Reflection and Absorption

To 'reflect' means, most literally, to 'bend back'. For example, the Moon is said to 'reflect' the Sun because moonlight is a bending back, by the Moon, of sunlight. Hence, any sunlight that the Moon absorbs will not appear as moonlight. Likewise, it is inaccurate to speak of looking 'in' a mirror--what appears when one looks at a mirror is an image that has been bounced back away from the surface of the mirror, not something 'in' it. Similarly inaccurate is the common connotation of a 'reflective' type of person as 'self-absorbed'--a truly 'reflective' person expresses what is influencing them, rather than exhausts it. So, Rorty's image of the Mind as a 'mirror of nature' mischaracterizes the contemplative Philosophical tradition to which he contrasts the Pragmatist tradition. It is the Pragmatistic, not the Contemplativistic, Mind that expresses what it entertains, e. g. Peircian 'belief' is a representation that yields action.