Coyne on McGinn

January 24, 2026/13 Comments/in Uncategorized/by admin

Coyne on McGinn

I will reply to Jerry Coyne’s comments (January 23^rd, 2026) on my blog post “A (Really) Brief History of Knowledge”. I will keep this as brief and factual as possible without restating his criticisms.

1.I am not just a philosopher of mind but have written on many philosophical subjects. I was also trained as a scientist and have two degrees in psychology.

2.I don’t “conflate” consciousness and knowledge, as a perusal of my writings will confirm. There is no mutual entailment between them, though there are complex relations.

3.I don’t define consciousness in terms of qualia.

4.Instances of knowledge are commonly acquired not innate, but I was discussing types of knowledge (cognitive capacities) not instances of it: knowledge-how, acquaintance knowledge, propositional knowledge, and knowledge of different types of subject matter, e.g., states of mind and external objects. These do evolve unlike learned items of knowledge.

5.Consciousness evolves but not its passing contents, obviously, just like knowledge.

6.I am not “dead certain” of the pain theory—see my other articles on pain and evolution, cited in the paper we are discussing. Coyne is mistaking expository convenience with (misguided) certainty. Do I ever say that the pain theory is known to be true? I just think it is a good hypothesis.

7.Pain is important because it is highly motivating and very widespread. There can be other theories, such as tactile knowledge, which would deliver different results for later knowledge. See the articles footnoted. I was simply presupposing earlier work in the present article instead of repeating it.

8.Pain is more than adaptive reflexes; it is a sensation.

9.Not all of morality is acquired, as many have argued; the case is like language (as Chomsky has pointed out).

10.Coyne is wrong to say that biologists (scientists generally) are more cautious than philosophers; the opposite is true. I am both.

11.It is odd that he ignores my mysterianism, presumably because he thinks I’m a dogmatist. Ironic really.

12.The person out of his lane here is Jerry Coyne. I can guarantee that I have studied a lot more science than he has studied philosophy to judge from these comments (I do have a first-class degree in the science of psychology and used to teach experimental psychology).

13.This was an opportunity for constructive dialogue between disciplines, but it came out as tetchy incomprehension. All I can suggest is to read a philosophy book on epistemology: Russell’s The Problems of Philosophy would be a good place to start. Coyne never sent me his comments to get my response.

14.I was expecting my readers to be philosophers, so I didn’t spell out everything for the non-philosophical reader. This is true of everything on my website; it is not for beginners and I keep it concise.

15.It would be perfectly possible to have a cultural history of knowledge to be set beside a biological history, charting the main developments recorded in human history. I wasn’t much concerned with this distinction in the essay, though I focused more on the biological history of knowledge, it being neglected by intellectual historians.

Spatial Logic

January 23, 2026/4 Comments/in Uncategorized/by admin

Spatial Logic

Does logic have a real essence, and what might it be? And what exactly is logic? These are not easy questions; they invite us to dig deep. First, what is real essence? The paradigms are material substances and animal species: gold and tigers being the favorite examples. I won’t rehash all this; I will simply observe two things: (a) space is centrally implicated in both, and (b) the real essence doesn’t look much like what it is the essence of. As to (a), real essence is conceived as an arrangement of parts—spatial parts spatially arranged. Thus, we have atomic structure conceived as a configuration of particles in space; and genetic structure consisting of molecules, combined with an anatomical structure of organs. As to (b), the appearance of gold and tigers to the naked eye is not like the real essence as specified under (a), i.e., a particulate corpuscular structure invisible to ordinary perception. So, the real essence is both spatially constituted and hidden from sight; it is not evident to the senses or anything like an ethereal Aristotelian form. It is spatial-material and a matter of theory not observation—hence surprising. It may take an elaborate and bold theory to disclose real essence, and it may not even be possible in some cases. It may not be particularly intuitive or uncontroversial; it isn’t like “bachelors are unmarried males”. Do we, in fact, know of any cases in which real essence is notboth of these things? One might cite mental natural kinds like pain: but it is not at all clear that we have any idea of the real essence of mental kinds, or whether they even have real essences. To put it simply, real essences invariably turn out to be hidden shapes, geometric invisibles—micro-anatomy.

We may therefore entertain the hypothesis that the real essence of logic consists of spatially arranged units of some sort—points or regions or configurations. That is, logical space is, or is analogous to, physical space. Physical space exhibits logical structure in its own right: for example, it is not possible, logically, to move from point a to point b without traversing the intermediate points; and it is necessary that if a point is inside a given region, it must be inside any region that contains that region. Then too, we have all the theorems of Euclidian geometry, as well as the thesis that space is necessarily three-dimensional. And so on.[1] These provide a model for logic as a system of necessary truths regarding propositions or states of affairs or facts. Might the formal properties of space constitute the real essence of the subject matter of logic? Here we run into the question of what precisely logic is: is it a human construction or is it completely independent of the human mind? I won’t adjudicate this question except to say that as a human institution—a symbolic system with an interpretation—we would expect something human to enter in. The natural view, then, is that logic in that sense is a combination of the objective and the subjective—the extra-human and the human. To cut to the chase: logic as it exists today is a combination of space and language. Predicate calculus, say, is a combination, a confluence, of mind-independent modal facts concerning space and its material occupants, themselves modifications of space (strings, knots, holes, what have you), on the one hand, and human language, on the other. Logic is the logic of space (space-matter) and grammar: hence the formulas that crowd the pages of logic texts—those squiggles and spacings. According to metaphysical spatialism, mind and language are both upshots of space as the fundamental stuff of the universe.[2] So, logic is an amalgam of two aspects of space—its own logical structure and the structure of the human mind as it has evolved under conditions of spatial life. The real essence of logic is space in its manifold guises. There would still be logical facts if there were no language and mind, though there would not be logic as we currently think of it. It is the same with geometry: there would be geometrical facts without human minds, though the subject of geometry would not exist under those circumstances. In logical reality, it would still be true that no object can both be in a place and not be in it, but the discipline of logic—what is taught in schools—would not exist (there would be no logical statement of the law of noncontradiction). However, language by itself cannot produce logical facts; it needs space to confer logic on it (and on the world). This is the killer: logic requires space in order to have any reality, because all of reality is ultimately composed of space–in particular, matter and mind are so composed. Logic makes claims about reality, and reality is basically spatial; it turns out that its truths reflect that reality. The logic of space is logic; there is no other logic. Conceptually, it is like this claim: H2O is water; there is no other water. The logic of the world is logic—there is no other logic. Reality’s logic is logic’s reality.

