Textbooks in philosophy often refer tothe problem of otherminds. At a superficial glance it can look as if there isagreement about what the problem is and how we might address it. Buton closer inspection one finds there is little agreement either aboutthe problem or the solution to it. Indeed, there is little agreementabout whether there is a problem here at all. What seems clear is thatthere was a period in philosophy, roughly around the mid-twentiethcentury, when there was much discussion about other minds. The problemhere has most commonly been thought to arise within epistemology: howdo I know (or how can I justify the belief) that other beings existwho have thoughts, feelings and other mental attributes? One standardline of reply to this question has been to appeal to analogy, anotherto best explanation. More recently it has been suggested thattestimony can serve as a basic source of knowledge of another’smental states; that is, testimony can serve as a way of knowing herein the absence of any other way of knowing (see Gomes 2015). Asomewhat less standard approach to this question has been to appeal tocriteria. Connected with this approach, and fueled by the later workof Ludwig Wittgenstein, some philosophers argue that therealproblem of other minds is conceptual: why do I so much as think thatthere are other thinking, feeling beings? Both the conceptual and theepistemological problems may be thought to be connected with a moregeneral metaphysical problem of understanding what minds and mentalstates are.

In analytic philosophy, towards the end of the twentieth century,interest in these problems waned, but there has been a revival ofinterest in recent years. This is in part due to the fact thatphilosophers have begun to explore in earnest the possibility that wecome by our knowledge of other minds in much the same way that we comeby our knowledge of objects in the world—by perception. Thispossibility is also explored in phenomenology and in recent timesphilosophers schooled in both the analytic and phenomenologicaltraditions have contributed to discussion of this topic. Whateveraccount one gives of this knowledge, what must be remembered is thatthe thoughts and feelings I want to know about are the thoughts andfeelings of another.^[1]

Some philosophers who consider this problem have found inspirationeven further afield, in the texts of classical Indian philosophers.There is much in the texts of Buddhist philosophers, as well as in thewriting of their opponents, on the topic of the self and the existenceof others. More recently, philosophical interest in other minds hasalso been stimulated by work in psychology and neuroscience. A morenaturalistic turn in philosophy has led to questions concerning ourunderstanding of others. One might see this work as leaving behindtraditional epistemological concerns with radical scepticism,addressing instead the question of how we go about ascribing mentalstates to others—a question that can be asked not just of adulthumans, but of infants (when and how do they come to ascribe mentalstates to others), and also of other, non-human, animals. Furthermore,one can consider the possibility of a deficit in the capacity toattribute minds to others and how this might manifest itself in, forexample, autism.

• 1. The (Traditional) Epistemological Problem
  • 1.1 The Argument from Analogy
  • 1.2 Best Explanation
  • 1.3 Criteria
  • 1.4 Perceptual Knowledge of Other Minds
    • 1.4.1 McDowell and Dretske on perceptual knowledge of other minds
    • 1.4.2 Perceptual knowledge of other minds and the phenomenological tradition
    • 1.4.3 Indirect vs direct accounts
• 2. The Conceptual Problem of Other Minds
• 3. The Naturalist Turn
  • 3.1 Theory-Theory and Simulation Theory
  • 3.2 The Second Person and Person Model Theory
• 4. Thinking about Mind Prior to the Twentieth Century
  • 4.1 From Descartes to Mill
  • 4.2 Before Descartes
  • 4.3 Another History
• Bibliography
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. The (Traditional) Epistemological Problem

The traditional epistemological problem of other minds is oftenassociated with scepticism. The sceptic raises a doubt about thepossibility of knowledge in connection with the mind of another, adoubt which is thought to follow from a more general doubt raised byDescartes concerning our knowledge of the external world. This latterdoubt arises in stages, each of which is designed to draw us into amore wide-reaching scepticism: at stage one it is observed that thesenses sometimes deceive; at stage two the possibility of an extendeddream is considered; and at stage three the possibility is introducedthat there is an Evil Demon deceiving me to think that there is aworld beyond how things appear. It is with the third stage thatDescartes thought we encounter the possibility of universal doubtabout an entire domain, in this case the external world. Descartes hasfound a way to retreat into his own mind, where he claims to find bothknowledge and truth: I can know how things appear to me; externalthings are now in doubt. Cartesian doubt isradical and ithas been raised by philosophers not just in connection with ourknowledge of the external world, but also of the past, induction, andother minds.

In connection with other minds, we might press Descartes’ firstsceptical consideration, thus: I am sometimes deceived about whatanother is thinking or feeling. But, as with the external world, thisis not sufficient for radical doubt concerning others. Radical doubtmay be thought to arise when one presses the third scepticalconsideration, the possibility that an Evil Demon (or mad scientist)has contrived that all others apart from myself areautomata/zombies—non-thinking, non-feeling individuals who movein a manner similar to the way I move. We can associate a‘thin’ sceptical problem with the former doubt and a‘thick’ sceptical problem with the latter (Avramides2015). The former is a problem we grapple with in our everyday lives;the latter is a distinctively philosophical problem. It is the thickskeptical problem that leads to the possibility ofsolipsism—that I am alone in the universe.

Once one teases out a thin from a thick problem, one can ask thefollowing: (i) does any proposed response to the thick problem helpwith the thin?; (ii) does having knowledge (in any domain) depend upona solution to the thick problem?; and (iii) are there any furtherquestions that can be raised with respect to other minds beyond thoseassociated with these two sceptical problems? It is fair to say thatlittle to no consideration was paid to question (i) in the past. It isthe threat of solipsism that largely preoccupied philosophers—atleast until more recently. Question (ii) has received much discussionin recent decades. Epistemologists who favor an externalist approach(e.g., Goldman, Nozick, Dretske) concentrate on the question ofwhat others think and feel. In line with the generalexternalist approach, these philosophers hold that there can beknowledge despite there being no response to the radical scepticalchallenge. Others agree that having knowledge does not requireresponding to this challenge, but not because they believe that thereis no response here but because they believe that the correct accountof knowledge leaves no room for such a challenge (McDowell 1982). Withrespect to (iii), Zahavi (2014) has identified a further question thathe labels thewhy question. In our everyday encounters with,and understanding of, others we want to know not only what they thinkand feel, but also why they think and feel as they do and what thismeans to them.

Not everyone takes the epistemological problem here to be a radicalskeptical one. Some see the problem as arising from reflection on anapparent asymmetry in the way I know about my own and another’smind: in my own case, at least most of the time, I know what I thinkand feel directly and without inference from any evidence (thequalification here is designed to reflect the fact that one can, attimes, learn about one’s own mental states from others—seeAustin 1946 [1979: 110]); in the case of others, all access to whatthey think or feel is thought to be indirect, mediated by theother’s behavior. Hyslop, for example, writes, “theproblem of other minds is generated by an asymmetry in respect ofknowledge” (1995: 6; cf. Davidson 1991 [2001]). Gomes (2018) haslabeled the epistemological problem raised by attention to thisasymmetry the problem ofsources, which he distinguishes fromthe problem oferror. Gomes finds the problem of sources inthe work of Austin (1946 [1979]) who begins his discussion of otherminds by asking, “How do we know that, for example, anotherindividual is angry?”, a question which Austin distinguishesfrom, “Do we (ever) know…?” (cf. Cassam 2007 andNozick 1981).

