A mind that is about nothing is not really a mind

Evidence

Understood in this way, the mind hardly is anything at all: it is its aboutness. This makes the human mind (and possibly some animal minds) different from any other naturally occurring entity. Nothing else can be as thoroughly about or of things as the mind is: even a book only reveals what it’s ‘about’ to someone who picks it up and peruses it, and is otherwise merely a storage device. But a mind that is experiencing nothing, imagining nothing, or speculating about nothing can hardly be said to be a mind at all. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 154

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Tight, reversible boundary definition of mind against mere storage devices — denser than it first looks.
• XREF: Resonates with the previous chapter’s treatment of Brentano and with Sartre’s ‘consciousness is a great emptiness.’ — connects to: The mind cannot naturally stay empty because aboutness is its default state; Consciousness is necessarily directed at a being other than itself — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 151; Intentionality means the mind’s constant aboutness, not deliberate purpose — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 152 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• The mind cannot naturally stay empty because aboutness is its default state #corroborates (0.90)
• Consciousness is necessarily directed at a being other than itself #corroborates (0.88) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 151
• Intentionality means the mind’s constant aboutness, not deliberate purpose #corroborates (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 152