Look at it this way: what else could logic consist in? If we insist on space-logic dualism, we run into the following conundrum: how can logic and space (including matter and mind) be so well suited to each other? How come the logical world and the spatial-material-mental world fit so snugly together? If logic had an entirely separate source, we would expect a lack of fit: space over here, logic over there (each with its own creating deity). It would be a giant coincidence that logic describes concrete reality. But logic seems tailor-made for the spatial universe, as if created for it—by it. The spatial world suggests logic to the mind, if it is properly receptive; space isn’t logically neutral. Space is logical; once it is combined with language we get logical systems, construed as human creations. Space was also material and mental even before these realities showed themselves; the seeds were there before the big bang hit. According to metaphysical spatialism, space is the ultimate reality, the foundation of everything—everything. How could anything not be in space and made of spatial stuff? The only alternative is a non-spatial divine being (whatever that may be) as a source of being. But once we drop this fantasy and embrace cosmological naturalism, we reach the conclusion that space is the engine that brings it all about. That is why Platonism always ends up locating things in a quasi-space; for this is how we imagine universals and numbers to exist. Space is God, to put it bluntly. In any event, space-logic dualism faces a problem of interaction: how do the spatial world and the logical world mesh so tightly together? Does space have a pineal gland of some sort? Metaphysical monism is always superior from this point of view, and spatial monism looks like the way to go. Why has it not been thought of before? Because to the human eye space is an absence, an emptiness, a passive receptacle. But this is to overestimate the physical and metaphysical powers of the human visual system; better to go with the modern view and accept that space is an active medium, the root of all being. Space-matter dualism is a myth, a visual illusion. We need to unify matter and space—matter as knots in space anyone?—and when we do we get a brand new metaphysics. Even logic comes out as a spatial phenomenon (consciousness already went spatial). But this space is not the phenomenal space we see with our eyes; it may not even be fully intelligible to us. Nor is it identical with, or reducible to, the material universe as it emerged after the big bang, since that universe did not even exist at that explosive moment; but it is closely related to the matter that congealed in those early seconds, and to the form it took post-big bang. No doubt the space that now exists owes its nature to the primal space that preceded the big bang, so we have not left that reality completely behind. Perhaps when the universe cools down to absolute zero (or heats up tremendously) the original form of space will re-appear and look more capable of its remarkable feats. In any case, the present point is that space (plus language) constitutes the real essence of logic, appearances notwithstanding.

I have tried to keep this discussion at the ontological level without venturing an opinion about our knowledge of logic, though that inevitably creeps in. Now let me make some remarks about the epistemological question: how do we know logic? We know it by perceiving space and knowing our language. We see that certain things are necessarily true of the spatial world, particularly regarding motion, such as that solid objects cannot pass through other solid objects, and then we use our language (itself a product of space) to state certain logical truths. This introduces the subject-predicate grammatical form into logical cognition, which then influences the form of the formulas familiar from logic texts. That is, perception, particularly vision, makes certain possibilities and impossibilities evident to us, and we express the resulting knowledge in the grammatical forms of our language; thus, we concoct the formulas of standard logic. We combine spatial perceptual knowledge with grammatical knowledge to produce symbolic logical systems. For example, we see that every part of space is necessarily adjoined to another part of space, and this gives us the idea of entailment, when conjoined with a grasp of grammatical structure. Likewise, we understand moving from one place to another, and we then form the idea of moving from one proposition or sentence to another, by relying on our grasp of language. Thus, we construct a conception of logical space modeled on physical space. Space plays an indispensable role in the formation of logical concepts. Epistemology recapitulates ontology.[3]

[1] See my “Logic and Space”.

[2] See my “Space, Time, and Logic”.

[3] I keep thinking of Kant: he sensed the absolutely central role of space in the construction of reality, ontologically and epistemologically. Human sensibility is deeply spatial, but so is objective reality; indeed, the former is true because of the latter. It is strange that we ever stray from strict spatiality—why do we even seem to conceive of non-spatial things? Do other animals entertain such fantasies—aren’t they strict Kantians? Told of non-spatial entities, they respond, “Humbug, away with such nonsense!”—or words to that effect. Is it language that creates such strange ideas is us? Do we have a misguided propensity towards abstraction, suggested by words? I have the feeling that Mr. Spock is a strict spatialist; perhaps he instinctively thinks of the mind as a spatial thing, paceDescartes (but then he does have a very sophisticated conception of space). As to logic, he sees the link between logic and space quite clearly; only human emotion could obstruct such perception. In his mind, logic has reality just because space does: both are staring us in the face. He is not sentimental about logic. Here he sides with terrestrial beasts (and Immanuel Kant, the original Space Man).

