The Problem of Consciousness: Essays Towards a Resolution / Edition 1

by Colin McGinn

Overview

Can consciousness be fitted into a naturalistic worldview or is it inherently mysterious? In virtue of what does a physical organism come to have an inner conscious life? This book argues that we are not equipped to understand the workings of conciousness, despite its objective naturalness. Introspection does not reveal the hiddent structure of consciousness and it is this that joins experience to the material world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780631188032
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	03/02/1993
Series:	Essays Towards a Resolution
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	228
Product dimensions:	6.01(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

Colin McGinn was formerly Wilde Reader in Mental Philosophy, Oxford University. He is the author of The Character of Mind (1981), The Subjective View (1982), Wittgenstein on Meaning (Blackwell, 1984) and Mental Content (Blackwell, 1989).

Table of Contents

Preface.

1. Can We Solve the Mind-Body Problem?.

2. Consciousness and Content.

3. Consciousness and the Natural Order.

4. The Hidden Structure of Consciousness.

5. Mental States, Natural Kinds and Psychophysical Laws.

6. Philosophical Materialism.

7. Functionalism and Phenomenalism: A Critical Note.

8. Could a Machine be Conscious?.

Index.

Editorial Reviews

"These essays provide a vivid introduction to current views in the philosophy of mind and to their immediate precursors ... an up-to-date, sophisticated and enjoyably tendentious account ... if you want to read somebody clever worrying about a problem that's worth somebody clever's worrying about, read The Problem of Consciousness." Jerry Fodor, London Review of Books

From the Publisher