Word: mcginnes
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...psychiatrist Allan Hobson, as well as many philosophers. Their answers have ranged from the optimism of Tufts University's Daniel Dennett, who says consciousness will one day be understood as nothing more complicated than a kind of biological software routine, to the outright pessimism of Rutgers University's Colin McGinn. He regards consciousness as "the ultimate mystery, a mystery that human intelligence will never unravel...
...though, Damasio admits he hasn't explained consciousness completely either. Perhaps, he muses, so-called mysterians like Rutgers' McGinn have it right, and a full understanding of consciousness and its origins--like that of life itself--will always elude us. But, he insists, "it's not justified to say we'll never understand consciousness just because there is an explanatory gap right now." Rather, he sees the quest as a beginning. The brain, he firmly believes, holds answers to questions that we have not yet even thought of asking...
...doing things set higher standards for those who worked around him; he brought out the best in us," said Noel McGinn, professor of Education at the Graduate School of Education and an Institute Fellow, emeritus at HIID...
...people who don't share Dennett's philosophical intuitions, these arguments may seem unintelligible. (It's one thing to say feelings are generated by the brain, which Chalmers and McGinn believe, but what does it even mean to say feelings are the brain?) Still, that doesn't mean Dennett is wrong. Some people share his intuitions and find the thinking of his critics opaque. Consciousness is one of those questions so deep that frequently people with different views don't just fail to convince one another, they fail even to communicate. The unintelligibility is often mutual...
Chalmers isn't a hard-core mysterian like McGinn. He thinks a solution to the consciousness puzzle is possible. But he thinks it will require recognizing that consciousness is something "over and above the physical" and then building a theory some might call metaphysical. This word has long been out of vogue in philosophy, and even Chalmers uses it only under duress, since it makes people think of crystals and Shirley MacLaine. He prefers "psychophysical...