European Journal of Philosophy 25 (4):1476-1495 (2017)
Authors |
|
Abstract |
The traditional epistemological problem of other minds seeks to answer the following question: how can we know someone else's mental states? The problem is often taken to be generated by a fundamental asymmetry in the means of knowledge. In my own case, I can know directly what I think and feel. This sort of self-knowledge is epistemically direct in the sense of being non-inferential and non-observational. My knowledge of other minds, however, is thought to lack these epistemic features. So what is the basic source of my knowledge of other minds if I know my mind in such a way that I cannot know the minds of others? The aim of this paper is to clarify and assess the pivotal role that the asymmetry in respect of knowledge plays within a broadly inferentialist approach to the epistemological problem of other minds. The received dogma has always been to endorse the asymmetry for conceptual reasons and to insist that the idea of knowing someone else's mental life in the same way as one knows one's own mind is a complete non-starter. Against this, I aim to show that it is at best a contingent matter that creatures such as us cannot know other minds just as we know a good deal of our own minds and also that the idea of having someone else's mind in one's own introspective reach is not obviously self-contradictory. So the dogma needs to be revisited. As a result, the dialectical position of those inferentialists who believe that we know about someone else's mentality in virtue of an analogical inference will be reinforced.
|
Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) |
Categories |
No categories specified (categorize this paper) |
DOI | 10.1111/ejop.12238 |
Options |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Download options
References found in this work BETA
Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind.Wilfrid S. Sellars - 1956 - Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 1:253-329.
A Treatise of Human Nature.David Hume & A. D. Lindsay - 1958 - Philosophical Quarterly 8 (33):379-380.
Philosophical investigations.Ludwig Wittgenstein & G. E. M. Anscombe - 1953 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 161:124-124.
View all 48 references / Add more references
Citations of this work BETA
No citations found.
Similar books and articles
What Asymmetry? Knowledge of Self, Knowledge of Others, and the Inferentialist Challenge.Quassim Cassam - 2017 - Synthese 194 (3):723-741.
Skepticism About Other Minds.Anil Gomes - forthcoming - In Diego Machuca & Baron Reed (eds.), Skepticism: From Antiquity to the Present. Bloomsbury Academic.
XII—Is There a Problem of Other Minds?Anil Gomes - 2011 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 111 (3pt3):353-373.
Inference to the Best Explanation and Other Minds.Andrew Melnyk - 1994 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 72 (4):482-91.
Inferentialism and Our Knowledge of Others’ Minds.William E. S. McNeill - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (6):1435-1454.
Buddhist Idealism and the Problem of Other Minds.Roy W. Perrett - 2017 - Asian Philosophy 27 (1):59-68.
On Knowing One's Own Language.Barry C. Smith - 1998 - In Crispin Wright, Barry C. Smith & Cynthia Macdonald (eds.), Knowing Our Own Minds. Oxford University Press. pp. 391--428.
The Problem of Other Minds: Wittgenstein's Phenomenological Perspective. [REVIEW]Søren Overgaard - 2006 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 5 (1):53-73.
Phenomenology and the Problem of Animal Minds.Simon P. James - 2009 - Environmental Values 18 (1):33 - 49.
Sellarsian Behaviorism, Davidsonian Interpretivism, and First Person Authority. [REVIEW]Richard N. Manning - 2014 - Philosophia 42 (2):1-24.
Critical Examination on the Problem of Our Knowledge of Other Minds.R. T. Rathod - forthcoming - Indian Philosophical Quarterly.
Analytics
Added to PP index
2017-04-25
Total views
32 ( #358,802 of 2,518,749 )
Recent downloads (6 months)
3 ( #205,867 of 2,518,749 )
2017-04-25
Total views
32 ( #358,802 of 2,518,749 )
Recent downloads (6 months)
3 ( #205,867 of 2,518,749 )
How can I increase my downloads?
Downloads