Robbins Library Notes

Good morning, readers, and a happy Friday to you!

Regular readers may remember that I wrote a post about the Honderich/McGuinn feud earlier this year.  While browsing through Bookforum.com a few days ago, I found a link to an article that appeared earlier this year, in the Journal of Consciousness Studies:

Ross, J.A. (2008). Hitting on Consciousness: Honderich Versus McGinn.   Journal of Consciousness Studies 15(1): 109-128

Ross’ article provides some background to the feud, along with summaries of the arguments being discussed, reviews of Honderich’s book, and summaries of the exchanges between Honderich and McGinn.

Ross’ conclusion is interesting:

There is much to be learned about the current state of academic philosophy of mind in this unseemly tale. For me, the main lesson is that professional philosophers have no monopoly of wisdom in consciousness studies, either in writing books about consciousness or in reviewing the efforts of their peers. The JCS illustrates with its judicious balance of peer-reviewed articles and other texts (such as the present metareview) that consciousness studies can be enriched by reaching beyond conventional academic work.

Spare a final moment to consider the longer implications of the cat fight you have just witnessed. Googling ‘Honderich’or ‘McGinn’ will regularly find the two names paired with each other for the rest of digital eternity. Whether they like it or not, the two prickly protagonists are now sparring partners in cyberspace, bound in a fellowship of reciprocal contempt and vituperation. Perhaps future generations of philosophers will amuse themselves with animatronic replays of the Ted and Colin show, where photorealistic avatars trade vile words with heated fluency in comic clips.

In any case, the philosophical soil in which this debate is rooted will soon be ploughed over. I suspect that neither radical externalism nor the new mysterianism will attract much attention once we witness the arrival of the first conscious robots.

I’m not so sure about the possibility of conscious robots, but Ross may be on to something — much in the way that Kierkegaard is forever linked with the war of words surrounding the Corsair affair, so too Honderich and McGinn in their feud.

In any event, it’s an interesting article for those who follow such things, and who are interested in philosophical practice, consciousness, philosophy of mind, and the like.