It is worth pausing to consider the seriousness of the problem ofknowing others. While some draw a parallel between the problem ofgaining knowledge of the past and of another mind, there is animportant asymmetry to be noted here: in the case of the past it is atleast logically possible that there should be direct knowledge, whilein the case of another mind such knowledge seems to be logically ruledout. As A.J. Ayer writes:

It can be argued that one’s position to observe a past event isdue to the accident of one’s position in time…. But it isnot an accident that one is not someone else. (1953 [1954:216–217])

(Discussions linking knowledge of other minds and the past provide arich vein of philosophical discussion; see, for example, Dummett 1969,Wright 1980, and McDowell 1998.) It may be thought that there could bea way of knowing another’s mind—say by telepathy—andthat it is simply a contingent fact that this is not a way that isopen to human beings. Telepathy would allow one to knowanother’s thoughts and feelings by coming to share them. Theproblem, however, is that ifI haveyourexperiences, then those experiences aremine and notyours. As Ayer writes: “In this respect telepathy is nobetter than the telephone” (1953 [1954: 196]; cf. Austin 1946and Wisdom 1940).

Philosophers, thus, find themselves saddled with the question, How doI know that others have minds? One can put the emphasis on the word“know” and raise a sceptical question parallel tothe one Descartes raises in connection with our knowledge of theexternal world, or one can put the emphasis on the word“how” and question the source of our knowledge given thatI am not in a position to have direct knowledge of the mind ofanother.

1.1 The Argument from Analogy

While it may be the case that different considerations can give riseto an epistemological problem concerning other minds, on the wholewhat appears to have pre-occupied philosophers in the period underconsideration (mid-twentieth century) was the question of solipsism,the question of whether I am alone in the universe. While it is oftenaccepted that I cannot be certain that I am not alone, it is thoughtthat it can be shown that we have good reason to believe that theothers I encounter are like me in having thoughts and feelings. Oneform of reasoning has been taken to be “traditional” inthis connection: the argument from analogy (Blackburn 1994).Analogical reasoning cites similarities between two things and usesthis as support for concluding that further similarities may be takento exist. Like all forms of inferential reasoning, analogicalreasoning is employed in order to expand knowledge in the face ofuncertainty (Bartha 2016).

A statement of the argument from analogy can be found in the writingof J.S. Mill. In reply to the question,

By what evidence do I know, or by what considerations am I led tobelieve … that the walking and speaking figures which I see andhear, have sensations and thoughts, or in other words, possessMinds?

Mill writes:

First, they have bodies like me, which I know in my own case, to bethe antecedent condition of feelings; and because, secondly, theyexhibit the acts, and outward signs, which in my own case I know byexperience to be caused by feelings. (1865 [1872: 243])

While this argument was once popular (see, e.g., Russell 1923;Hampshire 1952), it soon came to be considered unfit for purpose dueto the following considerations. Firstly, it was pointed out thatwhile this way of proceeding may work in certain domains, in the caseof other minds the conclusion is logically uncheckable (Locke 1968).Secondly, it was considered problematic that this way of extendingone’s knowledge proceeds from a single case (Locke 1968). Andthirdly, it was claimed that the very first premise of this argument(I know in my own case) is problematic (Malcolm 1958).

Various attempts have been made to salvage the argument. Against thefirst of these considerations it has been pointed out that wesuccessfully appeal to analogy when extending our knowledge from thepresent to the past. However, Hyslop and Jackson (1972) remind us thatthis defense fails to register the fact that the impossibility ofchecking the conclusion in the case of other minds islogical(cf.§1), and prefer to defend appeal to analogy here by suggesting that, whilethis is true, it is not “obviously relevant”. They alsosuggest that the fact that the conclusion here cannot be verified maybe “neutralized” by the fact that it also cannot berefuted (1972: 169–170).

Hyslop and Jackson also propose an alternative to the standard defenseof the argument from analogy from the second of the aboveconsiderations. The standard defense insists that the argument doesnot proceed from a single case and that there are innumerableinstances and many different contexts in which one observes a mentalstate and its associated behavior (Ayer 1956: 219–222); cf. Millwho writes that analogy is an “inferior degree of inductiveevidence” that only works by providing one with an hypothesiswhich is then verified by further correlations, 1865 [1872: 260]).According to Hyslop & Jackson, however, there is no need to appealto multiple cases here just so long as one can establish a linkbetween mental states and behavior, something they claim can be donefrom observation of one’s own case (cf. Hill 1984). Hyslop(1995) warns that we must be careful here not to appeal to the(invalid) principle that like effects (behavior) have like causes(mental states)—your behavior may have a purely physical cause.We should instead appeal to the (valid) principle that like causeshave like effects: what I observe in my own case leads me tohypothesize that my mental states are caused by physical states of mybody, and I can argue that like physical states in others will causelike mental states. This, in effect, is to invoke the principle of theUniformity of Nature; it is this principle that Hyslop believes liesat the heart of the argument from analogy. While many consider thatgeneralization from a single instance is a crucial weakness in theargument from analogy, Hyslop takes this to be the argument’sstrength. Indeed, he holds that the other main contender in the field,the argument from scientific inference/best explanation failsprecisely because it does not take into account a crucial dependenceon our own case when it comes to knowledge of other minds (cf.§1.2).

The third of the arguments that have been brought to bear against theargument from analogy requires careful consideration. The very premisethat Hyslop believes recommends this way of supporting one’sbelief in other minds is the one that some have thought to beirremediably problematic. Malcolm, inspired by the later work ofWittgenstein, has suggested that the premise—I know from my owncase what it is like to think and feel—is committed to what hecalls the “fundamental error” of thinking that one learnswhat thoughts and feelings are from one’s own case (Malcolm1958: 974). This way of coming to learn about mind is associated withwhat is sometimes thought of as an ‘inward glance’ orintrospection (cf. Locke 1689). It has been argued that this way oflearning about mind or mental states is committed to the possibilityof a private language (Wittgenstein 1953; Malcolm 1954). According toMalcolm, Wittgenstein advances both an “internal” and an“external” attack on the possibility of such a language(Malcolm 1954 [1966: 75]). The internal attack aims to show that,while a genuine language requires that one be able to articulatecorrectness conditions for the application of a word, it is notpossible to articulate such conditions when the referent of the wordis not intersubjectively available. As Wittgenstein points out:“Whatever is going to seem right to me is right. And that onlymeans that here we can’t talk about ‘right’”(1953: §258). (For a statement of the “external”attack here see§2.) The private language argument aside, the suggestion that I can cometo know about mental states from my own case leads to a conception ofmind as something not observable in behavior but as something lyingbehind and causing behavior. Malcolm contrasts this way of thinkingwith what he labels acriterial view of the relationshipbetween mind and behavior. Much ink has been spilled over trying tounderstand this proposed alternative way of thinking of mind inrelation to behavior (see§1.3). However we understand this proposal, it is important to appreciatethe difficulties thought to be associated with the idea that onelearns from one’s own case what it is to think and feel: it isbelieved to lead inexorably to solipsism. (This was something arguablyfirst appreciated by Thomas Reid; see§4.1). It should, however, be noted that solipsism comes in two varieties:epistemological and conceptual. While the argument from analogy isproposed as a way of avoiding the former, it is arguable that it isreally the latter to which Malcolm and others are drawing ourattention. In effect, the claim here is that use of the argument fromanalogy as a way of avoiding epistemological solipsism (the only mindI can know is my own) falls foul of conceptual solipsism (the onlymind I can think about is my own). Discussion of the conceptualproblem in connection with other minds may be thought to take us in adirection at odds with that taken when one approaches these mattersfrom an epistemological perspective (for the conceptual problem see§2.)

