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Full Idea
Mental states have causal powers.
Gist of Idea
Mental states have causal powers
Source
Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.2.3)
Book Ref
Fodor,Jerry A.: 'LOT 2: the Language of Thought Revisited' [OUP 2008], p.48
A Reaction
I quote this because it gives you the link between a general account of causal powers as basic to reality, and an active account of what the mind is. It has to be a key link in a decent modern unified account of the world. See Idea 12638.
Related Idea
Idea 12638 If concepts have sense, we can't see the connection to their causal powers [Fodor]
| 13784 | Mind is self-ruling, pure, ordering and ubiquitous [Anaxagoras, by Plato] |
| 1714 | Mind involves movement, perception, incorporeality [Aristotle] |
| 20809 | Eight parts of the soul: five senses, seeds, speech and reason [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 23266 | The spirit in the soul wants freedom, power and honour [Galen] |
| 18453 | Intelligence is aware of itself, so the intelligence is both the thinker and the thought [Porphyry] |
| 17196 | The will is not a desire, but the faculty of affirming what is true or false [Spinoza] |
| 17198 | Will and intellect are the same thing [Spinoza] |
| 17201 | The will is finite, but the intellect is infinite [Spinoza] |
| 23242 | Consciousness has two parts, passively receiving sensation, and actively causing productions [Fichte] |
| 8648 | Ideas are not spatial, and don't have distances between them [Frege] |
| 2550 | Pain lacks intentionality; beliefs lack qualia [Rorty] |
| 3368 | Mind is basically qualities and intentionality, but how do they connect? [Kim] |
| 12636 | Mental states have causal powers [Fodor] |
| 6152 | Minds are rational, conscious, subjective, self-knowing, free, meaningful and self-aware [Rowlands] |