ABSTRACT
One of the central negative motives of this book is to show that ‘mental’ does not denote a status, such that one can sensibly ask of a given thing or event whether it is mental or physical, ‘in the mind’ or ‘in the outside world’. To talk of a person’s mind is not to talk of a repository which is permitted to house objects that something called ‘the physical world’ is forbidden to house; it is to talk of the person’s abilities, liabilities and inclinations to do and undergo certain sorts of things, and of the doing and undergoing of these things in the ordinary world. Indeed, it makes no sense to speak as if there could be two or eleven worlds. Nothing but confusion is achieved by labelling worlds after particular avocations. Even the solemn phrase ‘the physical world’ is as philosophically pointless as would be the phrase ‘the numismatic world’, ‘the haberdashery world’, or ‘the botanical world.’