1.2 Best Explanation

The argument from best explanation has been advocated as an advance onthe argument from analogy. While Hyslop insists that any justificationfor one’s belief in other minds must make crucial reference toone’s own case, it has been argued thatnot needing torely on such reference makes the argument from best explanationpreferable as an account of how we justify our belief here (Pargetter1984). Whether or not one pauses to assess the relative merits ofthese two ways of defending the rationality of our belief in otherminds, what is undoubtedly the case is that the argument from bestexplanation is—either explicitly or implicitly—a form ofargument that enjoys wide acceptance today. David Chalmers, forexample, writes, “It … seems that this [argument frombest explanation] is as good a solution to the problem of other mindsas we are going to get” (1996: 246).

While the argument from analogy was once popular in science (Hyslop& Jackson (1972) cite the example of the discovery of helium onthe sun to have a characteristic spectrum by analogy with thecharacteristic spectrum of helium on earth) in more recent timesscience has tended to proceed in accordance with the principle that itis rational to believe that hypothesis that provides the bestavailable explanation of a particular phenomenon at a given time. Thisstyle of argument is sometimes referred to as abduction, and it isplaced alongside deduction and enumerative induction as another formof inferential reasoning. While simple enumerative inductive takes onefrom certain observations to the conclusion that one can expect moreof the same, abduction allows for the introduction of entities thatare not just unobserved, but that are unobservable (Lipton 2000;Harman 1965).

It is claimed that my reason for believing that others have mindssimilar to my own can be taken to be the same as the scientificrealist’s reason for believing in the existence of electrons orother theoretical entities. On this way of thinking, mental states aretaken to be inner states of an individual that provide the bestexplanation of the behavior we observe in others; any otherexplanation would be implausible. Pargetter (1984) considers thefollowing as implausible alternative hypotheses: (i) God is workingothers like puppets; (ii) I am unique in having mental states as thecause of behavior; and (iii) that others have mental states but theyare of an entirely different nature to my own.

According to Pargetter, the argument from best explanation is able tobypass all criticisms standardly brought to bear against the argumentfrom analogy, as it relies solely on the explanatory power of theproposed hypothesis—in this case, that others have minds. Thisform of reasoning is also held to be superior to reasoning fromanalogy as it can be used to establish the existence of minds inindividuals of other species whose behavior may not be similar to mineor who think and feel in ways that aredissimilar to the waythat I think and feel. It may also be used to justify the belief inminds of (abnormal) humans who may either behave very differently orthink and feel very differently from their conspecifics.

Melnyk (1994) has argued that there is an important disanalogy betweenthe scientific realist’s reason for believing in theoreticalentities and an ordinary person’s reason for believing thatother people have minds. His argument rests on the observation thatgross behavioral evidence is insufficient for belief in another mindwithout additional reference to what one knows from one’s owncase. Melnyk can be read as advocating a hybrid account of ourknowledge here, incorporating elements from the argument from analogyas a supplement to the inference from best explanation. But he alsomakes the following, important, observation: “A completeresponse to the problem of other minds seems obliged to incorporatemore than one approach, and may have to incorporate several”(1994: 487). This is an observation others have also begun to advocate(see§3.2).

1.3 Criteria

It has been suggested that an alternative to the view that mind liesbehind and serves as the cause of behavior is the view that behaviorserves as thecriterion of mind (see§1.1). The former conception of mind in relation to behavior is associatedwith the following ideas: (i) my mind is private to me; (ii) I am bothinfallible and incorrigible with respect to my own mental states; and(iii) I can know my own mental state without having to observeanything about my body. This picture of mind is bolstered by thethought that, whatever another person says or does, it is alwayspossible that they are deceiving me about what is going on in theirminds—an extreme version of which leads to the thought that I amentirely deceived and all others are mere automata or zombies. Inshort, this conception of mind leads to the traditionalepistemological problem of other minds. Standard responses to thisproblem—arguments from analogy and best explanation—draw aparallel between knowledge of another’s mind and explanation inscience. In this connection Wittgenstein writes: “Misleadingparallel: psychology treats of processes in the psychical sphere, asdoes physics in the physical” (1953: §571). InThe BlueBook (24–25) Wittgenstein contrasts the business of citingcriteria with that of giving symptoms in answer to the question,“How do you know?” He associates the giving of symptomswith the making of hypotheses; he associates the citing of criteriawith “the grammar (the use)” of a word or with linguisticconvention (1958: 23).

It has not proved an easy thing for philosophers to understand whatWittgenstein means here (see Albritton 1959; Shoemaker 1963; Kenny1967; Baker 1974). What one can say is that a criterial relationbetween mind and behavior is designed to be distinct from, on the onehand, logical entailment, and on the other, inductive inference. Somesee a connection between a criterial relation here and the possibilityof perceptual knowledge of another’s mind (McDowell 1982, Hacker1997; see§1.4.1). Those that advocate a criterial relation between mind and behavioralso tend to understand the problem of other minds to be a conceptualone (see§2). As well as being associated with the rejection of a certainconception of mind that can be labeled ‘Cartesian’, appealto a criterial relationship between mind and behavior is often thoughtto form part of an anti-sceptical stance in connection withothers.

Some have seen in the appeal to criteria nothing but a form ofbehaviorism. Chihara and Fodor (1965) are among such philosophers, andtheir work has served to turn the tide against talk of criteria as away of understanding the relationship between mental states andbehavior. Chihara and Fodor sum up the Wittgensteinian argument asfollows: if we are justified in claiming that one can tell ordetermine that a predicate ‘Y’ applies on thebasis of the presence ofX then eitherX is acriterion ofY orX can be shown to be correlatedwithY. They then claim that this overlooks the possibilitythat in some cases the justification for the application of apredicate rests on an appeal to the “simplicity, plausibilityand predictive adequacy of an explanatory system as a whole”(1965: 411). They point out that scientists use this method ofexplanation when it comes to the detection of particles that are notdirectly observable (see§1.2). Chihara and Fodor agree with the Wittgensteinian who holds that thechild does not learn about mental states by introspection but ratherlearns about complex relations between mental states and behavior inthe course of learning her language, but they point out that part ofwhat the child learns is how to explain another’s behavior byreference to her thoughts and feelings and suggest that this may bethe result either of explicit training or of an innate capacity.

Whether one is persuaded by Chihara and Fodor’s position againstappeal to criteria will depend in part upon one’s assessment ofthe correctness of thinking about mental states on the model ofunobservables in science. Furthermore, it may be thought that tounderstand mental states to be entirely explanatory phenomena isarguably to lose sight of the subjective aspect of these states.Finally, to think of mental states as lying behind and causingbehavior may be thought to break what some see as a deep connectionbetween mentality and behavior, thereby opening up the possibilitythat I am alone in the universe (Avramides 2013).

Many have continued to defend a criterial approach here. CrispinWright and John McDowell have written extensively on this topic, eachoffering a very different interpretation of the notion of a criterion.While the debate here is complex and interwoven with issues such asrealist vs anti-realist semantics, there is one thread in this debatethat is particularly relevant to the epistemological problem of otherminds: the question of whether criteria should be thought of asdefeasible or indefeasible. Wright rightly sees this question asconnected with the question of whether appeal to criteria can provideone with an anti-sceptical stance. Wright’s own understanding ofcriteria turns on an important distinction betweenconstitutingknowledge that P andan entitlement to a knowledge-claim thatP. While a sceptic can always challenge the truth of any claim toknow that which lies beyond the cognitive reach of the subject(examples here include the past and other minds), Wright suggests thatthe sceptic can make no inroads when one pulls in one’s hornsand simply makes a statement about the reasonableness of one’sbelief or claim to know in such cases. He then argues thatreasonableness is secured if one can show that the criteria for theclaim that, for example, another is in pain are satisfied and oneknows of no consideration that would defeat the claim—in otherwords, just so long as one is using a word, e.g., “pain”,in accordance with the conventions in play in one’s linguisticcommunity. It is a consequence of this understanding of criteria that,while one may be in the best position to make a claim to know that Tomis in pain by observing his behavior, one’s claim isdefeasible—that is, it is open to being shown to be mistaken inthe light of further evidence. Importantly, to hold that behavioralcriteria are defeasible is not, according to Wright, to be committedto understanding behavior as ‘outer’ evidence (a symptom)of the other’s ‘inner’ mental states. Wright admits,however, that his position leaves room for scepticism: “a formof scepticism that is endemic in the very practice of assertion”(1984: [1993: 389–390]).^[2]

McDowell is not content to concede any ground to the sceptic, andbelieves that appeal to criteria can confer (sceptic-proof) knowledge.But for this to be the case, criteria must be understood to beindefeasible (McDowell 1982). McDowell finds anincompatibility between, on the one hand, the legitimacy of aknowledge ascription and, on the other, the possible of its falsity(its defeasibility). McDowell is not persuaded by Wright’sunderstanding of criteria, and proposes an alternative to it.McDowell’s understanding of criteria is thought to form a partof his defense of a direct, perceptual, account of our knowledge ofother minds (see§1.4.1).

