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Colin McGinn
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The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World Paperback – April 26, 2000

by Colin Mcginn (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars 35 ratings
Is consciousness nothing more than brain tissue, as Daniel Dennett argues in his best-selling Consciousness Explained ? Or, as others claim, is it a fundamental reality like space, time, and matter? In recent years the nature of consciousness -- our immediately known experiences -- has taken its place as the most profound problem that science faces. Now in this brilliant and thoroughly accessible new book Colin McGinn takes a provocative position on this perplexing problem. Arguing that we can never truly "know" consciousness -- that the human intellect is simply not equipped to unravel this mystery -- he demonstrates that accepting this limitation in fact opens up a whole new field of investigation. Indeed, he asserts, consciousness is the best place from which to begin to understand the internal make-up of human intelligence, to investigate our cognitive strengths and weaknesses, and to explore the possibility of machine minds. In elegant prose, McGinn explores the implications of this Mysterian position -- such as the new value it gives to the power of dreams and of introspection -- and challenges the reader with intriguing questions about the very nature of our minds and brains.
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  1. Print length
    256 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    April 26, 2000
  4. Dimensions
    5 x 0.65 x 8 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    0465014232
  6. ISBN-13
    978-0465014231
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"There is [no] better introduction to the problem of consciousness than this." -- New York Times

About the Author

Colin McGinn is Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University. He is author of several books, including The Character of the Mind; Moral Literacy; Minds and Bodies: Philosophers and Their Ideas; Ethics, Evil, and Fiction; and Mental Content.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Basic Books
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 26, 2000
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0465014232
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0465014231
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.6 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 0.65 x 8 inches
  • Best Sellers Rank: #905,590 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 out of 5 stars 35 ratings

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Colin McGinn

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Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
35 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

  • DonL2507
    5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding Introduction to the Mind-Body Problem
    Reviewed in the United States on May 13, 2018
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
    I am neither a neuroscientist not a philosopher, but Colin McGinn's clear and fascinating account of the issues surrounding the emergence of consciousness (human and otherwise) from a material world was a wonderful introduction for lay readers on this difficult topic. In this relatively short book McGinn addresses the mind-body problem and classifies himself as a "mysterian" or one who believes humans may never understand the mind-body relationship. The brain has "space" but the mind does not have any spatial elements, so how does the mind emerge from, and interact with, the brain? The two standard responses, which McGinn finds wanting, are materialism and dualism. Materialism simply denies that consciousness is non-spatial. As McGinn writes: "according to materialism, the mind is the brain, and since the brain is a three-dimension solid....then the mind is also a three-dimensional solid." In contrast, dualism states that the mind has no spatial dimensions; that it is, in McGinn's words, an "unextended substance" and totally distinct from the brain. McGinn rejects dualism because, as the vast majority of neuroscientists maintain, there has to be "some kind of" generative relation between mind and brain. McGinn doubts that mankind has the "cognitive capacity" to fully understand the mind-body mystery. He asserts that the selection pressures that built our brain over evolutionary time did not build a brain that could solve this problem. He adds, however, that we do mathematics and philosophy without any obvious selection pressures encouraging their development.

    I've read several neuroscientists who have identified neural patterns and locations in brain imaging studies using fMRI with selected conscious states. From these correlations the scientists express enthusiasm for eventually solving the mind-body problem. McGinn would observe that simply identifying the part of the brain that's getting a greater flow of energy and oxygen when the person being imaged is, say, looking at various objects gets us no further to identifying how energy and matter embedded in our skulls generate mental aspects such as subjective thoughts and introspection. McGinn proposes that conscious states have a "hidden nature" that allows them to arise from neural states. He states (p. 155): "The unknown properties of the brain that allow consciousness to emerge from it thus overlap with the hidden aspects of consciousness that allow it to be embodied in the brain. The principle of emergence coincides with the principle of embodiment." To me, this was a wonderful way of expressing the potential impenetrability of the mind-body problem.

    I've rated this book 5 stars, and although I'm a theist and not particularly amenable to materialism, and found parts of the book where I disagreed with the author, I'm not inclined to knock down the rating of such a well-written and lucid book, and one leavened with wry humor, just because I'm not onboard with the author. He definitely made me want to explore these issues further.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Hank
    5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
    Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2017
    Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
    Good pop book.
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  • ZEERUK
    4.0 out of 5 stars Good thesis but over generalized
    Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2012
    Format: Paperback
    Some Consciousness thinkers believe that consciousness is the function of brain and it is just the matter of time that we will be able to explain consciousness through the workings of brain. Others believe that consciousness can never be explained by understanding the brain because it is metaphysical. Colin McGinn's approach is unique in this regard as he believes that consciousness is the function of brain but at the same time claims that we will not be able to understand that how brain produces consciousness. The reason is that we are cognitively closed to understand this process.Mcginn's coined the term `cognitive closure' for this restriction from nature. According to him consciousness is not a complicated phenomenon but we don't have the proper instrument in our minds to understand it. His thesis is good but he over generalized it to other concepts such as death, self etc.
    it would be unfair to regard consciousness forever unknowable. It would be fair to say that at present we are cognitively close to understand consciousness but for future one should remain agnostic. As a whole Colin's book is an interesting read because it is simple and informative.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Antony Raymont
    3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting that Mcginn, while saying that consciousness is unknowable ...
    Reviewed in the United States on August 6, 2015
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
    Interesting that Mcginn, while saying that consciousness is unknowable, presents no information fom spiritual traditions that have studied the issue for thousands of years.
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  • G'ma Frances
    5.0 out of 5 stars A bargain, On Time and As Ordered
    Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2005
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
    A Bargain, On Time and As Ordered - what more could I ask for?