Logic and Space

January 21, 2026/2 Comments/in Uncategorized/by admin

Logic and Space

There is a gleam in the eye of this metaphysician, or a glimmer of a gleam. Might logic be derivable from space? Then we would have a metaphysics based solely on space (assuming time can be regarded as a dimension of space).[1] By “logic” I don’t just mean the logical systems studied in university philosophy departments and elsewhere—propositional and predicate calculus (or even modal logic, tense logic, and the like). I mean the entire realm of what we call logical necessity (aka metaphysical necessity): anything consisting of necessary structure or necessary relations. So, I mean to be including, especially, geometry: and not just the academic subject but the actual form of space—its structure. Logic as it is typically studied today is really the logic of quantifiers and truth-functional connectives; I am talking about the logic of space (as we can speak of the logic of time, i.e., tense logic, or the logic of obligation, i.e., deontic logic)—necessary a prioritruths of space. So, my question is whether logic in this broad sense can be derived from the nature of space. Is space the ultimate cradle of necessity? More ambitiously: is space everything?

What are the basic formal properties of space? They are not difficult to discern: finite parts, infinite extension, inclusion, adjacency, impalpability, aggregation. Space is made up of regions that aggregate into adjacent spaces and form inclusive spaces; it is infinite as to extent and fine structure. We can view space as what is studied in geometry in the manner of Euclid: necessary or logical truths about spatial figures. This logical study is one of the earliest forms of logic as a human intellectual discipline—axioms, theorems, universal generalizations. The logic of reasoning is another form of logic in the broad sense, as is arithmetic (the logic of numbers), as is metaphysics and philosophy generally (the logic of reality as a whole). The current proposal, then, is that the logic of space is prior to all other forms of logic. How does this work? As follows: space is a logical structure; it consists of parts necessarily linked—fixed, unchangeable, discoverable a priori. You can infer that other regions exist from the existence of a given region, because one region entails others—and so on ad infinitum. Nothing can be (wholly) in one place and also in another; nothing can both be in a place and not be in it; everything is either in a place or not in that place. We speak naturally of logical space; possible worlds are laid out in logical space; propositions are conceived quasi-spatially. We think of necessity spatially—as existing everywhere, of one thing being included in another, of one thing following from another (as if tracking it through space). We implicitly recognize the affinity. Moreover, both space and logic are abstract not concrete, a matter of the intellect. When the child begins to grasp the structure of space, particularly its extent, this is mirrored in his grasp of the infinite power of logic—its ability to generate infinities. Every proposition entails and is entailed by an infinity of propositions, as every part of space entails an infinity of other parts of space. Logic, like space, is vast: there is the endless successor relation in mathematics and the endless adjacency relation in space. The necessities of space are hard necessities, like the necessities of logic. Logic is implicit in space; we don’t first have a logically neutral space to which we add necessities. Logic is already present in space. Space has a logical (necessary) nature—parts standing in logical relations to each other. Since material objects are themselves products of space, any logical features they possess derive from those of space. This isn’t to say that logic is reducible to physics; rather, physics (the theory of material objects) is up to its neck in logic—in natural necessities. Space and logic are intertwined; thus, space has the resources from which what we call logic can be derived. Predicate calculus is an offshoot of space, de re and originally. Logic and space are coevals. Space is pregnant with logic. Therefore, we don’t need to supplement it with anything extraneous in order for logical necessity to exist. We might say: the world is the totality of spatial facts. All reality is preceded by and based upon an antecedent spatial reality (compare “all ideas derive from antecedent impressions”). This doctrine deserves to be called spatialism. It is intended as a metaphysical or ontological doctrine not an epistemological one, but there are obvious epistemological consequences of it; we may therefore speak of epistemological spatialism. It contrasts with both materialism and idealism, though it is closer to materialism (material objects are not fundamental in spatialism). All you need is space. Pan-spatialism. To be is to be spatial. Logical space is a by-product of physical space. Cue the gleam.

How do we get from spatialism about logic to standard metaphysical necessities and analytic necessities? Quite easily: the former concern necessities of material objects (progeny of space) and the latter arise from meaning and language that depend on human beings and their brains (minds). For example, the necessity of “bachelors are unmarried males” has its origins in necessities of space; indeed, we speak of inclusion in both cases (the meaning of “bachelor” contains the meaning of “male”). Meaning takes its rise ultimately from space, like everything else, and its necessities reflect the necessities of space—the most basic necessities of all. Space is woven into everything, because space is the foundation of everything. No space, no nothing; with space everything. All is vacuum, as a pre-Socratic might put it. Because space is not pure nothingness; space is an existent thing with real potential—a living thing, we might say. It has a nature, a real essence, a mode of being. It preceded the big bang, cosmologically, and underwent a transformation (this is the cosmology of metaphysical spatialism). It may not have looked much like the space we see around us every day (it had no matter in it to start with—no particles, no solid objects). But we can designate it now without knowing anything much about it then (“that stuff”). It had the seeds of everything built into it—matter, mind, and logic. The religious-minded might well identify this amazing stuff with God; the secular-minded will see just a mysterious natural substance of unknown origin. The important point is that it has the potential to generate all that we see today, according to the spatialist creed. Can that creed be verified? Probably not. Can it be falsified? Not in any obvious way. But it can be a gleam in the metaphysician’s eye, or the glimmer of a gleam. On purely aesthetic grounds, it scores highly.[2]

[1] See my “Space, Time, and Logic”. The present paper goes for an even more exiguous foundation. The view might be called “non-reductive spatialism”.

