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Single Idea 6164

[filed under theme 18. Thought / C. Content / 1. Content ]

Full Idea

Sartre's attack on the idea that consciousness has contents is an attack on the idea that the mental possesses features that are hidden, inner and constituted or revealed by the individual's inwardly directed awareness.

Gist of Idea

Sartre rejects mental content, and the idea that the mind has hidden inner features

Source

report of Jean-Paul Sartre (Being and Nothingness [1943]) by Mark Rowlands - Externalism Ch.5

Book Ref

Rowlands,Mark: 'Externalism' [Acumen 2003], p.76

A Reaction

This is part of the move towards 'externalism' about the mind. The notion of 'content' implies a container. It seems slightly ridiculous, though, to try to say that the mind just 'is the world'. How is reasoning possible, and the relation of ideas?

The 57 ideas from Jean-Paul Sartre

22232 Authenticity is taking responsibility for a situation, with all its risks and emotions [Sartre]
20760 Sincerity is not authenticity, because it only commits to one particular identity [Sartre, by Aho]
22228 Sartre's freedom is not for whimsical action, but taking responsibility for our own values [Sartre, by Daigle]
22227 For Sartre there is only being for-itself, or being in-itself (which is beyond experience) [Sartre, by Daigle]
6151 Sartre says consciousness is just directedness towards external objects [Sartre, by Rowlands]
6164 Sartre rejects mental content, and the idea that the mind has hidden inner features [Sartre, by Rowlands]
7074 Man is a useless passion [Sartre]
20743 Appearances do not hide the essence; appearances are the essence [Sartre]
22233 Love is the demand to be loved [Sartre]
6687 Man is the desire to be God [Sartre]
20755 Fear concerns the world, but 'anguish' comes from confronting my self [Sartre]
22231 We flee from the anguish of freedom by seeing ourselves objectively, as determined [Sartre]
21240 The truth about events always comes from the oppressed and disadvantaged [Sartre, by Bakewell]
6868 'Existence precedes essence' means we have no pre-existing self, but create it through existence [Sartre, by Le Poidevin]
3842 Existence before essence (or begin with the subjective) [Sartre]
3844 Existentialism says man is whatever he makes of himself [Sartre]
3843 There is no human nature [Sartre]
20764 In becoming what we want to be we create what we think man ought to be [Sartre]
20762 There are no values to justify us, and no excuses [Sartre]
20754 It is dishonest to offer passions as an excuse [Sartre]
20763 When my personal freedom becomes involved, I must want freedom for everyone else [Sartre]
3845 Without God there is no intelligibility or value [Sartre]
3846 Man IS freedom [Sartre]
22229 Existentialists says that cowards and heroes make themselves [Sartre]
6571 When a man must choose between his mother and the Resistance, no theory can help [Sartre, by Fogelin]
3847 Man is nothing else but the sum of his actions [Sartre]
3848 Cowards are responsible for their cowardice [Sartre]
3851 If I do not choose, that is still a choice [Sartre]
3852 If values depend on us, freedom is the foundation of all values [Sartre]
20491 States have a monopoly of legitimate violence [Sartre, by Wolff,J]
24013 An emotion and its object form a unity, so emotion is a mode of apprehension [Sartre]
24017 Emotion is one of our modes of understanding our Being-in-the-World [Sartre]
24014 Emotions are a sort of bodily incantation which brings a magic to the world [Sartre]
24015 Emotions makes us believe in and live in a new world [Sartre]
24016 Consciousness always transcends itself [Sartre]
22226 Since we are a consciousness, Sartre entirely rejected the unconscious mind [Sartre, by Daigle]
7106 The Ego is not formally or materially part of consciousness, but is outside in the world [Sartre]
7125 A consciousness can conceive of no other consciousness than itself [Sartre]
7108 The eternal truth of 2+2=4 is what gives unity to the mind which regularly thinks it [Sartre]
7111 Consciousness exists as consciousness of itself [Sartre]
7107 Intentionality defines, transcends and unites consciousness [Sartre]
7109 If you think of '2+2=4' as the content of thought, the self must be united transcendentally [Sartre]
7110 If the 'I' is transcendental, it unnecessarily splits consciousness in two [Sartre]
7115 Maybe it is the act of reflection that brings 'me' into existence [Sartre]
7116 When we are unreflective (as when chasing a tram) there is no 'I' [Sartre]
7117 How could two I's, the reflective and the reflected, communicate with each other? [Sartre]
7113 Phenomenology assumes that all consciousness is of something [Sartre]
7114 The consciousness that says 'I think' is not the consciousness that thinks [Sartre]
7112 The Cogito depends on a second-order experience, of being conscious of consciousness [Sartre]
7119 Is the Cogito reporting an immediate experience of doubting, or the whole enterprise of doubting? [Sartre]
7122 We can never, even in principle, grasp other minds, because the Ego is self-conceiving [Sartre]
7123 Knowing yourself requires an exterior viewpoint, which is necessarily false [Sartre]
7124 The Ego never appears except when we are not looking for it [Sartre]
7121 The Ego only appears to reflection, so it is cut off from the World [Sartre]
7120 It is theoretically possible that the Ego consists entirely of false memories [Sartre]
22225 My ego is more intimate to me, but not more certain than other egos [Sartre]
22230 Sartre gradually realised that freedom is curtailed by the weight of situation [Sartre, by Daigle]