Tom Barnes
THE PHILOSOPHY
OF MIND
Tom Barnes Finals Revision Notes
Tutor: Natalia Waights Hickman
Tuesday 15th June 2021
Acknowledgements: Luke Wintour
,Tom Barnes
Other Minds
What the problem is
Two problems
- The epistemological problem of other minds concerns how we justify the belief that others
have mental states.
- The conceptual problem is how we know that theirs are anything like ours.
- But we should realise that the problems are not isolated – for how would we come to
conclude that another being has a mind, if not by realising that they have some particular
mental state?
o The difference between a being with a mind and without one is not behaviour – it is
whether the behaviour is a result of a mental state – it is stipulated that the
behaviour will be the same, and even that they will report about mental states in the
same way that we would.
Why there is a problem
- It seems that it is possible that there could be a case where someone seems to have an inner
mental life to someone observing them, but they in fact do not – they are a robot. We might
even say that they are biologically identical to ourselves.
- This case is phenomenologically indistinguishable from the case where that being has a
mind.
- This should mean there is uncertainty about which case we observe.
- And where there is uncertainty of this kind, according to one conception of knowledge
requiring certainty, we do not know .
This is illustrated by the difference between the means by which we know about our own minds, and
the means by which we supposedly know about the minds of others
- While we know our own minds by some direct and authoritative means, this is clearly not
the case with other people – our knowledge of our own minds is due to our position.
- There is no obvious means by which we can come to know about other people’s minds.
- If there is no means for us to know truths about the minds of others then we cannot know
anything about them.
But this is not necessarily some special, sui generis, problem
- We have something which we cannot empirically verify, but which seems plausible.
- It isn’t a distinct philosophical problem, rather just one of knowledge – can we ever have
sufficient justification?
Analogical and inferential approaches
JS Mill in 1865 proposed a basic argument from analogical inference
- His argument was that our beliefs about the mental lives of others are justified by the
recognition that our thoughts and feelings cause certain patterns of behaviour which we also
see in others of the same natural kind as us..
- By analogy therefore, we reason that when others of the same natural kind exhibit this same
behaviour, they instantiate the same mental states.
,Tom Barnes
This needs a bit more development though – Putnam 1975 argues that arguments from analogy
suffer from the major flaw that they could quite well be made about other features of individuals,
e.g. moles.
- He argues that the fact I have a mole is not evidence that all people have moles, rather it is
good evidence that some other people have moles.
We can however go further with minds than we can with moles, because while there is nothing
about people’s behaviour which implies they have moles, while there is something about it which
implies they have minds.
- Chihara and Fodor argue that we can determine that someone is e.g. in pain by appealing to
the simplicity and plausibility of an explanatory system which explains someone’s behaviour
in a situation we identify as painful, by concluding that they are in pain.
- An explanatory system is a web of concepts which as a whole explains the relations between
each part.
- Explanatory systems are how we come to understand things which cannot easily be reduced
– an essential part of understanding a concept is understanding how it fits with others.
- According to any remotely plausible explanatory system, the relation between pain
behaviour and feeling pain is that one is required to cause the other, and hence those that
exhibit pain behaviour are minded.
o Of course it is possible to fake this behaviour, but the very fact that this would be an
aberrant case shows that the exception proves the rule – we have no option but to
assume that they do feel pain, or that there is some extra effort to deceive us. The
no-mind hypothesis, that this might just arise without a mind, is not plausible, as
Putnam argues.
- We have no plausible alternative to this sort of explanatory system – nothing which seems
to remotely capture how these concepts interact posits anything except other minds.
- And hence we are justified in believing in other minds since this is the best explanation we
have for what we observe.
At this approach the criticism can be levelled that behaviours are far too varied for us to generalise
from – the explanatory systems this produces are hardly illuminating. The lack of a logical
relationship between mental states and mental state behaviours leaves us unable to conclude
anything with sufficient certainty from observing behaviours.
- This lack of a logical relationship is brought out by Putnam’s example of the person who
understands pain, but fails to realise that it applies to someone screaming out. He says this
can still be a competent speaker of English.
- Whether we go with this, or with Austin’s pain is a syndrome approach depends on what we
think pain actually refers to – a private feeling, or something public.
- But which gives us the better understanding of pain? On the former we have no
understanding at all!
Melnyk repairs the approach by relying instead on causes of mental states rather than their effects,
and noting the importance of physical constitution. We respond involuntarily to causes, and it is
reasonable to think that it is our biological constitution which generates this qualitative experience.
- We have logical certainty regarding certain matters concerning our own mind.
, Tom Barnes
- When certain things happen to me (like stubbing my toe), pain follows without me having
any choice whatsoever in the matter (whereas the effect, like shouting out, may be
somewhat under my control).
