Colin McGinn

Colin McGinn a reader in philosophy at University College London, is soon to take up the position of Wilde Reader in Mental Philosophy at Oxford. He is the author of Wittgenstein on Meaning.

Letter

Old Scores

30 August 1990

In my review of A.J. Ayer’s The Meaning of Life, I made the point that postulating the existence of an afterlife to confer meaning on our mortal life is viciously regressive, since the question must arise as to the meaning of this alleged afterlife; and similarly for postulating God. I have since stumbled upon a passage in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus which must be making essentially the same point:Not...

Old Scores

Colin McGinn, 30 August 1990

When I was a quivering graduate student at Oxford in 1973, fresh from the Northern provinces, I sat for the John Locke Prize, a voluntary two-day examination for Oxford postgraduates in philosophy. As I had hitherto been a psychology student at Manchester, I thought this would be good practice for my upcoming B.Phil. philosophy exams. It was quite an ordeal (I nearly gave up at one point), and afterwards I felt I had a long way to go philosophically. A few days later Professor Ayer, who was one of the examiners, informed me that he had been obliged to require that my papers be typed, on account of their extreme illegibility: I would have to dictate them to a typist in the presence of an invigilator, both of whom I would have to pay. I apologised to him for my calligraphic delinquency and expressed some mumbled misgivings about going to all that trouble and expense, in view of my poor performance. To my surprise, he said he thought I was ‘worth it’, on what basis I am not sure. I therefore did as I was told, spending a couple of wincing days reading out my script to be converted into cold type. I really must improve my handwriting, I thought.

Homage to Education

Colin McGinn, 16 August 1990

Robin Collingwood (1889-1943) was born 17 years after Bertrand Russell and died 27 years before him. Given the style and content of Collingwood’s philosophical work, this fact ought to seem surprising. For there is no apparent mark of Russell’s influence, nor of those who influenced him, upon Collingwood’s own philosophical corpus. For better or worse, he stands apart – even aloof – from the British analytical tradition exemplified by Russell. Or perhaps for better and worse: better, because he thereby created a distinctive style of philosophy, in which history, not science (or formal logic), was the model and focus of interest; worse, because his own thought lacks some of the clarity and rigour and analytical depth of the ‘school’ he opposed, or ignored. Not for him the dry deductions of Russell’s Principia Mathematica: consciousness in history was what excited his interest.’

Reputation

Colin McGinn, 23 November 1989

Philosophical reputations come and go – they surge and gutter – according largely to the prevailing intellectual climate, and are only tenuously tied to the actual merits of the views put forward by the reputand in question. To have a reputation is to have something perishable and fleeting, an imposition from without, no sooner bestowed than withdrawn.

Letter

Keith’s Review

28 September 1989

Readers of Martin Amis’s London Fields may be interested in the following review, which recently came into my hands:Oi: top of his game innit. Touch of ‘genius’ as such. 180! 2000! Martin, words! Sincerity at the desk. Pen clinicism. Got me down to a tee like. That Nicky, phwhore!, I could murder that. Bull finish, no danger. Yeah cheers mate.I gather the review was rejected by the Sun Literary...

Avoiding Colin

Frank Kermode, 6 August 1992

Once there were popular books with titles like Straight and Crooked Thinking, books in which professional philosophers, avoiding arcane speculation, tried to make the rest of us more sensible by...

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Too hard for our kind of mind?

Jerry Fodor, 27 June 1991

Whatever, you may be wondering, became of the mind-body problem? This new collection of Colin McGinn’s philosophical papers is as good a place to find out as any I know of. Published over a...

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Putnam’s Change of Mind

Ian Hacking, 4 May 1989

Big issues and little issues: among established working philosophers there is none more gifted at making us think anew about both than Hilary Putnam. His latest book is motivated by large...

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An End to Anxiety

Barry Stroud, 18 July 1985

Wittgenstein predicted that his work would not be properly understood and appreciated. He said it was written in a different spirit from that of the main stream of European and American...

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Persons

Brian O’Shaughnessy, 1 April 1983

The philosophy of mind is a branch of the philosophy of nature. But it has this peculiarity, that the very item that conjures up its questions and vets its answers is the very part of nature...

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