Knowledge Tree
Colin McGinn
Facts (37)
Sources
Moving Forward on the Problem of Consciousness - David Chalmers consc.net 11 facts
perspectiveDavid Chalmers argues that Colin McGinn's approach to consciousness requires revising or supplementing theories of space to accommodate consciousness while maintaining external predictions.
claimColin McGinn locates the 'hard problem' of consciousness in the non-spatial character of consciousness, specifically that consciousness lacks spatial extension and structure, making it difficult to fit into physical space.
claimDavid Chalmers notes that the proposal by Hut and Shepard for a property 'X' is similar to Colin McGinn's suggestion of a 'hidden dimension' of space that enables the existence of consciousness.
claimDavid Chalmers interprets Colin McGinn's concept of a 'hidden dimension' of physical reality as a requirement to postulate something new and fundamental beyond what is empirically adequate.
claimColin McGinn seeks to avoid epiphenomenalism in his philosophical work on consciousness.
claimHoward Robinson, Colin McGinn, and Richard Warner have proposed theories regarding why the 'hard problem' of consciousness is difficult to solve.
claimColin McGinn's view suggests that materialism is true, but humans are cognitively limited and cannot grasp the theory that reveals this truth.
claimColin McGinn proposes that the explanatory gap between physical facts and consciousness arises from human cognitive limitations, which prevent us from grasping the conceptual implication from physical facts to facts about consciousness.
claimDavid Chalmers notes that if Colin McGinn's view asserts that explaining experience is just a problem of explaining structure and function, it becomes remarkably similar to Daniel Dennett's position.
accountThe symposium on David Chalmers' paper 'Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness' included 26 commentaries from various scholars, including Bernard Baars, Douglas Bilodeau, Patricia Churchland, Tom Clark, C.J.S. Clarke, Francis Crick, Christof Koch, Daniel Dennett, Stuart Hameroff, Roger Penrose, Valerie Hardcastle, David Hodgson, Piet Hut, Roger Shepard, Benjamin Libet, E.J. Lowe, Bruce MacLennan, Colin McGinn, Eugene Mills, Kieron O'Hara, Tom Scutt, Mark Price, William Robinson, Gregg Rosenberg, William Seager, Jonathan Shear, Henry Stapp, Francisco Varela, Max Velmans, and Richard Warner.
claimDavid Chalmers argues that Colin McGinn's view faces a dilemma: either explaining experience is just a problem of explaining structure and function, or fundamental physics must contain something more than structure and function.
Hard problem of consciousness - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org 7 facts
quoteAnd then there is the theory put forward by philosopher Colin McGinn that our vertigo when pondering the Hard Problem is itself a quirk of our brains. The brain is a product of evolution, and just as animal brains have their limitations, we have ours. Our brains can't hold a hundred numbers in memory, can't visualize seven-dimensional space and perhaps can't intuitively grasp why neural information processing observed from the outside should give rise to subjective experience on the inside.
claimNew mysterianism, a position most significantly associated with philosopher Colin McGinn, proposes that the human mind in its current form is unable to explain consciousness.
claimColin McGinn cites Jerry Fodor's concept of the modularity of mind to support the theory of cognitive closure regarding the mind–body problem.
perspectiveColin McGinn argues that a naturalistic explanation for consciousness exists, but the human mind is cognitively closed to it due to limited intellectual abilities.
referenceColin McGinn wrote 'All machine and no ghost?' for the New Statesman on 20 February 2012.
claimPhilosophers Joseph Levine, Colin McGinn, and Ned Block, along with cognitive neuroscientists Francisco Varela, Giulio Tononi, and Christof Koch, accept the existence of the hard problem of consciousness.
claimColin McGinn categorizes the mind–body problem as a mystery rather than a problem, drawing on Noam Chomsky's distinction between problems that are solvable and mysteries that human cognitive faculties are unequipped to understand.
Hard Problem of Consciousness | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy iep.utm.edu 5 facts
claimColin McGinn compares the human inability to solve the hard problem of consciousness to the inability of squirrels to understand quantum mechanics.
claimColin McGinn argues that a solution to the hard problem of consciousness is cognitively closed to human beings.
claimColin McGinn supports his position on cognitive closure by stressing the consequences of a modular view of the mind, which is inspired in part by Noam Chomsky’s work in linguistics.
referenceColin McGinn authored 'The Problem of Consciousness', published in 1991 by Blackwell.
referenceColin McGinn authored 'Can we solve the Mind-Body Problem?', published in Mind in 1989.
Consciousness (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Fall 2025 ... plato.stanford.edu Jun 18, 2004 4 facts
claimRobert Van Gulick, Colin McGinn, and David Papineau have argued that explanatory gaps are expected and entailed by plausible versions of ontological physicalism, which treat human agents as physically realized cognitive systems with inherent limits derived from evolutionary origins.
claimJoseph Levine (1983, 1993) and Colin McGinn (1991) argue that brute links, such as nomic connections or well-confirmed correlations, are insufficient to fully explain consciousness because they do not make intelligible why those connections hold.
perspectiveColin McGinn (1995) argues that humans are not conceptually suited to understand the psychophysical link because human perceptual concepts and the scientific concepts derived from them are inherently spatial.
perspectiveThe 'explanatory gap' claim has a strong version which asserts that due to inherent human cognitive limits, humans will never be able to bridge the gap between consciousness and physical substrates, leaving it a residual mystery (McGinn 1991).
Panpsychism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Fall 2015 Edition) plato.stanford.edu May 23, 2001 4 facts
referenceColin McGinn argued that the mind-body problem is unsolvable by human cognition in his 1999 book 'The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World'.
perspectiveThe author of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Panpsychism claims that Colin McGinn ignores the distinction between 'mere aggregates' and 'unities' in his discussion of panpsychism.
perspectiveColin McGinn labels strong panpsychism, which asserts that everything has full-fledged consciousness, as “ludicrous,” and labels weak panpsychism, which asserts that everything has at least some kind of proto-mentality, as “empty.”
referenceColin McGinn argues in 'The Mysterious Flame' (1999) that mental attributes assigned to fundamental physical entities by panpsychists are epiphenomenal.
Panpsychism - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy plato.stanford.edu May 23, 2001 2 facts
referenceColin McGinn authored 'The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World', published by Basic Books in 1999.
claimColin McGinn argues in 'The Mysterious Flame' (1999) that mental attributes assigned to fundamental physical entities by panpsychists must lack causal efficacy because the physical world is causally closed.
David Chalmers Thinks the Hard Problem Is Really Hard scientificamerican.com Apr 10, 2017 2 facts
Panpsychism - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy plato.stanford.edu Jul 18, 2017 1 fact
perspectiveColin McGinn (1989) argued that human beings are constitutively incapable of grasping the nature of the properties that underlie consciousness.
Self-Consciousness - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy plato.stanford.edu Jul 13, 2017 1 fact
claimColin McGinn proposed a subjective view regarding secondary qualities and indexical thoughts in his 1983 book 'The Subjective View: Secondary Qualities and Indexical Thoughts'.