Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature: Thirtieth-Anniversary Edition (Princeton Classics)

by Richard Rorty

As for interactionism, the Antipodeans would not dream of denying that beliefs and desires, for example, interact causally with irradiations of the retina, movements of the arm, and so on. But they view talk of such an interaction not as yoking different ontological realms but as a handy (because brief) reference to function rather than to structure. (It is as philosophically unproblematic as a transaction between a government and an individual. No set of necessary and sufficient conditions stated in terms of just who did what to whom can be given for a remark about such a transaction, any more than for remarks about beliefs caused by radiations and movements caused by beliefs—but who would have thought they could?) Interaction would only be of interest if a neural discharge were swerved from its course by a raw feel, or drained of some of its power by a raw feel, or something of the sort. But the Antipodean neurologists have no need of such hypotheses.

September 17, 2020. Page 83.