Incorrigibility as the mark of the mental

Author

Descrates redescribed the mind in epistemic terms and drew the boundary around the mental based on incorribility.

This assimilated what the ancients and scholastics never would have: conceptually articulated thoughts¹ and raw feels.²

That’s a normative status: they have a unique role in social reasoning: social practices now are such that no one can override them. So we can change that (e.g. Freudian grounds or by developing cerebroscopes). Eliminative materials says: we brought Cartesian minds into existence (we really do have them) but we could change our practices and then there would be no Cartesian minds.

Footnotes §

1. e.g. “the cathedral of learning is 500 ft tall” ↩

2. e.g. a red afterimage / sensation of pain ↩