In the work of Stanley Cavell one finds yet another understanding ofcriteria: “Criteria are ‘criteria for something’sbeing so”, not in the sense that they tell us of a thing’sexistence, but of something like its identity, not of itsbeing so, but of its beingso. Criteria do notdetermine the certainty of statements, but the application of theconcepts employed in statements“ (Cavell 1979: 45; for a gooddiscussion of Cavell’s understanding of criteria see Mulhall1994, Pt. II,). I may come to know that the criteria for pain havebeen satisfied, but this does not touch the question of whether theotherreally experiences thoughts and feelings (the thicksceptical question). Cavell insists that, rather than reply to thesceptic or show why this thick sceptical question does not arise(inferential arguments attempt to do the former, appeal to criteriahave been used by some to do the latter), we need to understand whatit is that gives rise to the sceptic’s worry. Cavell urges thatwe see the sceptic as being motivated by a genuine concern, but onethat s/he misunderstands to be an epistemological concern. Rather thanask, How can I know the thoughts and feelings of others?, Cavellthinks we should look to how how I respond to the other. He drawsattention to thePhilosophical Investigations (p. 178) whereWittgenstein writes, My attitude towards him is an attitude towards asoul”. Cavell sees in this attitude an acknowledgement ofanother. Acknowledgment is active, it is something we do in relationto another; it is not a cognitive achievement. With his emphasis onacknowledgement, Cavell aims to turn us away from the idea that myfundamental relation to others is a cognitive one (see Cavell, 1979,Pt. IV, and Avramides 2023).

1.4 Perceptual Knowledge of Other Minds

Those who defend either the argument from analogy or from bestexplanation are firmly of the view that any knowledge we may have ofother minds (or any justification there may be for our belief in them)must be indirect. They accept that, while our knowledge of our ownmental states is direct, our knowledge of the mental states of othersmust proceed by reasoning from what we observe—the other’sbehavior—to what we cannot observe—the other’smental states.^[3] The idea that the mind of another is not directly observable is onethat seems common to many philosophers. As early as the fifth centuryAD, St. Augustine writes: “For even when a living body is moved,there is no way opened to our eyes to see the mind, a thing whichcannot be seen by the eyes…” (De Trinitate 140;cf. Descartes 1641, Second Meditation; and Berkeley 1710, Principle148) The idea that we should have direct knowledge of another’smental states has also come under fire more recently by Colin McGinn,who writes that direct perceptual reports specifying the mental statesof another “seem definitely wrong” (1984: 123, n. 2; cf.Plantinga 1966: 441).

Direct knowledge is often associated with perception and it is this,as we have just seen, that so many philosophers have rejected inassociation with other minds. While our knowledge of the world ofthings around us is taken to come about through perception, it hasbeen thought that knowledge of another’s mind cannot come aboutby this means.^[4] Nonetheless, we find Nathalie Duddington writing, “My object inthe present paper is to maintain that our knowledge of other minds isas direct and immediate as our knowledge of physical things”(1919: 147). It is not at all clear that philosophers at the time paidmuch attention to this very interesting paper, but philosophers todayhave found in Duddington’s work a precursor for an idea that hascome to be taken very seriously—at least in some circles.^[5]

Many analytic philosophers in the past few decades have written indefense of the idea that our knowledge of other minds comes aboutthrough perception (e.g., McDowell 1978 and 1982, Dretske 1969 and1976, Cassam 2007, McNeil 2012, Stout 2010, and Green, 2010). The ideais also defended by some philosophers writing in the phenomenologicaltradition (§1.4.2). Many philosophers working today bring together work in bothtraditions in defense of this idea (e.g., Overgaard 2019, Krueger2014, and J. Smith 2010). Consideration of issues to do with the selfin relation to others has been thought by some to have the power tobridge the chasm between these two traditions in philosophy.

1.4.1 McDowell and Dretske on perceptual knowledge of other minds

Those attracted by the idea that our knowledge of other minds comesabout through perception often appeal to the following in defense oftheir position: we all acknowledge that we often claim to be in theposition where we canjust see that another is angry, inpain, and the like. These philosophers are careful to point out thatwe don’t always claim that this is the case and we do not claimit with respect to all mental states, but they hold that attention tosuch cases can teach us that the mental is not always “withdrawnfrom direct engagement with the world” (McDowell 1995: 413).Duddington writes that to say that knowledge of another’s mindcan be direct and immediate is to say that there is no veil or barrierintervening between the knowing subject and what is known—it isnot to say either that our knowledge here is complete or that thereare no difficulties that stand in the way of our attainment of suchknowledge (1919: 167; cf. McDowell 1982).

McDowell has written that

we should not jib at, or interpret away, the common-sense thought that… one can literally perceive, in another person’s facialexpression or his behavior, that he is in pain, and not just inferthat he is in pain from what one perceives. (1978: 305)

McDowell’s perceptual account involves two crucial moves, oneconcerning our understanding of experience and the other concerningour understanding of behavior. He proposes that we think of ourexperience as being “open” to the world, allowing objectsto figure in it directly; and in a parallel fashion he proposes thatwe think of behavior as giving expression to mental states therebyallowing them to figure in behavior (McDowell 1982, 1986). Accordingto McDowell, when one has an experience of genuinely expressivebehavior, one is not actually experiencing the mental state of theother; nonetheless, behavior in the veridical case should not bethought to fall short of mind in such a way as to allow for thepossibility of its total absence. McDowell believes that thisunderstanding of experience and behavior can support (sceptic-proof)knowledge of both the world and other minds.

The challenge for McDowell is to explain how error can arise in bothcases. To accommodate error, McDowell introduces a disjunctiveunderstanding of both experience and behavior (McDowell 1982; Soteriou2016). Considering the former we can say:either ourexperience is such as to yield access to the worldor it issuch as to yield only apparent access. Considering the latter we cansay:either the observed behavior is such as to be expressiveof the other’s mentalityor it only appears to be such.In both cases the way things seem to the experiencing subject is suchas to fall short of infallible knowledge as to which disjunct is inquestion (McDowell 1986 [1998: 240]). We may be fallible with respectto how things are in the world, but McDowell insists that we must becareful to locate this fallibility in the right place. We should notconclude, as so many have, that all experience may be fallible; thisis the move that paves the way for radical scepticism. It is, rather,our perceptual capacities that are fallible: sometimes they provide uswith experience which is veridical and sometimes they do not (McDowell2006). The important thing is that, when experience is veridical, wecan take it to give us (sceptic-proof) knowledge of the world.

