Life Saving It’s not every day that you save someone’s life. Some years ago, I was visited by the philosopher Amie Thomasson at my home on Miami Beach. We were doing water sports. She got into my waveski (a kayak for surfing). I instructed her not to put on the seatbelt until I had explained […]
Phenomenology of Death What is the phenomenology of death? What is it like to die? What does the final cessation of consciousness feel like? The answer is that there is no phenomenology of death, nothing it is like to die, no feeling of the end of consciousness. As Wittgenstein says, “Death is not an event […]
Immutability and Change Is change real? The question is of pre-Socratic antiquity and I probably have nothing new to say about it. Still, the truth is sufficiently strange to be worth reiterating: change is surprisingly absent from the world, more a matter of appearance than reality. Two things don’t change: particles and properties. The same […]
I am pleased to report that Cambridge Scholars Publishing has agreed to publish a volume entitled Colin McGinn’s Philosophy: Further Reflections, edited by Ken Levy. I cordially invite sundry “feminist” groups to send their letters of protest to the publisher and editor; I can promise we will have a good laugh at them.
Benefits of Cancellation Cancellation does have its upside. During the last ten years (it has been that long) I have had far more time to think, write philosophy, read (by choice), and pursue other interests. None of this would have been possible without ceasing to be a fulltime professor. This blog is one result. Not […]
Character and Consciousness It would be good to have a philosophy of character analogous to the philosophy of action or perception or emotion or thought or imagination or consciousness or the self. But we don’t. The subject hardly exists. I will take some steps to remedy that, focusing on the relationship between character and consciousness. […]
Aspects of Meaning Many theories of meaning have been propounded, each seeming to have some merit. But only one theory can be true, so some have to be rejected—or so we suppose. I will contest this. Things are more complicated, more nuanced. Among the theories defended we have: truth conditions, verification conditions, linguistic use, speaker […]
Analyzing Use If meaning is use, then a theory of meaning is a description of use not an analysis of sense. This is the message of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, as commonly understood. Instead of analyzing what a sentence means, breaking it into parts, providing necessary and sufficient conditions, we should aim for a perspicuous description […]
Analysis of a Sentence It is a useful exercise, for those interested in language, to list the various ways in which a sentence can be analyzed, in order to gain a full appreciation of how multi-faceted a sentence is.[1] Strangely, I have never seen this done. As an example, I will choose the sentence “Miami […]
Philosophy and Thought It is often said that philosophy is, or ought to be, concerned with thought. It is then contended, by some, that it should be concerned with language, since language provides our only access to thought.[1] Hence, the linguistic turn. A contrast is thereby presupposed: between science and philosophy. Science deals with external […]