Today, whilst brushing my teeth, I started wondering if anyone has ever written a philosophical essay about mirrors. It sounds very silly, I know, but I find it so amazing (from a philosophical stand-point) that it portrays exactly what opposes it. Does anyone know of any? What is your philosophical opinion on mirrors?
And yes, I’m quite bored at the moment.
Yes - Jorge Luis Borges went on at length about mirrors, in fact he was actually frightened by them.
You have a much broader concept of “philosophy” than I do.
Jacques Lacan is considered a philosopher by some people (others consider him more a mixture of Freudian psychoanalyst and fraud), and his theory of human psychological development includes the “mirror stage,” when a child learns to recognize him/herself in a mirror, as a crucial component. (I rather think that what makes this philosophy rather than psychology is the fact that it has no empirical support. :rolleyes:)
Martin Gardner has written about mirrors in a way that’s halfway between mathematics and philosophy. There’s stuff about mirrors in several of his books, include The Ambidextrous Universe and Aha!.
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature: Thirtieth-Anniversary Edition, by Richard Rorty
Other philosophers, like Jacvques Dirrrada, also used went in this direction. I can find a commentary on him, The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection, by Rodolphe Gasche, but it’s going to be extremely technical.
From what I understand, this is somewhat accepted as an ability that distinguishes different species’ levels of thinking. Humans and a handful of other animals recognize themselves in a mirror, but species with lower levels of thinking do not. [Again I’m not sure how universally this is accepted as a good test].