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Books

Truth By Analysis by Colin McGinn

Richard Baron analyses Truth by Analysis.

Philosophy is often described as an armchair activity: people try to learn about the world by sitting and thinking, instead of getting out into the world and doing experiments. Philosophy professor Colin McGinn accepts this description, but rejects the suggestion that there is anything wrong with working in this way. The armchair thinker is not a second-class scientist, too lazy to discover facts in the right way; she is a first-class analyser of concepts, who learns about the world in a different way.

McGinn needs several arguments to make his case. His arguments are cogent, but the conception of philosophy he gives is at risk of being too broad to have useful content, and of being mistaken in its detail.

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