One reason why the problem of other minds keeps cropping up in modern philosophy is that we seem to have conflicting intuitions about our access to the mental lives of others. On the one hand, we are inclined to think that it is wrong to claim, like Cartesian dualists must, that the minds of others are essentially inaccessible to direct experience. But on the other hand we feel that it is equally wrong to claim, like the behaviorists, that the mental (...) lives of others are completely accessible to an outside spectator. This paper attempts to address the problem of the accessibility of other minds while staying faithful to both these intuitions. Central to this undertaking is the idea that we express our mental lives in our bodily behavior. With a firm grasp of the notion of expression, as it is developed in the writings of Wittgenstein and Levinas, we can understand how other minds can be directly perceivable and yet retain a certain inaccessibility. The key is to emphasize the difference between the expressive appearance of a human being and the way an object appears in perception. (shrink)

Many contributors of the debate about knowledge by testimony concentrate on the problem of justification. In my paper I will stress a different point – the concept of testimony itself. As a starting point I will use the definitional proposal of Jennifer Lackey. She holds that the concept of testimony should be regarded as entailing two aspects – one corresponding to the speaker, the other one to the hearer. I will adopt the assumption that we need to deal with both (...) aspects. Nevertheless, I will show that her concept – which suggests regarding testimony as an act of communication conveying information – is too broad and, therefore, I will end up with a different twofold definition. (shrink)

In this article, we will deal with Wittgenstein’s view concerning the nature of mental states. As we know, Wittgenstein's position in this respect has been regarded by some of his commentators as something like behaviorism. In order to assess their claims, we will first turn to behaviorism in modern psychology as well as philosophical behaviorism, and then state Wittgenstein's own position about behaviorism by emphasizing on the point that, on Wittgenstein's view, "mental phenomena are neither reducible to, nor totally separable (...) from, their bodily and behavioral expressions.". (shrink)

This essay is about the inner and the outer in Wittgenstein, in particular his notion of “meaning experience”. Wittgenstein reminds us that we should not think of the inner, psychological the way we think about the outer, physical world. Again and again he keeps returning to certain views about the soul and our mental states. I think that it is not only therapy he has in mind. I will contrast certain aesthetic and ethical aspects of his thoughts with views from (...) Kant. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s thinking on music is intimately linked to core issues in his work on the philosophy of psychology. I argue that inasmuch musical experience exemplifies the kind of grammatical complexity that is indigenous to aspect perception and, in general, to concepts that are based on physiognomy, it is rendered by Wittgenstein as a form of knowledge, namely, knowledge of mankind.