Problem of other minds

The Problem:
If the mind is irreducible to the physical then we don't need to know the content of someone's consciousness, so it is conceivable that other minds don't exist.

Wittgenstein's 'Beetle in a Box'
Good old Wittgenstein compared the problem of other minds to having a 'beetle in a box', as follows: 'I can see directly what's in my box but no one else can, they have to rely on my description; it's possible that we may have different things in our boxes and that some people may not have ANYTHING in their box'.

In short, as the mind is accessible only via introspection, only our minds are private. And so, there is NO WAY of checking if other people have, y'know, MINDS.

Ryle criticises this, arguing that the problem of other minds comes from a mistaken view of how we acquire knowledge of other minds as if our language of mental states refers to private states! So OF COURSE it could never be applied to solipsism.

Mill's Argument from Analogy
Mill argues that we learn the connection between behaviour and mental states by observing it in our own case. From that argument, we can infer the same connection in others; by observing someone behaving in similar ways in response to similar incidents, I infer they have similar conscious experience.

Criticisms of the Argument from Analogy

 * 1) To argue from your own case is weak as inductive generalisation requires more.
 * 2) There is no possible way of verifying other minds so there can be no establishment of correlation between behaviour and mind.

Argument to best explanation
The existence of other minds is the best explanation of behaviour in other humans. Folk psychology predicts how people will react correctly and it is inconceivable for others to act in complex ways without having minds.

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