Why we Believe in Other Minds

Abstract

One does not hear very much about the problem of other minds these days. It is not that the problem has been solved, but, I think, that its intractability has sapped its interest. It is time for a new approach, one not beholden to the traditional analogical argument or neo-traditional criteriological arguments. That is what I undertake here. Let me prepare the way for my positive thesis by explaining why all traditional thinking that sets the problem as one of justified inference from the first-person case (i.e., all traditional thinking) must fail. The problem of other minds is normally posed this way: on what basis do I infer that various organisms I observe are conscious, and is this inference justified? Each stressed word contains a hefty assumption which usually goes unchallenged and indeed unnoticed. First is the assumption that each individual, as a sort of information-processing atom, goes from non-belief to belief about the existence of other consciousnesses. Second is the assumption that the process by which this transition is effected is inference. Now, these two assumptions can both be true even if the inference involved is faulty; in that case nobody would know of other minds, even though there would now be some understanding of the process which creates belief in other minds. However, since such a process that culminated in unwarranted belief would be vain and unlikely we all suppose pre-theoretically that we know there are other minds philosophers write as if our retention of the belief depends on the soundness of the inference. In all this, the purely causal question, By what process reasonable or not do we come to believe in other minds?, is ignored. All three assumptions are wrong, but it is easiest to create a presumption against them corporately by concentrating on the second one. It is rather unlikely that anyone infers the existence of other minds for the simple reason that creatures incapable of inference, at least of complicated inference, believe in them or hold beliefs that entail the existence