Entries by Colin McGinn
Stalin’s Fallacy
Stalin famously said, “Death solves all problems–no man, no problem”. He meant that murdering people solves the problem their existence poses–hence his murder of millions of Russians who threatened to be a “problem”. I suspect many people in power have thought along similar lines–and the saying has a certain cogency. But it is important to […]
Philosophy
Why does philosophy even exist? Is the world an inherently philosophical place? That seems unlikely. Is it our concepts that generate philosophical problems? But why should we have concepts that do that? Does it show there is something deeply wrong with our concepts? And why are we so confused, if conceptual confusions are the problem? […]
Philosophical Fun for the Whole Family
The Simulation Game The following document recently fell into my hands: “Report to the Commissioner of Games: We recently met to discuss, plan and implement a new game, to be called the Simulation Game (hereafter SG). For this purpose we have created a small group (about 6 billion) of individual centers of […]
Blind Review
The obsession with blind review of journal articles is peculiar. Why not blind examining or blind book reviewing or blind job selection? Anyone entrusted with these jobs is expected to evaluate in an unbiased manner, and if they can’t they should not be so trusted. I think all information about a candidate can be useful, […]
Serena
I was glad Serena Williams decided to return to Indian Wells after that shameful incident 14 years ago. Her return made the point with great force and clarity. But I also am glad that Venus and their father did not return this year, because that mob behavior can never be forgotten or forgiven. It was […]
Conceding Intelligence
In footnote 76 of Naming and Necessity Kripke uses a phrase that has stuck in my mind for decades–I think of it almost every day. He is discussing the identity theory and considers the objection that his use of “correlated with” presupposes the anti-materialist position he set out to prove. He says: “Although I was […]