Minds in Space How do I think of my own mind and other people’s minds? Or, what comes to the same thing, how do I think of myself and other selves? What distinguishes the way I think about myself (my mind) and the way I think about other selves (other minds)? This question should be [ ] The post Minds in Space first appeared on Colin McGinn .
Information and the Brain It has become routine to speak of neurons as “transmitting information”, usually without any definition of “information”. This talk is highly misleading. We can use wires and waves to transmit information to other people, because we have knowledge we can communicate in this way; but if the “information” is not sent [ ] The post Information and the Brain first appeared on…
Musical Therapy It is well known that listening to and performing music has cognitive benefits. It is not known, however, what explains these benefits—in virtue of what is music good exercise for the brain? I conjecture that three factors are at work: mathematics, memory, and emotion. Music is mathematical, because of scales and keys, as [ ] The post Musical Therapy first appeared on Colin McGinn…
Moral Knowledge I am going to defend a view of which I am morally certain: moral knowledge is the best kind of knowledge we have—intellectually, epistemologically. It is knowledge at its finest, purest, least qualified. It is the shining star in the epistemological firmament. Needless to say, this goes against the grain of the entire [ ] The post Moral Knowledge first appeared on Colin McGinn .
Ignorance and Other Minds What do we know better—material objects or other minds? In the ordinary course of things, there is a lot about material objects of which we are ignorant: their insides, their chemical composition, their unseen side, their atomic structure, the nature of matter itself. They are often too distant to see well, [ ] The post Ignorance and Other Minds first appeared on Colin…
Productivity I am perplexed by my own productivity. I don’t understand it. It seems like a bottomless well. As a psychologist, I’d like to have a theory about it. It’s something of a burden, truth be told, though not an annoyance. It seems out of my control. I wish I could bottle and sell it [ ] The post Productivity first appeared on Colin McGinn .
Illusions of Mind Is it possible to maintain that we know other minds better than we know other bodies—or even our own body? Can we be more skeptical about our knowledge of bodies than our knowledge of other minds? That sounds unlikely, given that we infer other minds from other bodies: we see other bodies [ ] The post Illusions of Mind first appeared on Colin McGinn .
Romances A romance is a love affair between two people. But this doesn’t specify what kind of love affair: it could be sexual love, but it need not be. It could be an intellectual romance; then it connotes shared passions and interests of an intellectual nature. The idea is of a cooperative, committed, passionate relationship [ ] The post Romances first appeared on Colin McGinn .