Making sense of the subjective experience of others

Abstract

In this article, we address some conceptual issues that are logically prior to the constitution of any psychopathology. We explore ontological and epistemological aspects of subjective experience, rejecting both Cartesianism and behaviorism, and favoring the Wittgensteinian notion of criterial support instead. Then, we discuss the disanalogy between knowledge of other minds and our knowledge of anything else. Based on the arguments by Eilan’s that the “communication claim” should replace the “observation claim,” we defend that there is a kind of knowledge that is irreducibly founded on intersubjectivity (that is, knowledge of persons is knowledge for two) and point out to implications it may have for psychopathology.