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The Prudent Gene

March 13, 2021/9 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Colin McGinn

    The Prudent Gene   Humans are capable of two types of selfishness, the prudent kind and the imprudent kind. Imprudent selfishness is quite common: a glutton grabs the cake from someone else and gorges himself on it, much to his future detriment. The genes, however, do not go in for this kind of […]

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0 0 Colin McGinn Colin McGinn2021-03-13 15:31:212021-03-13 15:31:21The Prudent Gene

Addition and the Origin of the Human Mind

March 11, 2021/2 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Colin McGinn

    Addition and the Origin of the Human Mind   How did language and arithmetic evolve?  [1] It is natural to ask about both in the same breath because of certain broad similarities between the two, particularly regarding discrete infinity, recursive rules, and computation. It would be nice if a common feature could be revealed […]

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0 0 Colin McGinn Colin McGinn2021-03-11 14:38:012021-03-11 14:38:01Addition and the Origin of the Human Mind

Soiled, Torn, Dead

March 6, 2021/2 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Colin McGinn

    Soiled, Torn, Dead   Chapter 7, Part II, of Lolita is an extraordinarily powerful piece of writing, even by the standards of that work. This is the chapter that begins: “I am now faced with the distasteful task of recording a definite drop in Lolita’s morals”. In this chapter Humbert Humbert describes how […]

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0 0 Colin McGinn Colin McGinn2021-03-06 15:09:072021-03-06 15:09:07Soiled, Torn, Dead

Metaphysical Pluralism

March 5, 2021/1 Comment/in Uncategorized /by Colin McGinn

    Metaphysical Pluralism   I will discuss a question at the outer edge of human comprehension. Some metaphysical views are monist, some dualist, and some pluralist. Monist views include materialism and idealism; dualist views typically divide reality into the mental and the material; and pluralist views include a variety of disparate types of being. […]

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0 0 Colin McGinn Colin McGinn2021-03-05 14:23:462021-03-05 14:23:46Metaphysical Pluralism

A Paradox of Democracy

March 3, 2021/2 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Colin McGinn

A Paradox of Democracy   A democratic state could decide democratically to abolish democracy. The people have come to the conclusion the democracy is dysfunctional, tyrannical (of the majority), and inefficient, so they vote to replace it with something better. According to democracy, they have a right to do that, and indeed a duty. Not […]

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0 0 Colin McGinn Colin McGinn2021-03-03 17:01:342021-03-03 17:01:34A Paradox of Democracy

Potentiality

March 3, 2021/4 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Colin McGinn

  Potentiality   Potentiality is not the same as possibility. Potentiality is a kind of power or capacity; possibility is a way things could be. Someone might have the potential to become a concert pianist but this might not actually be a possibility because of circumstances (no pianos to practice on, no teachers, etc.). And […]

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0 0 Colin McGinn Colin McGinn2021-03-03 16:57:302021-03-03 16:57:30Potentiality

Puzzles of the Unconscious

February 18, 2021/8 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Colin McGinn

  Puzzles of the Unconscious   When was the unconscious mind discovered? The question makes sense in a way the comparable question about the conscious mind does not. The conscious mind was “discovered” when it came to exist, just by being conscious: being conscious and knowing one is conscious are inseparable. But that isn’t true […]

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0 0 Colin McGinn Colin McGinn2021-02-18 15:44:352021-02-18 15:44:35Puzzles of the Unconscious

Thinking and Speaking

February 13, 2021/6 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Colin McGinn

    Thinking and Speaking   Is thinking a type of speaking? There is a tradition that says it is: thinking as “saying in one’s heart”, the language of thought, voices in the head, thoughts as sub-vocal speech. The idea is that just as we produce outward speech by using our speech organs so we […]

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0 0 Colin McGinn Colin McGinn2021-02-13 12:36:202021-02-13 12:36:20Thinking and Speaking

Judas

February 11, 2021/3 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Colin McGinn

I’ve been wondering about Judas Iscariot recently. We are told he betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, a contemptible act. But what surprises me is that it took money to get him to betray Jesus, quite a bit of it. Surely it is more realistic to suppose that he did it for a much […]

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0 0 Colin McGinn Colin McGinn2021-02-11 04:27:032021-02-11 04:29:14Judas

A Linguistic Universal

February 10, 2021/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Colin McGinn

    A Linguistic Universal   We are familiar with claims of linguistic universality: the noun-verb form, recursive embedding, quantificational structure, adverbial modification, discrete infinity, and the like. I want to add a different kind of linguistic universal, one that is less syntactic than semantic: I call it “material plurality”. A natural language like English […]

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0 0 Colin McGinn Colin McGinn2021-02-10 16:06:182021-02-10 16:06:18A Linguistic Universal
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