When it comes to our knowledge of other minds, the disjunctive moveallows us to hold that, where behavior is genuinely expressive ofanother’s mental life, there our experience of her behavior willyield (sceptic-proof) knowledge of another’s mental life.Genuinely expressive behavior is being thought of not as evidence (asymptom) of another’s mental life but as a criterion of it.This, McDowellian, understanding of criteria—in contrast toWright’s (§1.3)—requires that we accept behavior in at least some cases to be expressive of, acriterion of, mental states. So understood, behavioral criteria areindefeasible. This is not to say that error is not possible,as the person I encounter may be deceiving me. However, in such casesthe criterion for the mental state is not satisfied. The importantthing is that this possibility should not be taken to negate the factthat, when the other person is not deceiving me, my experience of herbehavior can result in (sceptic-proof) knowledge that she is, forexample, in pain. The genuine possibility that others may deceive meshould not be taken to open up the possibility that all others may bezombies and that I am in the world alone.^[6] (We may here consider something Wittgenstein writes (1992, 94e):“But of course it isn’t true that we are never certainabout the mental processes in someone else. In countless cases weare.”)

Dretske’s defense of our direct, perceptual knowledge of anothermind differs significantly from the one that is found in the work ofMcDowell or Duddington. Dretske is not interested in scepticism, or ingiving an account of knowledge that is sceptic-proof. He is interestedonly in saying how it is that we come to know what others think andfeel, to identify the source of our knowledge here (cf.§1). While we often say that we just can see what another is thinking orfeeling, it is also thought that there is an obstacle to takingperception to be a possible source of this knowledge. Dretskeidentifies the obstacle here to arise from the fact that it isgenerally thought that another’s mind is unobservable: while onecan see the smile, the clenched fist or the hunched shoulder, onecannot see what lies behind these things (Dretske 1973: 36). WhileDretske agrees that you cannot see another’s joy, anger ordepression, he believes you can see (the fact) that another is happy,angry or depressed. The distinction here goes along with another thatDretske draws between what he calls “non-epistemic” and“epistemic seeing”. The former is a relation between aperson and a thing (Dretske likens this relation to stepping on abug), while the latter has “positive belief content”(Dretske 1966). He points out that just as one can see that someone iswealthy without seeing their wealth, or see that the metal rod is hotwithout seeing the heat, so one can see that another is happy, angry,depressed and the like without seeing the other’s joy, anger ordepression (Dretske 1966 and 1973). Dretske suggests an analysis ofepistemic seeing, which analysis contains an all-important reliabilitycondition: the conditions under which, for example, Sally sees thatTom is angry must be such that Tom would not look angry to Sallyunless he was angry. It is the satisfaction of this reliabilitycondition that allows the satisfaction of the analysis to amount toboth a visual and an epistemic achievement.^[7]

Dretske appreciates that a given behavior on Tom’s part is notalways a reliable indicator of, say, anger. What he holds is thatunder certain conditions and to those who know Tom well—such ashis wife—his behavior can be taken to be a reliable indicator ofhis anger (for a critique of this idea see Avramides 2019). Therefore,according to Dretske, we can have direct perceptual knowledge ofanother’s mental states in the following sense: we can see whatothers are feeling andand thinking, even though we cannot seeanother’s mental states or know that solipsism is false.^[8]

Quassim Cassam brings the work of Dretske together with that ofMcDowell in his defense of a perceptual account of our knowledge ofother minds (Cassam 2007, ch. 5). Cassam uses Dretske’s work toshow that one can know what another thinks and feels despite the factthat one cannot see another’s mental states. But rather thanfollow Dretske in holding that behaviour is a reliable indicator ofanother’s mental states, Cassam follows McDowell and holds thatbehaviour manifests another’s mental states. Behaviour,according to Cassam, is revealing of another’s state of mindwithout being that state of mind (Cassam 2007, 165). The result ofbringing the work of these two philosophers together allows Cassam toclaim that I can know bothwhat another thinks and feelsand that he is a thinking, feeling being. Dretske, on theother hand, holds that I can only know what another thinks and feels.According to Dretske, that another is a genuine thinking, feelingbeing is not something that can be known; rather, this is apresumption or presupposition (for a discussion of Cassam’s workin relation to McDowell and Dretske see Avramides 2023).

1.4.2 Perceptual knowledge of other minds and the phenomenological tradition

The late 19^th and early twentieth centuries saw theemergence of the phenomenological movement associated with suchfigures as Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre. One importantdimension of the work of these philosophers is discussion ofintersubjectivity. There are two other philosophers in this traditionwhose work is also strongly associated with intersubjectivity, MaxScheler and Edith Stein. It can be said of the phenomenologicalapproach as a whole that it rejects the isolationism of the self thatcharacterizes Cartesian philosophy. Scheler specifically criticizesthe argument from analogy, claiming (i) that it is mistaken in itsstarting point or first premise and (ii) that it wrongly assumes thatwe cannot have access to another’s mind.

The first premise of the argument from analogy is, in effect, theCartesian starting point: one is secure in the knowledge that one hasof one’s own conscious experience. These phenomenologists rejectthis starting point. In its place Husserl (1931) adopts the startingpoint of embodied subjectivity, Heidegger (1927) insists that thestructure of human experience is such as to involve a relation to theworld and to others (Dasein is essentially characterized byMitsein), and Merleau-Ponty holds that “I find myselfalready situated and involved in a physical and social world”(1945 [2003: 419]). Sartre takes things further and draws attention tothe extent to which the encounter with another is an encounter withsomeone who takes me as an object (1943).

These philosophers refuse to allow themselves to be pre-occupied bythe epistemological issues that they see as arising from a mistakenstarting point. Instead of asking how I can justify my belief in theworld and others, they take for granted that the individual’sexperience is such as to exist in a world and for others and addressquestions that concern this starting point, such as: what makes thisstarting point possible (Husserl & Merleau-Ponty); how can weexplain/understand the structures of the being of subjectivity in sucha way as to include the world and others (Heidegger); how do Iencounter the Other (Sartre). Crucial to the defense of thisnon-Cartesian starting point is a non-Cartesian conception of mind inrelation to body. The conceptual divide between mind and body that onefinds in Descartes’ philosophy is taken by these thinkers to be“inadequate to phenomenology” (Overgaard 2006).

These phenomenologists also reject the idea that we cannot have accessto the mind of another. Scheler points out that

we believe ourselves to be directly acquainted with anotherperson’s joy in his laughter, with his sorrow and pain in histears, with his shame in his blushing

and the like (1913 [1954: 260]). And in the same paragraph Schelerinsists that we should not allow philosophical theory to tempt us awayfrom the obvious: that we know the minds of others through perception.In a similarly vein, Merleau-Ponty (1945 [2003: 415]) writes:

I perceive the grief or the anger of the other in his conduct, in hisface or his hands, without recourse to any ‘inner’experience of suffering or anger….

Scheler suggests that philosophical theory tries to turn us away fromthe obvious by insisting that “there is certainly no sensationof another person’s mind nor any stimulus from such asource”, and he insists that to think like this is to turnone’s back on the “expressive unity” of behavior(1913 [1954: 181]). He writes: “We can … have insightinto others, in so far as we treat their bodies as a field ofexpression for their experiences” (1913 [1954: 10]). Whether wetake knowledge here to come about either as the reult of an inference(as in the argument from analogy) or though perception turns,according to Scheler, on the question of how one views therelationship between mind and behavior.

