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Full Idea
No one has ever described a way of explaining what beliefs, desires, and other mental states are except in terms of actual or possible relations to things in the external world.
Gist of Idea
We can only describe mental attitudes in relation to the external world
Source
Gilbert Harman ((Nonsolipsistic) Conceptual Role Semantics [1987], 12.3.4)
Book Ref
Harman,Gilbert: 'Reasoning Meaning and Mind' [OUP 1999], p.226
A Reaction
If I pursue my current favourite idea, that how we explain things is the driving force in what ontology we adopt, then this way of seeing the mind, and taking an externalist anti-individualist view of it seems quite attractive.
| 1735 | In a way the soul is everything which exists, through its perceptions and thoughts [Aristotle] |
| 22978 | Memory is so vast that I cannot recognise it as part of my mind [Augustine] |
| 22164 | When Dasein grasps something it exists externally alongside the thing [Heidegger] |
| 12602 | There is no natural border between inner and outer [Harman] |
| 12603 | We can only describe mental attitudes in relation to the external world [Harman] |
| 8126 | Anti-individualism says the environment is involved in the individuation of some mental states [Burge] |
| 8127 | Broad concepts suggest an extension of the mind into the environment (less computer-like) [Burge] |
| 6176 | A mechanism can count as 'cognitive' whether it is in the brain or outside it [Clark/Chalmers, by Rowlands] |
| 19741 | If something in the world could equally have been a mental process, it is part of our cognition [Clark/Chalmers] |
| 19742 | Consciousness may not extend beyond the head, but cognition need not be conscious [Clark/Chalmers] |
| 6173 | Content externalism implies that we do not have privileged access to our own minds [Rowlands] |
| 6174 | If someone is secretly transported to Twin Earth, others know their thoughts better than they do [Rowlands] |