When1: 1982
When2: 1999
Who: Colin McGinn [McGinn, Colin]
What: psychologist
Where: England
works\ Character of Mind [1982]; Subjective View [1983]; Mental Content [1989]; Problem of Consciousness: Essays Toward a Resolution [1991]; Mysterious Flame [1999]
Detail: Consciousness contents are either sensory or propositional. Sensory content is mental image or actual object. Propositional content is statement. Content is what people are aware of, rather than conscious state itself.
Perhaps, minds cannot understand or explain consciousness {mysterianism, McGinn}. People cannot perceive or conceive how brain can make consciousness. Thinking is always spatial but consciousness is non-spatial. People can only understand something if it has simpler parts, parts have relations and combine in specific ways, and combinations let properties emerge {Combinatorial Atomism with Lawlike Mappings} (CALM). Introspection is knowledge by acquaintance and needs no concepts or thinking. Introspection shows that consciousness is not spatial.
Perhaps, before universe origin, everything had no matter, mass, size, or shape. Perhaps, consciousness is about non-spatial-property worlds. Complex brains somehow enable recreating that reality.
Philosophical problems have four answer types: deflationary reductionism, irreducibility, magical, eliminativism (DIME).
Social Sciences>Psychology>History>Consciousness
6-Psychology-History-Consciousness
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Date Modified: 2022.0224