[2] Like all paradigm shifts, this one is hard to take in, to comprehend. The intuition behind it, Kantian in spirit, is that space is the form of everything intelligible (and unintelligible): material objects, minds, and logical necessities. In the beginning was the place. What other kind of being could there be? Even the abstract partakes of a spatial flavor—numbers, propositions, platonic forms. This is the form of all intentionality, and all reality. Not matter, not mind: these are but aspects of the spatial. If it helps, think of it in evolutionary terms: all life has its origins in a single life-form, modified and yet preserved. Well, space was the original life-form of the cosmos, modified yet preserved. Logic itself is an expression of this basic reality. The Force, as invoked in Star Wars, is really space in its most primitive and elusive form—what lies behind everything, the source of all potency (and poetry). It is what mysticism is gesturing at, however ineptly. Consciousness itself is an expression of space (the real essence thereof). The metaphysical spatialist is simply trying to put the pieces together into one big picture, a unifying reality. If he speaks somewhat in riddles and paradoxes, we must forgive him; he is only trying to make sense of it all. Atomism once sounded speculative and bizarre but is now a commonplace; maybe the same will one day be true of spatialism. Sober truth can arrive mysteriously clothed.

On What It’s Like

January 20, 2026/10 Comments/in Uncategorized/by admin

On What It’s Like

It has become orthodox to state the mind-body problem using the locution “what it’s like”. Consciousness is defined as there being something it’s like. Pain is conscious because there is something it’s like to be in pain (it feels a certain way). I will argue that this is neither necessary nor sufficient; it is also very obscure. We would be better off without it. In fact, it turns out to be more or less vacuous, a mere meme (to put it harshly). Let’s start with an intuitive point; then we will get more analytic. The intuitive point is that the locution only applies to a subset of conscious states—roughly, sensations. There is something it’s like to feel pain and pleasure, to experience tastes, to see colors, hear sounds, and feel shapes; but there is nothing it’s like (no way it feels) to have thoughts, know things, have goals, intend to act, introspect. I don’t think if we began our inquiry with these latter states of consciousness, we would ever have come up with the what-it’s-like formula. If a person had the equivalent of blindsight for every sense, and hence no sensations in the ordinary sense, he could still be conscious—by thinking, knowing, wanting, intending, introspecting. Why is this? We might turn to the comparative use: pain, say, is like some other sensations and unlike others. Suppose someone had never been in pain and wanted to know what pain feels like; we might reply, “Well, it is a bit like tasting hot peppers—it’s intense, unpleasant, and you want it to stop; quite unlike tasting something sweet or hearing a pleasant melody”. In the same way, seeing red is like seeing orange and unlike seeing blue. These are perfectly meaningful statements, and they have an established use; we might hope that the philosophical use could piggyback on this use. Then, we might go on to suggest that to be exactly like pain a mental state would have to be a pain (ditto for a particular kind of pain, e.g., throbbing). Thus, what it’s like to experience pain is to have a mental state of pain—nothing else will do, though other mental states may approximate. To be a pain (etc.) is to be like…a pain. So, haven’t we found a good sense for “what it’s like”? There are two problems with this approach. First, the same is true of mental states that intuitively there is nothing it’s like to have—ones unlike bodily sensations. Thoughts about philosophy are more like thoughts about physics than they are like desires for a biscuit, and a thought can be exactly like itself. Second, such comparisons apply outside the mental realm, as when we say that one metal is like another but unlike a non-metal. So, we have not captured what it consists in to be conscious.

Can this be fixed? There is an obvious move: to be conscious is to be similar to a sensation, sensations being paradigms of consciousness. To be conscious a state must be like a sensation: this comparison must hold. And now we see the problem: this presupposes the concept of a conscious sensation; we are using the concept of sensation to explain what what-it’s-likeness is. We could do that, but then we are assuming that all consciousness is sensational consciousness; we are assuming that all conscious states are, or involve, sensations. But surely that is not true; sensations are a subset of conscious states not the general essence of them. The what-it’s-like-locution is presupposing that all consciousness is the consciousness that sensations have. The OED defines “sensation” as “a physical feeling or perception resulting in something that happens to or comes into contact with the body”. Surely, there are many conscious states that do not involve such feelings. The philosopher is stretching the word “sensation” if he asserts that all conscious states are literally sensations. Some are and some aren’t. Notice that other attempts to define the notion of consciousness do not suffer from this problem; they have the requisite generality. Thus, definitions in terms of intentionality, privacy, or first-person authority; or definitions that say that consciousness is a cluster concept made up of several notions loosely linked. It is hard to devise a suitably general definition of consciousness, and the what-it’s-like definition stumbles on this reef. We can give examples of consciousness by citing sensations and what they are like, but this won’t give us a general definition applicable to all conscious phenomena. It follows that we can’t formulate the mind-body problem as the problem of explaining what-it’s-like in terms of facts that there is nothing it’s like (brain states, say). The problem isn’t simply the explanation of sensations; this is just one part of the problem. Also, the what-it’s-like locution turns out to be either completely mysterious or equivalent to simple talk of sensations—to being similar to a sensation. This is why people so readily resort to saying that consciousness is a feeling (a feeling where?). That would make the mind-body problem into the problem of explaining feelings.

Why do we talk this way to begin with? Why do we say there is something it’s like to be a sensation but not a thought or item of knowledge? I don’t know; it is something of a puzzle. But I can imagine how such a use got started: we want to know what a given sensation is similar to (is like) because we are wondering whether to seek out such sensations ourselves—but this is not true of other types of mental state. Thus: should I taste this new fruit, say a pineapple? I ask someone who has tasted a pineapple what it tastes like. He tells me it tastes like a grapefruit only sweeter. This gives me some idea, if I am familiar with the taste of grapefruits. I bite into the pineapple. We are naturally interested in the sensations various stimuli produce and we can gain information about this by being informed of similarities to sensations with which we are already familiar. This is not so for other kinds of mental states like thoughts and wishes. The language game of discussing and evaluating sensations has a place for the “like” locution, and philosophers pick it up and (mis)use it for their own purposes. And it is certainly true that if a given mental state is like a sensation, it will a conscious state—though this is not a necessary condition of being a conscious state.

