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Ideas for 'works', 'Sweet Dreams' and '(Nonsolipsistic) Conceptual Role Semantics'

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2 ideas

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 6. Anti-Individualism
There is no natural border between inner and outer [Harman]
     Full Idea: There is no natural border between inner and outer.
     From: Gilbert Harman ((Nonsolipsistic) Conceptual Role Semantics [1987], 12.3.4)
     A reaction: Perhaps this is the key idea for the anti-individualist view of mind. Subjectively I would have to accept this idea, but looking objectively at another person it seems self-evident nonsense.
We can only describe mental attitudes in relation to the external world [Harman]
     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.
     From: Gilbert Harman ((Nonsolipsistic) Conceptual Role Semantics [1987], 12.3.4)
     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.