.
• "Conceptual Causation: Some Elementary Reflections" (1991). Mind.
• "Can We Solve the Mind-Body Problem?" Mind, 1989.
• "What is the Problem of Other Minds?" (1984). Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society.
• "Two Notions of Realism?" (1983). Philosophical Topics.
• "Realist Semantics and Content Ascription" (1982). Synthese.
• "Rigid Designation and Semantic Value" (1982). Philosophical Quarterly.
• "Philosophical Materialism" (1980). Synthese
• "An A Priori Argument for Realism" (1979). The Journal of Philosophy.
• "Single-case Probability and Logical Form" (1979). Mind.
• "Charity, Interpretation and Belief" (1977). The Journal of Philosophy.
• "Semantics for Nonindicative Sentences" (1977). Philosophical Studies.
• "A Priori and A Posteriori Knowledge" (1976). Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society.
• "A Note on the Frege Argument" (1976). Mind.
• "On the Necessity of Origin" (1976). The Journal of Philosophy.
• "A Note on the Essence of Natural Kinds" (1975). Analysis.
• "Mach and Husserl" (1972). Journal for the British Society of Phenomenology.

External links

• McGinn's Rutgers web page — includes biography and bibliography.
• McGinn on Faith & Reason — transcript of an interview with McGinn on the PBS program "Bill Moyer on Faith & Reason".
• Conscious Entities — information on McGinn's views on consciousness.
• Colin McGinn in ZhurnalWiki — a review of McGinn's autobiography.
• "Apes, Humans, Aliens, Vampires and Robots". In Paola Cavalieri & Peter Singer (eds.), The Great Ape Project, New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1993, pp. 146-151.
• The Atheism Tapes, program 1 — the transcript of an extended interview with Colin McGinn for the Jonathan Miller BBC TV series The Atheism Tapes.

Peter Albert David Singer (born July 6, 1946 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) is an Australian Humanist and philosopher. ... Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller, CBE (born July 21, 1934) is a British physician, theatre and opera director and television presenter. ... The Atheism Tapes is a BBC TV documentary series by Jonathan Miller. ...

Reference

• McGinn, Colin. (2002). The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey Through Twentieth-Century Philosophy. HarperCollins, ISBN 0-06-019792-7 (first edition). (Reprint edition, 2003, Harper Perennial, ISBN 0-06-095760-3.)