Abstract

If I am aware of my own mental states by introspection How can I know that other people have minds? and How can I know what their mental states are? These are two of the questions with which I will be concerned in this dissertation. I discuss five different attempts to deal with them. The claim that we can know that other people have minds by an argument from analogy. I show a number of serious flaws in Russell's and other versions of this argument. Malcolm's thesis that the criteria by which we apply mental terms to others are just different from the criteria one applies in one's own case. I argue that Halcolm's accounts of both first- and third-person criteria are not adequate. I consider Strawson claim that 'persons' is a primitive concept and that behavioural criteria are "logically adequate" for determining the correctness of statements about the mental states of others. I argue that both of his key concepts are underanalysed. A quite different attempt to answer our questions and is given by the empirical realist who argues that knowledge claims about other minds are best understood as hypotheses in a wider psycho-physical theory. I show that the major fault in Putnam's version of empirical realism is that he overlooks the subjective character of our mental states. Finally I consider the claim, due to Nagel, that a conception of mental states is possible which incorporates both subjective and objective aspects of the phenonemon. I speculate that with a great deal of development this approach might hold the answer to our questions