Entries by Colin McGinn

Polyamory and Identity

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                                        Polyamory and Identity     Suppose I take myself to be in love with a single person but in reality there are two people that are the recipients of my affection. What I think to be one person is really a pair of identical twins; they have just never disclosed this fact […]

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Possible Minds

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                                                      Possible Minds     It is fair to say that today much of Freudian theory is not generally regarded as true (though it was believed to be true for most of the twentieth century–ardently so). Nevertheless, I think it would be accepted even by Freud’s contemporary critics (including myself) that his […]

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A Picture of Mind

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    A Picture of Mind     How in the most general terms should we characterize the mind, animal or human? If the body has a respiratory system, a digestive system, and a reproductive system, what systems does the mind have? How does it divide up? What is its fundamental structure? I suggest the […]

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Archive Complete

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That should do it for uploading my unpublished work (for the moment). There may be some duplications when I couldn’t keep track of what was already up there. Now I don’t need to worry if I pop off tomorrow! 

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Zombie Worlds

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  Zombie Worlds     Is a purely physical world possible? Our world contains mental attributes, but suppose we strip them completely away, so that nothing mental remains: will the world that is left be purely physical? I don’t mean will it actually lack all mental attributes—by hypothesis it will; I mean will it lack […]

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The Selfish Molecule

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                                                The Selfish Molecule       We have got used to speaking of the selfish gene, a unit much smaller than the individual organism (or the group or species). The genes create bodies that ensure their survival down the generations: the more effective a gene is at producing bodies that survive to reproduction the […]

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Word and Subject

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      Word and Subject     The advent of language on our planet changed the natural history of consciousness. Before language existed animal consciousness was confined to sensation, perception, memory, emotion, and will—extensive but not exhaustive features of mind. What went through an animal’s mind was limited by these forms of basic consciousness—sights […]

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Whence Particularity?

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    Whence Particularity?     Imagine a world consisting only of general properties: what would it take for particulars to be added to this world? How could you convert a general world stocked with universals into a world containing particular things—things that instantiate universals? What is the metaphysical basis of particularity? Plato invited us […]

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