Scheler considers a crying child and the various responses that onemay have to her. Firstly there is the possibility that one sees theface but does not see it as expressing distress. Secondly there is thepossibility that one sees the face as expressive of distress whileremaining indifferent. And finally, there is the situation where onesees the child’s distress and responds emotionally. Schelerassociates empathy with the second situation, and labels the emotionalresponse in the final situation “sympathy.”^[9] The relationship between perception and empathy is explored insomewhat more detail in the work of both Husserl and his student EdithStein. While Husserl struggles with the idea of empathy in relation toothers throughout his career we find in Stein’s work a moresettled view (Zahavi 2014). Stein distinguishes empathy fromperception, holding that empathy “is a kind of act of perceivingsui generis” (Stein 1917 [1989: 5]): it is likeperception in so far as it isdirect (like Scheler, Steinrejects the idea that knowledge of others comes about throughinference); it is unlike perception in the way in which it gives usits object. Empathy is the way in which we experienceforeignconsciousness. Stein follows Scheler in holding that our experience ofthe other is an experience of a soul which is “alwaysnecessarily a soul in a body” (1917 [1989: 44]), but sheemphasizes the way in which this experience is always imperfect: thereis always a distance between what I am aware of when I empathize withthe other and what the other is experiencing; I experience the otheras other, as a center of intentionality or as a perspectiveon the world that is different from mine (cf. Zahavi 2014: 192).Without the distance introduced by an imperfect understanding—ifunderstanding here could be perfect—I would be the other (cf.Levinas 1979: 89: “the absence of the other is exactly hispresence as other”). It is this distance that Stein accusesScheler of failing to capture in his more straightforwardly perceptual account.^[10] As well as appreciating the otherness of the other, there is anappreciation in the work of Stein and Scheler of the ethical nature ofmy encounter with the other (cf. Levinas, Wittgenstein andCavell).

1.4.3 Indirect vs direct accounts

It is sometimes taken to be the case that perception and inferenceexhaust the alternatives when we consider how we might account for ourknowledge of others. But, as we have seen in§1.4.2, Stein’s account eschews a straightforwardly perceptual accountof our knowledge here without yet succumbing to an inferential one. Itmay be more fruitful if one thought of the opposition here to bebetween indirect and direct accounts of our knowledge of others. Whatmany who oppose inference are against is the mind-body relationshipupon which it is based. Many who reject indirect accounts are opposedto an idea that they see as lying at the heart of such accounts– the idea that the behaviour of the other acts as a veilcutting me off from the other’s mental states. Once this idea isrejected, it remains open how to understand direct accounts. McDowellsuggests two possible interpretations. On the first, the fact of theother’s mental states is presented to view; on the other,

… we might think of what is directly available to experience insome such terms as “his giving expression to his being in the‘inner’ state”: this is something that, while notitself actually being the “inner” state of affairs inquestion, nevertheless does not fall short of it…. (McDowell1982, 472–3).

Those that advocate a direct account of our knowledge of other mindsare faced with the following question: does their account entail arejection of the asymmetry that philosophers have identified betweenknowledge of one’s own and another’s mind (see§1)? Some philosophers who propose a direct account would insist that theycan still allow for an asymmetry here, just so long as we are carefulhow we understand it.^[11] They believe that we must be careful not to understand the asymmetryhere as committing us to a picture of mind as lying behind behavior.One alternative to this picture can be found in the work ofMerleau-Ponty who writes,

The grief and anger of another have never quite the same significancefor him as they have for me. For him these situations are livedthrough, for me they are displayed. (Merleau-Ponty 1945 [2003:415])

(Cf. Wittgenstein 1992: 10e, who writes: “My words and myactions interest me in a completely different way than they do someoneelse … I do not relate to them as an observer”.)

2. The Conceptual Problem of Other Minds

Thomas Nagel once wrote:

The interesting problem of other minds is not the epistemologicalproblem…. It is the conceptual problem, how I canunderstand the attribution of mental states to others. (1986:19–20)

Bilgrami agrees (1992). Some philosophers go further than Nagel andinsist that the conceptual is the fundamental problem; others seelittle in it (Hyslop 1995). How one understands this problem is amatter of some contention (Gomes 2011). What all agree is that theproblem is associated with the work of Wittgenstein, and in particularsection 302 from thePhilosophical Investigations:

If one has to imagine someone else’s pain on the model ofone’s own, this is none too easy a thing to do: for I have toimagine pain which Ido not feel on the model of pain which Ido feel. That is, what I have to do is not simply to make atransition in imagination from one place of pain to another. As, fromthe pain in the hand to pain in the arm. For I am not to imagine thatI feel pain in some region of his body….

Malcolm understands 302 as providing an “external attack”on the possibility of a private language (contrast the argument of§1.1). That is to say, 302 is designed to show the difficulty that one runsinto if one begins with the idea that one knows from one’s owncase what it is to feel pain: one risks conceptual solipsism.^[12] Colin McGinn has suggested that the problem raised in 302 can bethought of in the following way: if I learn through introspection whatit is, say, to be in pain, then there is a “a way of thinkingabout my experiences which (a) only I have and (b) enters into myunderstanding of the concept in question” (1984: 127). The way Ilearn about the object of my thought here is as something that has a“distinctively first-person element” from which it seemsimpossible to prescind (ibid). This explains why I can make atransition from the pain in my hand to the pain in my arm, but it is“none too easy a thing” to make a transition from a painthat I feel in my hand to a pain that you feel somewhere in your body(for a very different interpretation of the 302, see Kripke 1982,Postscript).

Some associate the conceptual problem here with the problem of comingto have mental concepts that are completely general. Gareth Evans hasproposed that to have a thought about an object to the effect that itisF (consider: Tom is angry) requires the exercise of thefollowing two capacities:

One being the capacity to think ofx, which could be equallyexercised in thoughts aboutx to the effect that it isG orH; and the other being a conception of what itis to beF, which could be equally exercised in thoughtsabout other individuals, to the effect that they areF.(1982: 75)

Evans labels this the “generality constraint”(Ibid, ftnt. 15), and it has been thought to raise a problemfor thoughts about mental states if one takes it that one comes toknow what a mental state is by inward reflection alone. The problem,reflected in 302, is how to understand the extension to others of aconcept acquired in this way.

P.F. Strawson in effect acknowledges the generality constraint when hewrites:

It is a necessary condition of one’s ascribing states ofconsciousness, experiences, to oneself, in the way that one does, thatone should also ascribe them, or be prepared to ascribe them, toothers who are not oneself. (1959: 99)

Strawson considers how it is that one ascribes mental states to othersand concludes that one cannot do this if we insist on divorcing mentalstates from the behaving body. Strawson claims that we mustacknowledge what he calls the “primitiveness of the concept of aperson”, the concept of

a type of entity such thatboth predicates ascribing statesof consciousnessand predicates ascribing corporealcharacteristics … are equally applicable…. (1959:101–2)

While many will accept that the conceptual problem is thefirst problem we encounter in connection with others, othersgo further and claim that once one addresses the conceptual problemthere is no room for the epistemological one. This is because our wayof thinking and talking about mind will have application to othersbuilt into it from the start. It has been pointed out that to say whatis required for grasp of a concept is not yet to show that thatconcept is instantiated.^[13] It can be said in reply that it is a particular proposed solution tothis conceptual problem that may be thought to make theepistemological question otiose. As we can see with Strawson’sproposal, the idea is that we break down the gap between mind andbehavior and understand what one experiences when one seesanother’s behavior as itself requiring mental state attributionsto the other. Some can only see in this proposal a retreat intobehaviorism. Others, however, insist that this is not thecase—at least if behaviorism is understood as a reductionistthesis. It is not reductionist to hold that behavior is expressive ofanother’s mental life; genuinely expressive behavior is held tobe distinguishable from ‘mere behavior’ (cf. Austin1946).

