Abstract
If we all have the problem of other minds, if no theory of mind manages either to avoid the problem or provide a solution, if there is no way of avoiding crucial use of one’s own case, and if a scientific inference fails, on its own, to justify our belief in other minds, then it is to be expected there will be renewed interest in the (hybrid) analogical inference to other minds. We often make do, in philosophy at any rate, with what we have, and the absence of an alternative is, in philosophy, generally fatally seductive. For many philosophers, scientific inference was embraced to deliver them, if not from the bottomless pit of scepticism, at any rate from the analogical inference to other minds.
This chapter has developed over the years out of A. Hyslop and F.C. Jackson, ‘The Analogical Inference to Other Minds’, American Philosophical Quarterly, vol.9 (1972) pp.168–76.
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Notes to Chapter Four
This point is elaborated later in this chapter.
We also believe, of course, that there is exactly one person to each living human body; but this is not something we should expect the analogical inference to other minds to establish.
R.I. Sikora, ‘The Argument from Analogy is not an Argument for Other Minds’, American Philosophical Quarterly, vol.14 (1977) pp.137–41.
Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations’ in V.C. Chappell (ed.), The Philosophy of Mind (Prentice-Hall, 1962).
See Donald Davidson, ‘Psychology as philosophy’, in J. Glover (ed.), The Philosophy of Mind (OUP, 1976), and also his ‘Mental States’, in L. Foster and J.W. Swanson (eds.), Experience and Theory (Duckworth, 1970); Paul Ziff, ‘The Simplicity of Other Minds’, Journal of Philosophy, vol.62 (1965) pp. 575–84; Sydney Shoemaker, ‘Ziff s Other Minds’, Journal of Philosophy, vol.62 (1965) pp. 587–9; Jaegwon Kim, ‘On the Psycho-Physical Identity Theory’, American Philosophical Quarterly, vol.3 (1966) pp. 227–35; David Lewis, ‘An Argument for the Identity Theory’, Journal of Philosophy, vol.63 (1966), pp. 17–25.
My response to Sikora is a revised version of my ‘A Multiple Case Inference and Other Minds’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol.57 (1979) pp. 330–6.
Don Locke, Myself and Others (OUP, 1968) p. 49.
Norman Malcolm, ‘Knowledge of Other Minds’, in V.C. Chappell (ed.), The Philosophy of Mind (Prentice-Hall, 1962) pp. 151–9 (see p. 152).
J. Day, Inductive Probability (Routledge, 1962) p. 64.
R.J. Pargetter, ‘The Scientific Inference to Other Minds’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol.62 (1984) p. 160.
Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol.54 (1976) pp. 158–61.
Op. cit.
‘In Defense of Type Materialism’, Synthese, vol.59 (1984) pp. 295–320. See pp. 310–14.
Carl Wellman, ‘Our Criteria for Third Person Ps cholo ical Sentences’, Journal o Philosophy vol.58 (1961) pp. 281–93 (see pp. 292–3).
Don Locke, op.cit., pp. 49–50.
Don Locke, ‘Just What is Wrong with the Argument from Analogy?’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol.51 (1973) pp. 153–6.
My response to Don Locke’s response is essentially that to be found in Alec Hyslop and Frank Jackson, ‘A Reply to Don Locke’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol.53 (1975) pp. 68–9.
The locus classicus is Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (Hutchinson, 1949) see p. 52.
Ibid.
Stuart Hampshire, ‘The Analogy of Feelin’, Mind, vol.61 1952 pp. 1–12 (see p. 4).
Norman Malcolm, op.Cit.. p. 153
V.C. Chappell (ed.), The Philosophy of Mind (Prentice Hall, 1962) p. 3.
Peter Alexander, ‘Other People’s Experiences’, Aristotelian Society Proceedings, vol. 51 (1950/51) pp. 24–46 (see pp. 43–4). Alexander is considering, without definitely endorsing, this objection.
Alvin Plantinga, God and Other Minds (Cornell, 1967 248)p
John Wisdom, Other Minds, 2nd ed. (Blackwell, 1965).
John Wisdom, ‘The Concept of Mind’, Other Minds, op. cit., pp. 232–44 (see p. 237)
Plantinga, op, cit., pp. 245–68. See also his ‘Induction and Other Minds’, Review of Metaphysics, vol.19 (1965–1966) pp. 441–61 and Michael Slote’s reply in Review of Metaphysics, vol.20 (1966–1967) pp. 341–60 and Plantinga’s reply to Slote in the same issue. I discuss Plantinga’s criticism of the analogical inference to other minds because, apart from being an unusually penetrating one, it seems to me that Slote’s re 1 to it fails
I owe this suggestion to John Fox.
See Hector Neri-Castañeda, ‘Consciousness and Behaviour’, in Intentionality, Minds and Perception, ed., Castañeda (Wayne State, 1966) pp. 132–3.
Karl Ameriks, ‘Plantinga and Other Minds’, Southern Journal of Philosophy, vol.16 (1973) pp. 285–91.
Ibid., p. 286.
It should be noted that Ameriks is defending the analogical inference to other minds in this article by constructing a version which complies with his principles.
Sydney Shoemaker, Self-knowledge and self-identity (Cornell, 1963) p. 168.
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Hyslop, A. (1995). The Analogical Inference to Other Minds. In: Other Minds. Synthese Library, vol 246. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8510-1_5
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