- I take this to mean that in a normal instance of a biological creature with the same biological
constitution as me, such an experience causes pain.
- To suppose that someone else stubbing their toe does not cause them pain I must suppose
that they are wired differently, or that their toe is not like mine. Both are far less likely than
that they just have minds too. After all we are not positing more mysterious entities, but
rather just the same sort of thing, but more of them.
- The objection can be made that I am just deducing inductively from a single case, a risky
business, which is the motivation behind Putnam’s mole objection
o But why is this risky?
o Melnyk argues that the question of whether we need more evidence is the question
of whether there are any other suggestions worth taking seriously which we have
not yet ruled out
o In the mole situation, there is the possibility that not all people have moles
o But in the mind situation, it is not a serious possibility that only some people have
minds
Ultimately, all of these accounts leave a lot to be desired. They may well be decent accounts of how
we actually think, but that does not mean they are sufficient – they certainly wont be enough to
reassure the sceptic, who will themselves agree that the best explanation is that there are other
minds, however not be satisfied that this in itself allows us to know it.
- A lot here depends on our conception of ‘knows’. Famously we don’t yet have an analysis of
knowledge split up into necessary and jointly sufficient internal and external conditions.
- But it seems that when we talk about knowledge of other minds, those who challenge our
knowledge of other minds often have in mind some sort of internalist infallibilist conception,
where knowing means being able to prove to yourself that there is no possibility that you
are wrong.
- This might well not be the appropriate way to approach the problem.
The other problem with these is that even if these succeed, they don’t really account for the
implausibility of the no-mind hypothesis – we do not think that our knowledge of other minds is on
the balance of probabilities.
Deflationary approaches – knowing requires less
The argument that an ordinary understanding of ‘knows’ does not imply that we need to rule out the
possibility of there being no other minds is made by JL Austin. He argues that knowing something is
about being able to respond to appropriate challenges in the right way (a result of his highly
linguistic approach to philosophy, focusing on the actual use of words).
- We are allowed to say ‘I know that is a goldfinch’ when we see a bird, without having
checked that it is not a stuffed bird, unless that possibility was specifically raised, because
otherwise it is not a reasonable prospect.
- Of course, in the case of other minds, that sceptical scenario is exactly what is being raised.
So do we have to check it is not the case?
- No – there is no way of checking. If a goldfinch could not be checked for fakery, then fake
goldfinches would not be some distinct category which one is required to check for.
THE PHILOSOPHY
OF MIND
Tom Barnes Finals Revision Notes
Tutor: Natalia Waights Hickman
Tuesday 15th June 2021
Acknowledgements: Luke Wintour
,Tom Barnes
Other Minds
What the problem is
Two problems
- The epistemological problem of other minds concerns how we justify the belief that others
have mental states.
- The conceptual problem is how we know that theirs are anything like ours.
- But we should realise that the problems are not isolated – for how would we come to
conclude that another being has a mind, if not by realising that they have some particular
mental state?
o The difference between a being with a mind and without one is not behaviour – it is
whether the behaviour is a result of a mental state – it is stipulated that the
behaviour will be the same, and even that they will report about mental states in the
same way that we would.
Why there is a problem
- It seems that it is possible that there could be a case where someone seems to have an inner
mental life to someone observing them, but they in fact do not – they are a robot. We might
even say that they are biologically identical to ourselves.
- This case is phenomenologically indistinguishable from the case where that being has a
mind.
- This should mean there is uncertainty about which case we observe.
- And where there is uncertainty of this kind, according to one conception of knowledge
requiring certainty, we do not know .
This is illustrated by the difference between the means by which we know about our own minds, and
the means by which we supposedly know about the minds of others
- While we know our own minds by some direct and authoritative means, this is clearly not
the case with other people – our knowledge of our own minds is due to our position.
- There is no obvious means by which we can come to know about other people’s minds.
- If there is no means for us to know truths about the minds of others then we cannot know
anything about them.
But this is not necessarily some special, sui generis, problem
- We have something which we cannot empirically verify, but which seems plausible.
- It isn’t a distinct philosophical problem, rather just one of knowledge – can we ever have
sufficient justification?
Analogical and inferential approaches
JS Mill in 1865 proposed a basic argument from analogical inference
- His argument was that our beliefs about the mental lives of others are justified by the
recognition that our thoughts and feelings cause certain patterns of behaviour which we also
see in others of the same natural kind as us..
- By analogy therefore, we reason that when others of the same natural kind exhibit this same
behaviour, they instantiate the same mental states.
,Tom Barnes
This needs a bit more development though – Putnam 1975 argues that arguments from analogy
suffer from the major flaw that they could quite well be made about other features of individuals,
e.g. moles.
- He argues that the fact I have a mole is not evidence that all people have moles, rather it is
good evidence that some other people have moles.