McDowell claims to echo Strawson’s work when he writes in thisconnection that we must regain the concept of ahuman beingfrom what he takes to be a “philosophically generated”concept of ahuman body (McDowell 1982: 469; cf. Cook 1969).Some take issue with McDowell over whether the latter is only aphilosophically generated concept (Wright 1998), but it is hard todeny that the move from the former concept to the latter is deeplysignificant.

3. The Naturalist Turn

Alvin Goldman (2006) has distinguished a descriptive from a normativeepistemological problem of other minds.Section 1 andsection 2 were largely concerned with the latter; this section will concernitself with the former. The descriptive problem is associated withwhat Goldman termsmind reading (ormentalizing).Mind reading involves the capacity to think about mind and is a secondor higher order activity that involves representing or conceptualizingothers (as well as oneself) as “loci of mentallife” (Goldman 2006: 3). While many species of animal may bethought to have minds, only some will be capable of representinganother as having minds. Questions of justification and conceptualdifficulty are not of concern to the descriptive theorist, nor aremetaphysical questions concerning the nature of mind; what concernsthe descriptive epistemologist is how what she says measures up withwhat is being learned in the empirical disciplines of developmentalpsychology and neuroscience. Work on the descriptive problem isdeveloping at a rapid pace and, while at first attention in all therelevant disciplines was concentrated on two prominent accounts ofmind reading—theory-theory and simulation theory—a varietyof accounts now exist which challenge both of these accounts (see§3.2).

3.1 Theory-Theory and Simulation Theory

Theory-theory has its roots in a paper by Premack and Woodruff (1978),which argued that certain problem-solving behavior observed inchimpanzees should be taken as evidence that they possess a theory ofmind, as evidence that they are able to make predictions about thebehavior of others that impute to them unobservable mental states.Premack and Woodruff take this imputation to be a rather primitive andunsophisticated reaction to the observation of certain behavior, sonatural in both humans and chimpanzees that it would take an effort tosuppress it.^[14]

In their commentaries on this paper (1978), Dennett, Bennett, andHarman pointed out that further experimentation was required in orderto determine whether a creature possesses the concept of belief (whichconcept is required in order to have thoughts about another’smental states). In particular, it would need to be shown that thecreature possesses the concept offalse belief. Wimmer andPerner (1983) devised a test that purported to show just that. Theoriginal test was carried out with normally developing human childrenand taken to show that the capacity to represent false beliefs ispresent in 4 to 6 year olds, but absent in 3 year olds.^[15] Two different proposals have been put forward to explain thisdevelopmental change. One proposal (see, e.g., Gopnik & Wellman1992) suggests that the child possesses a naïve psychologicaltheory that it uses to explain and predict the behavior of others andthat gets revised by the child over time. The other proposal (see,e.g., Leslie & Roth 1993) suggests a native, domain-specific (ormodular) mechanism that matures at a certain point as what explainsthe child’s success with the false-belief test.

This approach to understanding how we attribute mental states toothers has several notable features: (i) it dovetails with thedominant approach to solving the knowledge-of-other-minds problem asit proposes that our belief here is the result of postulating mentalstates as the best explanation of observed behavior; (ii) it dovetailswith a functionalist account of mind; and (iii) it can solve theasymmetry problem, as some hold the child comes to attribute mentalstates to herself on the same model as she does others (Gopnik 2009).All three features of this theory have come under criticism. Thisapproach has also been challenged by further empirical work thatpurports to show that infants as young as 15 months have the conceptof false belief (Onishi & Baillargeon 2005). One suggestion toaccommodate this data is that we postulate two systems: one thatoperates in the infant and that is fast, efficient, inflexible andnon-normative, and another that develops later (and operates in tandemwith the earlier one in the mature human) and that is effortful,inflexible, normative and language-dependent (Apperly and Butterfill2009; for a good summary of this work and a critique of it, see Jacob2019). Much recent work has challenged the conclusion that the childwho fails the false belief test lacks a competence, suggesting insteadthat the young child’s failure with the false belief test shouldbe accounted for in terms of performance factors (in this connectionsee work by Fabricius and Oktay-Gür & Rakoczy). Questionshave been raised about various aspects of the design of the originalfalse belief test, including questions regarding the way national orcommunity identity may be thought to play a role in the performanceand understanding of the tasks.

Robert Gordon, Jane Heal and Alvin Goldman propose an alternative tothe theory-theory account of how to understand the attribution ofmental states to others. Heal identifies in theory-theory a scientificmotivation that runs roughshod over important differences betweenhuman beings and the rest of the natural world. While theory-theoristsextend a style of understanding from its application in connectionwith the latter to the former, Heal and others propose that we come tounderstand what the other persons are thinking “from theinside”, that we “exploit the fact that we are or haveminds” (Heal 1998 [2003: 84]). Heal is particularly concernedwith the question, What further thoughts will a person have given whatthoughts I already know her to have? (Heal (1998) also traces outfurther questions about others that may concern us.) Gordon (1986,1995) insists that simulation theory must be formulated in such a wayas to avoid reliance on both introspection and inference from oneselfto the other. Rather than imagine what I would do in your situation,he suggests that I imagine being you in your situation. In this way,thinking about others is taken to parallel understanding ofone’s own future behavior: one predicts what one will do byimagining or pretending that the world is a certain way. Simulationtheory has its roots inVerstehen theories favored bysociologists and historians such as Collingwood and Dilthey (as wellas work by Lipps on empathy; for an overview here see Stueber 2018).Simulation theory was thought to be given neurophysiological backingby the discovery of mirror neurons in the pre-motor cortex and inBroca’s area of the human brain that are activated both when anindividual acts and when she observes the actions of another (Galleseand Goldman 1998; Gallese 2001; Rizzolatti et al. 1996). (For anoverview of the different versions of simulation theory that have beenadvocated see Barlassina and Gordon 2017.)

3.2 The Second Person and Person Model Theory

Over the years theory-theory and simulation theory have moved closertowards each other, giving rise to various hybrid accounts of how itis that we attribute minds to others. But there are those whochallenge both theories and any hybrid versions that they havespawned. One such challenge arises from Gallagher & Zahavi 2008who urge that we cast aside both third-person (theory) andfirst-person (simulation) approaches, and concentrate instead onsecond-person interaction. (In its development in Gallagher’swork, this approach has come to be known as “interactiontheory”.) Influenced by work in phenomenology and embodiedcognition, Gallagher and Zahavi propose that our attribution of mentalstates to others is the result of perception of and reaction tobehavior understood as expressive of mental life. Furthermore, theysuggest that the activation of mirror neurons be understood as servingaction or response preparation (rather than as supporting simulation,cf.§3.1). Drawing on the work of developmental psychologists such as Meltzoff,Trevarthen, and Hobson, they identify two forms of intersubjectivity:a primary form identifiable in early infancy that involves adifferential response to persons and inanimate objects; and asecondary form when the behavior of persons is interpreted “interms of their goals and intentions set in contextualizedsituations” (Gallagher & Zahavi 2008: 190). In addition toprimary and secondary intersubjectivity, and at the point when thechild has language, it is suggested that a more nuanced way ofunderstanding others becomes possible through the development ofcommunicative and narrative practices (Hutto 2008; Gallagher &Hutto 2008). Gallagher and Zahavi reject inferential accounts of howwe know others in favor of a direct perceptual one, and theyunderstand behavior (e.g., gesture, facial expressions, contextualizedactions) to be constitutive of mental life. Importantly, they pointout that one shouldn’t conceive of interpersonal understandingas if it was merely and primarily a question of bridging the gapbetween two isolated subjects. Interpersonal understanding occurs in acontext and through “our shared engagement in the commonworld” (Gallagher & Zahavi 2008: 190; cf. Gurwitsch 1977[1979]).

