Bernard Williams and Me One day, over twenty years ago, I ran into Bernard Williams in the corridor at NYU. He remarked: “The thing about you, Colin, is that you think you’ve either solved the problems of philosophy or they can’t be solved at all”. I paused for less than a second and replied, “I […]
Games and Meaning Imagine a philosopher, call him LW for short, with a lifelong interest in games. In his youth he writes a book called The Logical Structure of Games. As the name suggests, the book gives an analysis of the formal structure of games—a theory of the a priori essence of games which purports […]
A Law of Subjectivity and Objectivity Things can be subjective or objective, and so can conceptions of things. The former distinction pertains to types of objects and concerns their proximity to the mind: are they explicitly mental or at any rate mind-dependent? In this use, we say that color is subjective but shape is not. […]
This is from Bill Reagan: I thoroughly enjoyed Colin McGinn’s post on Reflexes because it is a solid, concise work on the subject, with dabs of humour throughout. I am keeping it close-by as a reference for my own project on instincts, and guide to what the body is capable of doing to protect our […]
Accents Nowadays people recommend speaking in the same accent you were brought up to speak, whatever that may be, in the interests of linguistic diversity. I disagree. I myself first spoke in a Geordie accent, because I was born in Newcastle; my parents spoke Geordie their whole life. My family moved to Gillingham Kent when […]
Objective Truth We can take subjective and objective views of the same facts: we can conceive of the object by reference to ourselves (“the object I am seeing now”) or by abstracting away from our specific characteristics and thinking from no particular point of view (“the planet next to planet Earth”).[1] This general point applies […]
2026 I may as well make my predictions for the coming year, for what they are worth (sixpence perhaps). I think collective insanity will continue to increase, particularly on the right but also on the left. The descent into savagery will continue (just look at Abby Phillip’s nightly show). I think Me Too will suffer […]
Locating Meaning Where is meaning? Where is it located? This is a good question, because not easy to answer; maybe answering it would give us some idea of the nature of meaning. Is it in the external world, or in the mind (conscious or unconscious), or in the soul (immaterial substance), or in the body […]
Trump’s Christmas Yesterday was a holiday—from Trump. Nothing on the news about hm. No one killed or deported or insulted or demeaned or defamed. It was a welcome relief. But it set me wondering: when will he re-name Christmas “Trump Christmas”? When will he monetize it? He clearly envies Santa his popularity and there is […]
Lolita’s Tennis I make it a habit (a ritual) to (re-)read a chapter of Lolita every Christmas day. Yesterday was no exception; I chose chapter 20, in which Lolita’s tennis game is lovingly described. Here we are told of “the indescribable itch of rapture that her tennis game produced in me—the teasing delirious feeling of […]