    Amazon and it's contracted partners deliver their products WITH plenty of actual Customer Service, Thank You.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Jon Steiger
    5.0 out of 5 stars Hyperdualism: consciousness from a parallel universe.
    Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2000
    Format: Hardcover
    This book stands alongside of John Searle's The Mystery of Consciousness as one of the very best written about the subject of consciousness. Consciousness: What is it? How does it work? Where does it come from? These questions have been debated for several millennia. This book, as Searle's, struggles with these questions from a philosophical and scientific point of view, putting aside (as opposed to throwing away) the theistic lid put on the subject since antiquity. Searle approaches the subject of consciousness as an unwavering materialist. McGinn is a dualist. Dualism and materialism are to consciousness what the Creation Theory and Darwinism are to the origin of the species.
    Materialism says there is nothing more to the mind than the brain as currently conceived. The mind is made of meat. Materialists start from the assumption that consciousness is an ordinary biological phenomenon comparable with growth, digestion, or the secretion of bile and the mystery about the origin and functioning of consciousness exists because we have not yet learned enough about the brain which causes consciousness. Materialism might be called the "scientific" view of the mind.
    Dualism, Professor Searle instructs us, is a historical mistake arising from the seventeenth century when Descartes and Galileo made a distinction between physical reality measurable by science and the unmeasurable mental reality of the soul. (Searle notes there was some utility in the mistake as it kept religious authorities off the scientists' backs.) McGinn recognizes that dualism comes in different forms (he identifies "theistic dualism" as one such form and reserves judgment as to its validity). Dualism is interpreted by McGinn as "the belief that there is no logical relation between brain and mind. There is no possibility of reducing the mind to the brain, because they are separate realms. There are indeed empirical and contingent relations between the two---correlations between mental and physical processes have been discovered---but there is no necessary link between consciousness and the brain. Mind and brain run in parallel, like skis, but we cannot collapse the one into the other. They are distinct existences. The reason we cannot explain the mind by reference to the brain is simply that it is not essentially dependent upon the brain. Consciousness is an extra feature of the universe, as basic as space and time and matter themselves."
    Both McGinn's work and Searle's may be boiled down to the same essential statement: "I have no solution, but I do admire the problem." Neither throws their hands up in despair and each progresses, albeit from different points of view, to explore the nature of the consciousness-conundrum with exquisite clarity. Searle's book is a compilation of New York Times Book Review articles and therefore written for a somewhat sophisticated but non-technical audience. McGinn accurately describes his own style in the preface to his book by announcing that he has "relaxed his habitually cautious mode of academic exposition and goes straight to the heart of the big issues in plain, open language. . . . having written the book with the absolute minimum of jargon and technicality." The subject matter is complex, but neither book is difficult to read.
    There is a theory in theology, with which philologists agree, that the term "mystery" is concerned with that which "is revealed to us," as distinguished from problems which we "solve". Searle ultimately sees the mystery of consciousness as a problem to be solved. (Hence the title of his concluding chapter: "How to Transform the Mystery of Consciousness into the Problem of Consciousness.") McGinn argues, literally, "that the bond between mind and the brain is a deep mystery. It is an ultimate mystery, a mystery that human intelligence will never unravel. Consciousness indubitably exists, and it is connected to the brain in some intelligible way, but the nature of this connection necessarily eludes us."
    McGinn dismisses other protagonists in the field with whom he might have some disagreement in a lighthearted playful manner. This is particularly refreshing pause from the style of several other respected authors on the subject who often accuse those with whom they disagree as holding "absurd" views (Searle is among the guilty in this regard). Early in the book there is one broad swipe at the materialist in general, borrowed from another author's science fiction writing, that will bring any dinner table audience to hysterical laughter. (It involves intelligent aliens from outer space who travel to earth and discover -- to their astonishment and disgust -- that intelligent life exists here, but it's meat! "Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!" [Explorer to bewildered commander to whom he has just reported]: "Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you getting the picture?")
    I finished this book with the sense of elation that one gets when new avenues of the mind are opened or horizons are suddenly broadened. I am somehow left with a tingling sensation that -- just perhaps -- a prophetic clue to a powerful mystery has been revealed.
    10 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

  • emmcol
    4.0 out of 5 stars a bit of a damp squib
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 31, 2009
    Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
    First the good news: this book is free of jargon. It is written for the intelligent reader, not the professional philosopher, and its philosophy is probably better as a result.
    As for the content: the main point, that we are hard-wired not to understand consciousness, is almost self-evidently true, but he produces no rigorous argument for it. He successfully demolishes the materialist position (not too difficult), and adduces the standard arguments against Cartesian dualism, but cannot wrench himself away from the position that consciousness is generated only by organic brains. I think he comes nowhere near to proving this position. He admits that none of us can be absolutely certain that any other of us is conscious, so how can he categorically deny consciousness to a tree, an ant colony or a galaxy? His theory that consciousness somehow occupies a different dimension of space is vague in the extreme, and has a New Age feel to it. He draws the Big Bang into his argument, but demonstrates how enbarrassingly little he understands of what cosmologists mean by it. (He's quite entitled to disagree with the cosmologists, of course, but not to hijack and twist their terminology.)
    This book is worth reading, but take a pencil and write lots of ??? and !!! in the margin.
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