I now want to ask whether the formula is sufficient: is every state S such that, if there is something it is like to have S, S must be a conscious state? Perhaps surprisingly, that is not so—and in a rather obvious way. This is bad news for the what-it’s-like criterion of the conscious. For consider: there is something it is like to have the brain state of one’s C-fibers firing. If your C-fibers are firing, you are in a state there is something it is like to be in, namely pain. C-fiber firing is sufficient for pain what-it’s-likeness, either by identity or lawlike correlation. Yet C-fiber firing is not in itself a conscious state (unless you are an outright identity theorist). The concept C-fiber firing is not a what-it’s-like concept—unlike the concept pain. But it gets worse: there is also something it’s like to have a pin stick in your hand, but this is clearly not itself a sensation with a what-it’s-likeness attached. And the same goes for a great many bodily states and even external stimuli. It is a conceptual truth that pain feels a certain way, but it is not a conceptual truth that C-fiber firing feels a certain way; so, the alleged definition fails. In other words, many physical states are not sensations, though they are sufficient to produce sensations. These physical states are not like (comparative use) sensations.

What should we conclude? It became fashionable a few decades ago to bandy about the phrase “what it’s like” (thanks to the good work of Brian Farrell, Timothy Sprigge, and Thomas Nagel[1]), and there is no denying its heuristic value. But as a strict definition it leaves a lot to be desired (and was it ever intended as a strict definition?). Other definitions also proved unsatisfactory (or unfashionable): intentionality, privacy, incorrigibility, subjective point of view, higher-order belief, nothingness, etc. Perhaps we do better to rely on a cluster of criteria to guide our thoughts and forgo strict definition. I think that we don’t really know what consciousness is—that is, we have no articulable discursive conception of consciousness (we know it by acquaintance alone). This means we don’t know what the mind-body problem is (in that sense of “know”), construed as the consciousness-brain problem. There is no shame in that and it need not hamper our efforts (do you think physicists know what matter is, or energy?). Still, it is always wise to be aware of the limits of our definitions. Intuition is not the same as insight.[2]

[1] The history of the phrase is of some interest. It was first used by Farrell in his 1950 paper in Mind (the year of my birth), “Experience”, but it made no discernible impact; Nagel informs us in The View From Nowhere that he had read the article but forgot Farrell’s use of the phrase that he (Nagel) later made famous—so it made no real impact on him either (!). Sprigge employed it in 1971 three years before Nagel’s “What is it Like to be a Bat?”, but again no impact. I never heard the phrase used in Oxford when I was a student there (1972-1974). I don’t believe it took off even after Nagel’s paper, not for a while anyway. I have never made heavy use of it in my own writings on the mind-body problem, though it seems to work in getting the problem across to students. Why the neglect? I think the answer is fairly obvious: it just isn’t a very penetrating or theoretically useful phrase. It can serve an introductory purpose, but you don’t want place too much weight on it. This is why it didn’t catch fire immediately, way back in 1950. I succeeded Brian Farrell as Wilde Reader in Mental Philosophy at Oxford in 1985, so I am trying to bury a phrase he is responsible for introducing 75 years ago. I rather doubt that my opposition to it will catch on quickly either, so entrenched has the phrase become. The slowness of the philosophical mind.

[2] Several philosophical problems are like this: we know more about the problem than we can say. This is because knowledge comes in two forms—roughly, by acquaintance and propositionally. I think this is particularly true in ethics, but also in epistemology (skepticism) and philosophy of perception (sense-data theories and naïve realism). Some people are better than others at seeing the problem, though no better at stating it. It would be nice to be able to say more about this subject.

Reduction Redux

January 16, 2026/0 Comments/in Uncategorized/by admin

Reduction Redux

I have been too harsh on reductionism; it really isn’t such a bad thing, correctly understood. It all depends on the kind of reduction. Materialist reduction has given it a bad name, because it is just not plausible (as typically formulated anyway). The OED defines “reduce” as “make or become smaller or less in amount, degree, or size”. That would apply to materialism because it makes the world smaller by reducing everything to the physical: one thing is less than two things. But it also reduces the mind to something it is not—and that is the problem, not the sheer reduction. Even if there were as many kinds of matter as kinds of mind, or even more, it would still be objectionable. If the materialist announced that there are twice as many kinds of mental state than we thought, because of the greater variety of physical states correlated with mental states, that would not lessen its implausibility. This would expand not reduce the quantity of mental states, but the trouble is that the nature of mental states is not capturable by physical states. Reduction is okay; bad reduction isn’t. Reductionism is not intrinsically bad. We already knew this: nobody recoils at reducing water to H2O or heat to molecular motion, even though we have reduced the world from two natural kinds to one in each case. Newton reduced terrestrial and celestial motion to a single kind of motion (with tidal motion thrown in), thereby reducing the number of forces in the world; but that is fine because his theory is sound. It is the same for Darwin’s reduction of animal species to animal varieties, thus reducing the number of ways animals can differ; we don’t need another explanation to explain the origin of species. One is a special case of the other. Reductions can be good, illuminating, and true. Reductionism is perfectly acceptable in its place. One man’s reductionism is another man’s theoretical unification.

