Customer Reviews

Mindsight: Image, Dream, Meaning

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I have no degree in philosophy, but, for an amateur, I am very well-read in the field. Colin McGinn is, along with John Searle, the clearest writer I know among analytic philosophers, and if you enjoy linear, logical, step-by-step writing, then you will find this book a pleasure to read, whether or not you find the subject of the book of great interest. McGinn states in the introduction that "the book should be accessible to non-philosophers (at least up to Chapter 10)," and it is, and even chapters 10 through 13, although more difficult, are not inaccessible to amateurs. My only caveat is that McGinn forgets that non-philosophers may not know the meaning of "intentional" in its philosophical sense; he uses the word repeatedly, so look it up before you begin the book if you're not familiar with it. There is a bit more jargon starting with chapter 10, and I wish that McGinn had explained the meaning of "modal."

As for the substance of the book, McGinn explains the difference between perception and imagination, and discusses which category phenomena such as dreams and hallucinations fall in. He starts by evicerating Hume's view that images are a weak form of perceptions; they are in fact animals of a different species. One cannot control one's perceptions, as one sees or hears what is presented to one, whereas one can control one's images, because one creates them. One can learn from one's perceptions, but one cannot learn from one's images, because, again, one creates one's images. One's perceptions exist in space (a particular distance from one's body), but one's images do not. And so on. McGinn also shows how images interact with perceptions, as when, for example, one perceives Wittgenstein's duck/rabbit drawing and imagines it either as a duck or a rabbit. And McGinn discusses how imagination consists not just of images, but of ideas, as in "X imagines that p" rather than "X imagines p."