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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).
| 4726 | Rorty seems to view truth as simply being able to hold one's view against all comers [Rorty, by O'Grady] |
| 2549 | For James truth is "what it is better for us to believe" rather than a correct picture of reality [Rorty] |
| 2548 | If knowledge is merely justified belief, justification is social [Rorty] |
| 2550 | Pain lacks intentionality; beliefs lack qualia [Rorty] |
| 2554 | Is intentionality a special sort of function? [Rorty] |
| 2553 | The mind is a property, or it is baffling [Rorty] |
| 2556 | Rational certainty may be victory in argument rather than knowledge of facts [Rorty] |
| 2557 | Analytical philosophy seems to have little interest in how to tell a good analysis from a bad one [Rorty] |
| 2558 | Since Hegel we have tended to see a human as merely animal if it is outside a society [Rorty] |
| 2559 | Davidson's theory of meaning focuses not on terms, but on relations between sentences [Rorty] |
| 2560 | Can meanings remain the same when beliefs change? [Rorty] |
| 2562 | A theory of reference seems needed to pick out objects without ghostly inner states [Rorty] |
| 2565 | Nature has no preferred way of being represented [Rorty] |
| 2566 | You can't debate about whether to have higher standards for the application of words [Rorty] |
| 6599 | Knowing has no definable essence, but is a social right, found in the context of conversations [Rorty] |