There are some harder cases. Was Berkeley a reductionist? True, he reduced the number of basic entities in the world from two to one (matter and mind); but he introduced God into the empirical world and rejected mechanism as a theory of mental causation. He expanded ontology while also contracting it. One might object that his theory is false to the nature of matter, but that is not the fault of his reductionism per se. The trouble with reductive idealism is not that it is reductive but that it doesn’t correctly capture what it tries to reduce. What if he tried to reduce everything, including us, to the contents God’s mind? That is highly reducing, but it doesn’t strike us as failing to do justice to our nature, as materialism does. For the contents of God’s mind can be arbitrarily expansive; putting us in there doesn’t do violence to our evident nature. Is Russell’s theory of descriptions reductive? Yes, in that it replaces definite description with quantifiers, thus reducing the number of primitive expressions; but it doesn’t elicit the response that it is untrue to the meaning of “the”. By contrast, Thales’ “All is water” seems incredibly reductive, because so homogenizing—while “All is atoms” seems quite reasonable. Did we reduce Hesperus to Phosphorus? Yes and no: we got rid of one thing by identifying it with another, but it would be weird to say we reduced Hesperus to Phosphorus (why not the other way about?). Did we reduce stars (some of them) to planets? Did we reduce the Moon to a barren satellite of Earth? Is the true justified belief theory of knowledge a reduction of knowledge? Does the truth conditions theory of meaning count as a reduction of meaning? What about the image theory? Is possible worlds semantics a reduction of modal notions? Etc. These questions seem futile; the only issue is whether the theories in question are plausible. Say what you like about reduction; truth is what matters. The whole idea of reductionism seems empty and pointless. Is it good or bad? It depends, and anyway the real question is independent of that. The idea of reduction should not play a role in the relevant discussions. Certainly, it is not inherently a derogatory term. There are nice ones and nasty ones, that’s all.

What about the idea of irreducible entities? Suppose I say that colors are irreducible: they are not physical properties or dispositional properties or mental properties, but simple primitive properties in their own right. They have no analysis, no hidden structure, no real essence—they are what they are and no other thing. Isn’t that pretty reductive? I am denying them complexity, depth, an underlying nature. I am saying they are lessthan other properties, not as complicated, more one-dimensional. What if colors were traditionally regarded as like natural kinds with a hidden real essence—wouldn’t it seem reductive to say that they are no such thing but entirely superficial? Wouldn’t that be received as denying them their due as natural kinds? What if we said the same thing about water? It depends on expectations. If I said that colors are like primitive simple sensations with no further reality than their appearance, wouldn’t that sound reductive—surely colors have some sort of hidden nature. How do they become attached to objects along with size and shape? Don’t they need something to tie them down to material things, as physical properties and dispositions do? Irreducibility claims can sound pretty reductive in their way, because they deny depth.[1]

Here is a final tricky case. Suppose I grow suspicious of the soul as depicted in religious discourse (immaterial, immortal, possibly disembodied, supernatural). I propose that the soul is reducible to the person, construed as a psychophysical entity or as ontologically primitive. Then someone comes along and argues that the person is really reducible to psychological connectedness, calling himself a reductionist about persons.[2] But then this is deemed suspect because too divorced from the animal nature of persons; it is proposed that human beings are (just) animals of a certain biological species. And then it is suggested that even the concept of animal is too divisive; better to speak of “organisms” so that we don’t draw too sharp a line between animals and other living beings (worms, amoebas, bacteria, plants). But that is thought not quite reductive enough: isn’t an organism reducible to a collection of organs? Thus, the soul is reducible to the organs of the body. Is the concept of reduction doing any useful work here? Isn’t it introducing merely verbal quibbles into the discussion? The real question is whether any of these identifications are true. Asking whether they are “reductionist” cuts no ice. The term has outlived its usefulness. Being a reductionist is neither good nor bad in itself, merely meaningless; similarly, for being an anti-reductionist. It is more rhetoric than ratiocination.[3]

[1] What if I said there is nothing more to the ocean than its surface—a primitive property?

[2] This was Derek Parfit’s own self-description.

[3] And yet it has dominated philosophy of mind for lo these many years. You are either a reductionist or an anti-reductionist. I might be described as a “mysterian reductionist”, but how does that differ from believing that mental states have an unknown nature? It certainly isn’t the same as saying that mental states are less than they seem.

Sensible

January 16, 2026/2 Comments/in Uncategorized/by admin

Hi Colin:

Happy New Year!

As you know, I’m a fan of your blogs, save them all. Two I find especially relevant for the Landscape of Consciousness, as they are original and insightful, and encourage new ways of thinking. I took each of the blogs and framed them in Landscape style, using your words as quotes, and giving the references and URLs (and footnotes).

https://loc.closertotruth.com/theory/mcginn-s-brain-perception

https://loc.closertotruth.com/theory/mcginn-s-living-consciousness

If you’d like any changes, edits, etc, very easy to do – please send me a redline or notes.

You now have three theories/positions on the Landscape. The only other person to have three is Dennett. (Several others have two.)

Warm regards,

Robert

Living Landscape of Consciousness

January 16, 2026/0 Comments/in Uncategorized/by admin

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Home / Materialism / Phylogenetic/Evolutionary / McGinn’s Living Consciousness

McGinn’s Living Consciousness

Elementary consciousness does not exist in all things, but it does exist in all organic things. The mind is confined to animate things. There are traces of it in all living tissue, but none in anything else. The mind is pan-biological but not pan-physical. Organic tissue is prone to developing mentality, but the same is not true of inorganic objects. Being organic is a precondition of consciousness; it disposes things to having minds in the full sense.

McGinn’s Living Consciousness

Philosopher Colin McGinn hypothesizes that “elementary consciousness does not exist in all things, but it does exist in all organic things.” He rejects panpsychism as “the doctrine that elements of mind exist in all physical things, down to atoms and their constituents” because “we don’t see inanimate things tending towards mentality, despite their alleged quota of it,” stressing, “The mind is confined to animate things.” He asserts, “There are traces of it in all living tissue, but none in anything else. The mind is pan-biological but not pan-physical. Organic tissue is prone to developing mentality, but the same is not true of inorganic objects.” (McGinn, 2025e, following).

