ABSTRACT
Philosophy.—Wondering what the mind is made of amounts to asking what criterion a state, process, or property must satisfy to be called mental (as opposed to a state, process, or property that is solely physical). Two criteria are generally proposed. One is the property of being conscious (→ CONSCIOUSNESS): a conscious state is a state that has the property of being sensed by its bearer. Referring to Thomas Nagel’s definition, a conscious organism is an organism that senses that “there is something that it is like to be that organism.” Having a mind is essentially being conscious or capable of consciousness. The other criterion is what Franz Brentano called the “intentionality of mental states” (→INTENTIONALITY). The mental states in question are about states of affairs; they represent them (→REPRESENTATION). Having a mind is being capable of building representations. However, the second criterion must be supplemented with the criterion that the representational content of mental states has to play a causal role in the behavior of the organism or system under consideration-otherwise, a photograph could be considered to be “mental” (→CAUSALITY AND MENTAL CAUSATION, COGNITIVISM, FUNCTIONALISM).