We can however go further with minds than we can with moles, because while there is nothing
about people’s behaviour which implies they have moles, while there is something about it which
implies they have minds.
- Chihara and Fodor argue that we can determine that someone is e.g. in pain by appealing to
the simplicity and plausibility of an explanatory system which explains someone’s behaviour
in a situation we identify as painful, by concluding that they are in pain.
- An explanatory system is a web of concepts which as a whole explains the relations between
each part.
- Explanatory systems are how we come to understand things which cannot easily be reduced
– an essential part of understanding a concept is understanding how it fits with others.
- According to any remotely plausible explanatory system, the relation between pain
behaviour and feeling pain is that one is required to cause the other, and hence those that
exhibit pain behaviour are minded.
o Of course it is possible to fake this behaviour, but the very fact that this would be an
aberrant case shows that the exception proves the rule – we have no option but to
assume that they do feel pain, or that there is some extra effort to deceive us. The
no-mind hypothesis, that this might just arise without a mind, is not plausible, as
Putnam argues.
- We have no plausible alternative to this sort of explanatory system – nothing which seems
to remotely capture how these concepts interact posits anything except other minds.
- And hence we are justified in believing in other minds since this is the best explanation we
have for what we observe.
At this approach the criticism can be levelled that behaviours are far too varied for us to generalise
from – the explanatory systems this produces are hardly illuminating. The lack of a logical
relationship between mental states and mental state behaviours leaves us unable to conclude
anything with sufficient certainty from observing behaviours.
- This lack of a logical relationship is brought out by Putnam’s example of the person who
understands pain, but fails to realise that it applies to someone screaming out. He says this
can still be a competent speaker of English.
- Whether we go with this, or with Austin’s pain is a syndrome approach depends on what we
think pain actually refers to – a private feeling, or something public.
- But which gives us the better understanding of pain? On the former we have no
understanding at all!
Melnyk repairs the approach by relying instead on causes of mental states rather than their effects,
and noting the importance of physical constitution. We respond involuntarily to causes, and it is
reasonable to think that it is our biological constitution which generates this qualitative experience.
- We have logical certainty regarding certain matters concerning our own mind.
, Tom Barnes
- When certain things happen to me (like stubbing my toe), pain follows without me having
any choice whatsoever in the matter (whereas the effect, like shouting out, may be
somewhat under my control).
- I take this to mean that in a normal instance of a biological creature with the same biological
constitution as me, such an experience causes pain.
- To suppose that someone else stubbing their toe does not cause them pain I must suppose
that they are wired differently, or that their toe is not like mine. Both are far less likely than
that they just have minds too. After all we are not positing more mysterious entities, but
rather just the same sort of thing, but more of them.
- The objection can be made that I am just deducing inductively from a single case, a risky
business, which is the motivation behind Putnam’s mole objection
o But why is this risky?
o Melnyk argues that the question of whether we need more evidence is the question
of whether there are any other suggestions worth taking seriously which we have
not yet ruled out
o In the mole situation, there is the possibility that not all people have moles
o But in the mind situation, it is not a serious possibility that only some people have
minds
Ultimately, all of these accounts leave a lot to be desired. They may well be decent accounts of how
we actually think, but that does not mean they are sufficient – they certainly wont be enough to
reassure the sceptic, who will themselves agree that the best explanation is that there are other
minds, however not be satisfied that this in itself allows us to know it.
- A lot here depends on our conception of ‘knows’. Famously we don’t yet have an analysis of
knowledge split up into necessary and jointly sufficient internal and external conditions.
- But it seems that when we talk about knowledge of other minds, those who challenge our
knowledge of other minds often have in mind some sort of internalist infallibilist conception,
where knowing means being able to prove to yourself that there is no possibility that you
are wrong.
- This might well not be the appropriate way to approach the problem.
The other problem with these is that even if these succeed, they don’t really account for the
implausibility of the no-mind hypothesis – we do not think that our knowledge of other minds is on
the balance of probabilities.
Deflationary approaches – knowing requires less
The argument that an ordinary understanding of ‘knows’ does not imply that we need to rule out the
possibility of there being no other minds is made by JL Austin. He argues that knowing something is
about being able to respond to appropriate challenges in the right way (a result of his highly
linguistic approach to philosophy, focusing on the actual use of words).
- We are allowed to say ‘I know that is a goldfinch’ when we see a bird, without having
checked that it is not a stuffed bird, unless that possibility was specifically raised, because
otherwise it is not a reasonable prospect.
- Of course, in the case of other minds, that sceptical scenario is exactly what is being raised.
So do we have to check it is not the case?
- No – there is no way of checking. If a goldfinch could not be checked for fakery, then fake
goldfinches would not be some distinct category which one is required to check for.
