The mind is defined by its aboutness rather than by any fixed substance

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

• DEFINE: The clearest statement of aboutness as the essence of mind — the core definitional payoff of intentionality.
• XREF: connects to: The mind should be studied by its activities, not as a substance — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 151; A mind that is about nothing is not really a mind — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 154; The mind cannot naturally stay empty because aboutness is its default state (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• A mind that is about nothing is not really a mind #corroborates (1.00) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 154
• The mind cannot naturally stay empty because aboutness is its default state #expands (0.90)
• Intentionality means the mind’s constant aboutness, not deliberate purpose #expands (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 152
• Consciousness defines itself by internal negation of its own objects #corroborates (0.85)
• The mind includes what is not expressed but still determines behavior #expands (0.80) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 739
• Consciousness is necessarily directed at a being other than itself #corroborates (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 151