Fichte’s Practical Response to the Problem of Other Minds

Abstract

The present paper examines the problem of attributing mental predicates to anyone but myself. Traditionally, this has been a major issue at the intersection of epistemology and ethics, because whether we should consider someone in our moral deliberations is often thought to depend on their cognitive abilities or their capacity for consciousness. For both Kant and Fichte, we have direct moral duties only to other rational beings. The fact that the other is present to us as a representation (for Kant) or as a Not-I that is posited in opposition to the I (for Fichte) threatens our supposed moral obligations to them and risks a form of metaphysical solipsism and moral egoism. The bindingness of interpersonal obligations depends on overcoming the separation between me and other persons. It will be shown that in order to establish the other as a morally considerable being, Fichte reverses the direction of implication: I do not derive my moral duties from others’ personhood; rather, others’ personhood follows from my immediate sense of moral obligation toward them. The way that the problem of other minds is posed presupposes that the only appropriate answer would be a series of propositions that establishes the existence of other morally considerable beings outside of myself. The immediate moral feeling of considerability, however, is not a proposition. It will be argued that Fichte thus provides a radically different alternative to Kant’s approach. The problem of other minds is not answered or solved but is rather dispelled in Fichte’s philosophy by the feeling of moral obligation and the recognition of others as the object of our obligations.