McGinn’s “Living Consciousness” theory states, “Being organic is a precondition of consciousness; it disposes things to having minds in the full sense. We don’t know how or why, but that seems to be the natural trend. Organic tissue is mysterious in this way. In the brain, organic tissue reaches its mental apotheosis, while rocks remain sub-mental. There is proto-mentality in your feet, a faint throb of what can become a full-fledged mind. It is the organic animal body that provides the cradle of mentality.”

McGinn works to undermine panpsychism. “We already know that not everything contains mentality in some form, even for the staunchest panpsychist. Not numbers or empty space or universals or the Good or geometric forms; mentality can’t live just anywhere.” Can the panpsychist explain why, McGinn asks? “Not that we have heard,” he responds rhetorically. His point is to refute the claim that the pan-biologist is being arbitrarily selective, “whereas the pan-physicalist is free of that vice.” Both, he says, “are selective in their own way. In fact, there is room for all sorts of restrictions on the general form of the doctrine of mental ubiquity: you might say atoms have mentality but not the elementary particles that compose them, or only physical things of a certain size and mass, or only organic tissue of certain sorts (not bone, say), or only tissue that has blood flowing through it. It is an empirical question. The evidence is that mentality is associated only with the organic—the correlation is unmistakable. It is a matter of detail precisely where it finds a home. The picture is that matter undergoes a kind of revolution in forming animal bodies, the result of which is the upsurge of consciousness of varying types and degrees. There is nothing simple or all-or-nothing about this.”

McGinn probes the point. “Could some types of biological tissue be closer to overt consciousness than other types of tissue–more packed with the stuff? Is it the amount of blood being pumped through it? Is consciousness blood-consciousness? Blood does seem remarkable in its powers and curious in its composition. There is no consciousness at all in hair and fingernails but plenty in the heart and lungs, according to this view. Is some neural tissue more charged with consciousness than other neural tissue, given that some is conscious and some is not? Is the heart more conscious than any other organ of the body except the brain?”

McGinn, enjoying his speculations, muses, “Fanciful, no doubt, but are such speculations beyond all reason? What would we discover if we had a consciousness microscope? Given the general shape of panpsychist doctrines, all sorts of possibilities present themselves. I rather fancy the idea of a consciousness hierarchy existing in the body, with the liver at the bottom and the brain at the top—with hair and fingernails not even in the running. Perhaps there is a correlation between organic complexity and degree of consciousness (or proto-consciousness)—whatever we might mean by complexity. It’s all terribly mysterious, no doubt, but is it beyond the possibilities of nature? Nature has surprised us many times and continues to do so. So, I suggest exploring the varieties of panpsychism and entertaining the idea of a panpsychism confined to the organic world. Doesn’t it feel right to limit mentality to the organic? We have underestimated the discontinuity between the animate and inanimate” (McGinn, 2025e).

McGinn concludes with a meta-self-reflection, “I freely admit I am venturing out on many limbs here, with analytic philosophy left far behind. So be it.”

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Home / Materialism / Relational / McGinn’s Brain Perception

McGinn’s Brain Perception

Consciousness is perceiving your own brain. This isn’t because all consciousness is a brain state; it’s because all consciousness is brain perception. Consciousness is brain awareness—awareness of the brain. All consciousness is consciousness-of… the brain. This can be stated as an identity theory: mental states are identical to perceptual states of brain awareness.

Colin McGinn

Philosopher

Colin McGinn is a British philosopher known for his work in the philosophy of mind, especially his theory of “new mysterianism” regarding consciousness. He has taught at Oxford and Rutgers and has authored over 20 philosophical books. His blog is a masterpiece of philosophical insights — https://www.colinmcginn.net/blog/.

McGinn’s Brain Perception

Philosopher Colin McGinn says he is “going to adumbrate a new theory, quite an eye-stinging one. It says that you perceive your own brain.” Consciousness is perceiving your own brain. This means, to be more specific, “pain is the perception of C-fibers firing. It isn’t C-fibers firing themselves, but the perception of that.^[1]The relation between pain and C-fibers is like that between seeing a dog and the dog: they are numerically distinct and yet closely entwined. The sensation of pain has a perceptual object and it’s in the brain. And not just pain: visual sensations, too, are perceptions of brain states (perturbations of the occipital cortex). When you see a dog, you also see your brain, or a bit of it. In fact, all consciousness is brain perception” (McGinn, 2025f, following).

Even all thinking, McGinn says, “is perceiving (sensing) your own brain. This isn’t because all consciousness is a brain state; it’s because all consciousness is brain perception. To put it with maximum provocativeness, consciousness is brain awareness—awareness of the brain. All consciousness is consciousness-of… the brain. This can be stated as an identity theory: mental states are identical to perceptual states of brain awareness. I don’t say only such awareness; rather, they are brain perception plus awareness of other things (if they have intentionality, that is). They have a kind of double intentionality: of the out-there and the in-here. You sense your environment and you sense your own body in the person of the brain. You have a dual awareness. If your mental states are states of your brain, then we can say that your brain senses itself: pain, say, is a state of your brain that is identical to a perception of your brain. On the other hand, if pain is a state of an immaterial substance, then it is a state of an immaterial substance that is identical to a perception of your brain. Thus, your mind has a relational structure: it stands in the relation of perceiving to your brain—as well as to other objects. If you have a tactile relational perception of an external object, you also have a tactile relational perception of your brain (the tactile part of it)—you touch your own brain, to put it crudely.^[2]

