The problem of other minds: VCE Philosophy

What this dot point is asking

VCAA wants you to explain the problem of other minds, distinguish its epistemic and conceptual forms, reconstruct the classic argument from analogy that attempts to solve it, and evaluate that argument together with its rivals. The high-band answer separates the question of how I know others have minds from the question of how I could even have the concept of another mind, and presses the objection that an analogy from a single case is weak.

The two problems

The problem arises from an asymmetry. I know my own mental states directly, from the inside, just by having them. But I cannot have anyone else's experiences. All I ever observe of other people is their bodies and behaviour. So my belief that other people have inner lives, that there is something it is like to be them, seems to outrun my evidence.

This splits into two problems. The epistemic problem: what justifies my belief that others have minds, when behaviour is consistent with there being no inner experience at all, as with a hypothetical zombie or a cleverly built robot? The conceptual problem, pressed by Wittgenstein: how could I even acquire the concept of another person's pain if I can only ever feel my own? If I learn what pain is purely from my own case, the worry is that I have no way to extend that concept to others at all.

The argument from analogy

The traditional answer, associated with John Stuart Mill and Bertrand Russell, is the argument from analogy. Reconstructed:

1. In my own case, I observe that certain behaviour (crying out, withdrawing a hand) is regularly caused by and accompanied by certain inner states (pain).
2. I observe other bodies producing the very same behaviour in the very same circumstances.
3. Like effects probably have like causes.
4. So it is probable that the same behaviour in others is also caused by and accompanied by the same inner states.
5. Therefore other people probably have minds and experiences like mine.

This treats the existence of other minds as a reasonable inductive inference, not certain knowledge but a well-supported probability.

Evaluation

The standard objection is that this is an exceptionally weak induction. A respectable generalisation rests on many and varied instances. But here I am generalising from a single case, my own, to every other person who has ever lived. Inferring a universal conclusion from one example is precisely the pattern we usually condemn as hasty generalisation. I have never once observed the correlation between behaviour and inner experience in anyone but myself, so the analogy rests on the thinnest possible base. Worse, I cannot in principle check my conclusion, since I can never observe another person's inner state to confirm the inference, which makes the hypothesis look unfalsifiable.

Two stronger replies are available. The first treats other minds not as an analogical inference but as an inference to the best explanation. The complex, flexible, context-sensitive behaviour of other people is best explained by the supposition that they have beliefs, desires and feelings, just as we infer unobservable entities in science when they best explain the data. This avoids the single-case worry, because the support comes from explanatory power rather than from a one-instance generalisation. The second, criteriological reply, drawn from Wittgenstein, denies that the connection between behaviour and mind is a contingent correlation we infer at all. Pain-behaviour is a criterion for pain, part of what the word pain means, learned in a public language. On this view the conceptual problem is dissolved: I could not have a private concept of pain graspable only from my own case, because meaning is public, so there is no gap to be bridged by analogy.

Against the criteriological reply, critics worry it risks collapsing into behaviourism and underplaying the felt inner quality of experience. Against inference to the best explanation, sceptics note that a zombie hypothesis (behaviour without experience) is not strictly ruled out, so certainty is still unavailable.

Judgement: the argument from analogy correctly identifies that our belief in other minds is reasonable rather than arbitrary, but as stated it is a poor argument, a generalisation from a single unconfirmable case. Reframing it as inference to the best explanation rescues the epistemic standing of the belief while conceding that certainty is not on offer, and Wittgenstein's criteriological approach makes real progress on the conceptual problem by denying that mental concepts are private in the first place. The existence of other minds is therefore justified as the best explanation of behaviour, not proven, and the conceptual problem is better dissolved than solved.