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Colin McGinn (born 1950) is a British philosopher currently working at the University of Miami, after leaving Rutgers University following more than decade there. McGinn was educated in the fields of metaphysics and philosophy of mind, although he has written on subjects as diverse as ethics and its relation to fiction, and how movies interact with mind. His most accessible and perhaps his most famous book among the general public is his autobiography, The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey Through Twentieth-Century Philosophy (2002).

He has written many influential books on mind, perhaps most influentially The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World (2000). He is primarily known for promoting the view known as "New Mysterianism", which is a view in philosophy of mind that states that the human mind is fundamentally incapable of comprehending itself entirely. This is his explanation as to why we humans have had such difficulty understanding our own consciousness. McGinn's answer to the hard problem of consciousness is that humans are ultimately unable to find the answer.

Biography

Colin McGinn was born in 1950 in West Hartlepool, England. In 1968, he became the first McGinn to attend university as he enrolled in Manchester University to study psychology. However, by the time he received his degree in psychology from Manchester in 1971 (by writing a thesis focusing on the ideas of Noam Chomsky), he wanted to study philosophy as a postgraduate. By 1972, McGinn was admitted into Oxford University's B.Litt postgraduate program, in hopes of eventaully gaining entrance into Oxford's B.Phil. program (which, despite appearances, is a postgraduate program).

McGinn quickly made the transition from psychology to philosophy during his first term at Oxford. After working arduously to make the transition, he was soon admitted into the B.Phil program under the recommendation of his current advisor, Michael Ayers. Shortly after entering the philosophy program, he won the prestigious John Locke Prize in 1972. By 1974, McGinn received the B.Phil degree from Oxford, writing a thesis under the supervision of P.F. Strawson, which focused on the semantics of Donald Davidson (philosopher).

In 1974, McGinn took his first philosophy position at University College London. In January of 1980, he spent two semesters at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) as a visiting professor. Then, shortly after declining a job at University of Southern California (USC), he succeeded Gareth Evans (philosopher) as Wilde Reader at Oxford University. In 1988, shortly after a visiting term at City University of New York (CUNY), McGinn received a job offer from Rutgers University. He accepted the offer from Rutgers, joining ranks with, among others, Jerry Fodor in the philosophy department. McGinn stayed at Rutgers until 2006, when he accepted a job offer from University of Miami.

Work

Colin McGinn's work concerns various areas within the field of philosophy as well outside of it. In the discipline of philosophy, he has written primarily on philosophy of mind (especially consciousness and intentionality), metaphysics, Wittgenstein, epistemology, ethics, and logic. Arguably his best-known contribution to philosophy is his defense of New Mysterianism, the view that the human intellect is not equipped to solve the mind-body problem. McGinn perhaps most notably revealed the view in his 1989 article "Can We Solve the Mind-Body Problem?".

Outside of philosophy McGinn has written a fictional novel entitled The Space Trap (1992). Mcginn also writes numerous book reviews and even published a highly accessible philosophical autobiography, The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey Through Twentieth-Century Philosophy in 2002.

Books

A partial list of books by Colin McGinn:

• The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey Through Twentieth-Century Philosophy (2002). HarperCollins, ISBN 0060197927 (first edition). (Reprint edition, 2003, Harper Perennial, ISBN 0060957603.)
• Logical Properties: Identity, Existence,Predication, Necessity, Truth (2001). Oxford University Press, ISBN 0199241813.
• The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World (1999). Basic Books, ISBN 0465014224.
• Knowledge and Reality: Selected Papers (1998). Oxford University Press.
• Ethics, Evil and Fiction (1997). Oxford University Press.
• Minds and Bodies: Philosophers and Their Ideas (1997). Oxford University Press.
• Problems in Philosophy: the Limits of Inquiry (1993). Blackwell.
• The Space Trap (1992). Duckworth.
• Moral Literacy: Or How To Do The Right Thing (1992). Duckworth, 1992; Hackett, 1993.
• The Problem of Consciousness (1991). Basil Blackwell.
• Mental Content (1989). Basil Blackwell.
• Wittgenstein on Meaning (1984). Basil Blackwell.
• The Subjective View: Secondary Qualities and Indexical Thoughts (1983). Oxford University Press.
• The Character of Mind (1982). Oxford University Press, 1982. (Second edition, 1997.)

Selected articles

A partial list of articles by Colin McGinn (emphasis on scholarly philosophical articles):

• "Another Look at Colour" (1996). Journal of Philosophy.
• "Consciousness and Space" (1995). Journal of Consciousness Studies.
• "The Problem of Philosophy" (1994). Philosophical Studies.
• "Must I Be Morally Perfect?" (1992). Analysis.
• "Conceptual Causation: Some Elementary Reflections" (1991). Mind.
• "Can We Solve the Mind-Body Problem?" Mind, 1989.
• "What is the Problem of Other Minds?" (1984). Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society.
• "Two Notions of Realism?" (1983). Philosophical Topics.
• "Realist Semantics and Content Ascription" (1982). Synthese.
• "Rigid Designation and Semantic Value" (1982). Philosophical Quarterly.
• "Philosophical Materialism" (1980). Synthese
• "An A Priori Argument for Realism" (1979). The Journal of Philosophy.
• "Single-case Probability and Logical Form" (1979). Mind.
• "Charity, Interpretation and Belief" (1977). The Journal of Philosophy.
• "Semantics for Nonindicative Sentences" (1977). Philosophical Studies.
• "A Priori and A Posteriori Knowledge" (1976). Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society.
• "A Note on the Frege Argument" (1976). Mind.
• "On the Necessity of Origin" (1976). The Journal of Philosophy.
• "A Note on the Essence of Natural Kinds" (1975). Analysis.
• "Mach and Husserl" (1972). Journal for the British Society of Phenomenology.

External links

• McGinn's Rutgers web page — includes biography and bibliography.
• McGinn on Faith & Reason — transcript of an interview with McGinn on the PBS program "Bill Moyer on Faith & Reason".
• Conscious Entities — information on McGinn's views on consciousness.
• Colin McGinn in ZhurnalWiki — a review of McGinn's autobiography.
• "Apes, Humans, Aliens, Vampires and Robots". In Paola Cavalieri & Peter Singer (eds.), The Great Ape Project, New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1993, pp. 146-151.
• The Atheism Tapes, program 1 — the transcript of an extended interview with Colin McGinn for the Jonathan Miller BBC TV series The Atheism Tapes.

Reference

• McGinn, Colin. (2002). The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey Through Twentieth-Century Philosophy. HarperCollins, ISBN 0060197927 (first edition). (Reprint edition, 2003, Harper Perennial, ISBN 0060957603.)

• 1950 births
• Living people
• 20th century philosophers
• 21st century philosophers
• Analytic philosophers
• Atheist philosophers
• British philosophers
• Philosophers of mind