Entries by Colin McGinn
Brexit
A lot has been said on this subject and no doubt it is a complete disaster in every way. To me one of the worst aspects of it will be the festering resentment created: within England, within Britain, and within Europe. There will be dislike and suspicion everywhere; ill feeling, anger, contempt. Even if it […]
Philosophical Provocations
Readers may be interested to learn that I have signed a contract with MIT Press to publish a collection of my recently written papers, numbering 50 odd (the remaining 60 or so papers may be published in a later volume). The papers are on a great many subjects but they all aim to provoke–hence the […]
Hume
I’ve been reading Hume’s Enquiry and am struck by how much I didn’t understand it before–and how little it is still understood. Several commentators have noted that Hume does not deny the existence of necessary connection, merely noting that our only knowledge of causation arises from experience of constant conjunction; but it is striking how much […]
Nabokov On the Move
I was reading an interesting article in the travel section of the NY Times yesterday about Nabokov’s journeys with his wife Vera across some of the more desolate parts of America, which form the basis for the extended sequence in “Lolita” in which Humbert and Lo desolately crisscross the desolate country. It occurred to me […]
Paraconsciousness
I’ve started to think that the customary way we divide up the mind into the conscious, the unconscious, and the preconscious is too crude and unrevealing. The connection between, say, a perception and an immediate memory of it is far too close to be captured by these categories. Isn’t it the same thing that exists […]