McGinn addresses what one might sense as an obvious problem with his theory: “people can have minds without knowing much if anything about brains. For surely, we don’t perceive anything as a brain when we enjoy ordinary experiences. I don’t feel that my C-fibers are firing when I am in pain. But that is not what the brain perception theory says; it says only that I am aware of my brain, not that I am aware that my brain is doing such-and-such. The awareness is de re not de dicto: it is true of my brain that I am aware of it—not that I am aware of it under a brain description. Perceptual statements have a de re/de dicto ambiguity, and the brain perception theory endorses only the de re reading. You can be conscious of something x that is actually F without being conscious that x is F. Compare ordinary visual perception: you can see (be looking at) an object that is in fact a block of atoms without seeing it as a block of atoms. We are aware ofcollections of atoms all the time but not as collections of atoms. We can be aware of objects that satisfy all manner of descriptions without knowing these descriptions or otherwise mentally representing them…. Thus, the brain perception theory is only claiming that we have de re perceptions of our brain states; it isn’t that we get mental images of our brain whenever we have an experience—or that our brains even cross our minds” (McGinn, 2025f).

How does McGinn defend the idea that the relation between mind and brain is one of perception? “One reason is that we get a nice uniform account of the nature of the mind: all mental phenomena are perceptions of the brain—this is what they are (the essence of the natural kind)… But second, and more subtly, it is part of the phenomenology of experience to sense an inner reference: we feel that our mental states are somehow inner. We certainly don’t feel them as outer, and I don’t think we are neutral on the question; we feel that they belong with us, internally. I don’t think my mental states might be outer; they strike me as definitely inner. But what kind of inner?”

McGinn sets a contrast with the “inner” as “an immaterial substance—the Cartesian ego.” If that were so, he says, “we would be in a perceptual relation to the states of such a substance, according to the perceptual theory of the mind. But we have discovered that it is the brain that houses and services the mind, so that entity is a better choice of perceptual object. If mental states are perceptions of something internal, as they seem to be, then the brain is the best candidate.”

Going further, McGinn asks, “But why suppose that these objects are perceived? That turns on what perception is, a question hitherto left dangling. The answer, I suggest, is that perception is basically a matter of a response to a stimulus—an action of registration or tracking or indicating. The mind is tracking the brain, recording its doings; the two are reliably correlated. The mind, we might say, senses the presence of the brain; not de dicto, to be sure, but de re. The brain causes the mind to respond in certain ways, such that you can read one off from the other. The mind perceives the brain in the sense that it is sensitive to what the brain is up to—as the senses are sensitive to what the environment is up to. To a well-informed intelligence, the mind would provide information regarding the brain. The mind senses changes in the brain, but only as changes in something internal, not as neurological changes—which they actually are.”

Assuming this idea sinks in, McGinn argues that “it seems very natural to speak of the mind as perceiving the brain; it is keeping tabs on the brain, resonating to its activities, albeit in a sort of code. Consciousness acts like a secret code for the brain, a kind of translation. The brain is encoded in the mind, as the external world is encoded in sensory experience. Thus, it is natural to speak of mental states as perceptions of the brain—ongoing (partial) reports on it. Pain is the code word for C-fibers firing, if only we could crack the code.^[3]If one day we manage to decode the code, we will naturally think of our experiences as messages from the brain; and we might become very adept at this and regard consciousness as we now regard vision in relation to the environment. The concept of perception is fairly elastic, so we might find ourselves happily using it to talk about our states of mind (‘I felt my frontal cortex to be unusually active this morning’, ‘My hypothalamus feels slow today’). We might even become able to selectively attend to certain regions of the brain, as we can with our senses.”

According to McGinn, how should we think about a mental state? “It points in several directions. It points to the external world—this is intentionality: there is a dog over there. It points to the internal world of the brain—this is brain perception: my C-fibers are firing. It points to behavior—this is action: I am about to throw a ball. The mind is about things; it is brain-sensitive, and it is functionally active. Two of these features are very familiar to us. I am adding a third feature: it is brain-perceptive.”

McGhie concludes by finding it “fascinating that the mind is a window onto the brain, another way to ‘see’ the brain. When I see a tree, I can sense my brain fizzing away just below the surface (or I fancy as much). I feel that I can focus on it, get to know it better. I feel closer to my brain now, less alienated from it. My phenomenology has shifted. I have become more brain-centered, existentially^[4](McGinn, 2025f).

Footnotes

[1] It should be noted that this theory is compatible with materialism: the act of perceiving C-fibers firing could be a brain state distinct from C-fibers firing. Pain would then be the brain state of perceiving the brain state of C-fibers firing—a kind of combination of the two.

[2] I say “touch” because a tactile sensation is arguably sufficient to qualify a sense as the sense of touch; you don’t need a physically touching body.

[3] We could devise a code in which causing you a (mild) pain acts as a sign that there is danger nearby. In terms of information theory, pain carries the information that one’s C-fibers are firing (makes it more probable).

[4] It is interesting to ask, in a science fiction spirit, what human life would be like if we knew the brain state corresponding to a given mental state, for all mental states. It would make our consciousness pretty jammed, I’m sure; maybe we are lucky not to perceive our brain in the de dicto way. It’s really best to minimize the content of consciousness for all practical purposes. There might I suppose be a brain pathology in which someone did have sensations of his brain when he experienced anything (The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Brain).

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Brain Perception

Colin McGinn Blog, December 24, 2025

https://colinmcginn.net/brain-perception/

Footnotes

[2] I say “touch” because a tactile sensation is arguably sufficient to qualify a sense as the sense of touch; you don’t need a physically touching body.