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Full Idea
We can't define the mental as intentional because pains aren't about anything, and we can't define it as phenomenal because beliefs don't feel like anything.
Clarification
'Intentional' events are about things; 'phenomenal' events feel like something
Gist of Idea
Pain lacks intentionality; beliefs lack qualia
Source
Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], 1.2)
Book Ref
Rorty,Richard: 'Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature' [Blackwell 1980], p.22
A Reaction
Nice, but simplistic? There is usually an intentional object for a pain, and the concepts which we use to build beliefs contain the residue of remembered qualia. It seems unlikely that any mind could have one without the other (even a computer).
| 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] |