This work aims to move us away from an overly-intellectualized way ofthinking of other minds and to turn our attention to the world that welive and act in with others. The emphasis here is less on individualbeliefs and desires than in shared intentions and goals. As Gallaghersays in one place, “social cognition is often nothing more than… social interaction” (2008: 541).

Interaction theory can be seen as an extension of enactivist theoriesof perception that understand perception as a highly complexaction-oriented phenomenon, incorporating both meaning and emotion: tosee an object is to see it as affording me opportunity for action, andthis opportunity is taken to be part of how I make sense of the worldand what gives the world value for me (cf. Clarke, Noe, Varelaetal). The extension of this idea allows that social interactionsalso constitute for me “novel domains of possibilities for sensemaking” (De Jaegher 2009). To see the other person is to see heras affording interaction; in this regard, direct perception is directenactive perception. Interactionist theorists have suggested concreteproposals for empirical work in psychology and neuroscience in thehopes of moving this research away from what they see as individualismand methodological solipsism (De Jaegher, DiPaulo, & Gallagher2010). Rather than taking individual agents to be constitutive ofsocial interaction, these interaction theorists take them to beconstituted by their interaction with others.

Person model theory challenges theory-theory (TT) and simulationtheory (ST)—as well as interaction theory (IT; Newen 2015, Newen& Schlicht 2009). Person model theory finds certain limitations ineach of the theories that it opposes. In the place of the two forms ofintersubjectivity recommended by Gallagher and Zahavi, person theorysuggests that the infant works with a “non-conceptualperson-schema” which develops—through the combined work ofobservation and narrative—into “conceptualizedperson-images”. Thus, it is proposed that the understanding ofpersons is a step-by-step process of enrichment, central to which isthe acceptance of a multiplicity of strategies (TT, ST, and IT amongthem). Which strategy is deployed is dependent upon such things ascontext, how similar or different the other is from oneself, whetherthe understanding is of an emotion or a propositional attitude, andthe complexity of the mental state. The idea of the deployment of amultiplicity of strategies is not unique to Person Theory. Gallagherand Fiebich (2019) argue for what they call a “pluralistapproach” to the understanding of others, drawing on inference,simulation, direct perception, and/or interaction—depending onthe situation (cf. Nichols & Stich 2003). What this workhighlights is how much may be involved when it comes to understandingothers.

It is possible to see a connection between ideas that are fundamentalto interaction theory (which brings together work from phenomenologyand embodied cognition) and some ideas that can be found in the workof Stanley Cavell (which aims to interpret and develop the work ofAustin and Wittgenstein, as well as integrating work fromphenomenology with work in analytic philosophy). Where Gallagher andZahavi emphasize social interaction, Cavell writes of a duality in theproblem of other minds. Cavell understands this duality to be what theradical Cartesian sceptic overlooks when she presses her questionabout our knowledge of the mind of another. What we must appreciate,according to Cavell, is that in so far as there is a problem about howI know you, there is equally a problem about how you know me (hereinlies the duality in the problem). Cavell holds that appreciating thisduality will help us to see the error of the sceptic’s ways. Thesceptic considers only one side of the problem and insists that wesuffer from an epistemological lack. Cavell draws attention to theside of the problem that the sceptic misses and finds in this a fearon our part of not being understood by another. It is this fear thatgets misunderstood by the sceptic and turned into a darkness which isprojected on to the other. Cavell thinks we must resist thisprojection and understand that acknowledgment by another is madepossible by expression on my part. Expression is what makesacknowledgement possible. We must take responsibility to giveexpression to our mental states which can in turn be acknowledged byothers. Importantly, for Cavell acknowledgement is not the same asknowledge. While the latter is a form of cognition, the forner is tobe understood as behaviour oriented towards another (for more on theduality that Cavell finds in the problem of other minds see Avramides,forthcoming). According to Cavell, I must take responsibility foracknowledging the humanity in others, which acknowledgement is evidentin the way I behave towards them.

4. Thinking about Mind Prior to the Twentieth Century

4.1 From Descartes to Mill

As so much of the debate concerning others in the heyday of itsdiscussion in analytic philosophy in the twentieth century can be readas a reaction to Mill’s formulation of the argument fromanalogy, it is instructive to consider the context for Mill’swork here.^[16] In proposing his argument, Mill was responding to a challenge laiddown by the eighteenth century philosopher Thomas Reid who argued thatDescartes’ philosophy, when traced through the work ofphilosophers such as Malebranche, Locke, Hume and Berkeley, leads tosolipsism. In order to avoid this conclusion, Reid argued thatphilosophers must jettison the Cartesian framework of ideas and itstrust in reason over the deliverances of sense. According to Reid, thefaculties of reason and perception should be regarded as being on anequal footing. Rather than insist that all human belief is regulatedby reason, Reid holds that we should allow that our perceptions of theworld are guided by principles for which no proof can be offered.Amongst the regulative principles Reid identifies there are twoconcerning others: (i) there is life and intelligence in our fellowmen; and (ii) certain features of the countenance, sounds of the voiceand gestures of the body indicate certain thoughts and dispositions ofmind (Reid 1785). Mill’s work is designed as a defense of theCartesian framework in response to Reid’s claim that it leadsinexorably to solipsism. According to Mill, all truths are known inone of two ways: either directly, through the authority ofconsciousness, or indirectly, by inference from truths known directly.Mill believes that knowledge arrived indirectly in this way issufficient to avoid the concern of solipsism.

While there is little direct discussion of this question inDescartes’ work, one can find passages devoted to it inpost-Cartesian philosophy.^[17] Malebranche, for example, differentiates knowledge of one’s ownmind, of bodies, and of other men’s mind: the first is throughconsciousness, the second through ideas, and the third throughconjecture (1674–5 [1980: 239]). In the case of anotherman’s sensations, Malebranche first considers the possibilitythat everyone has the same sensations when confronted with the sameobjects, but then notes that it can happen that “the internalfibers of the optic nerve do not produce the same sensation fordifferent people” (Ibid, 66). Despite this possibility,Malebranche thinks there is reason to believe that God arranged thingsso that the same physical conditions do produce the same sensations(i.e., that nature is uniform). Nonetheless, he argues that we cannotknow another’s sensations as there is “a great deal ofdiversity in different people’s organs of sight as well as ofhearing and taste” (ibid).^[18] Writing in response to Malebranche, Arnauld (1683) insists that we doknow other men’s minds through ideas: we have ideas of theirbodies and must reason from these to the conclusion that they haveminds. In Arnauld’s work we have, arguably, an early formulationof the argument from analogy.

It may be worth remembering that, in so far as Descartes’philosophy raises a problem about other minds, it is a thick orradical sceptical problem. What one finds in Malebranche’s workis a thin sceptical problem. Malebranche appears to take it forgranted that others have minds; what interests him is whether thesensations that others feel are the same as those that I feel. JohnLocke follows Malebrance in not taking seriously the thick or radicalsceptical problem here. Locke asks whether the idea produced in oneman’s mind by a violet may not be exactly the same as the ideaproduced in another man’s mind by a marigold (Locke 1689, II,xxxii, 15). But as Locke is concerned less with the“metaphysical Sense of the word Truth” and more with“the more ordinary Acceptation of those words” he allowsthat “the sensibleIdeas, produced by any Object indifferent Men’s Minds, are most commonly very near andundiscernible alike” (Locke 1689, II, XXXii, 13 & 15).

The threat of solipsism is particularly problematic for the idealismof George Berkeley. Without proof of other minds, idealism will amountto nothing but solipsism. Berkeley admits that I cannot have immediateevidence of the mind of another; what he holds is that there is“a certain collection of ideas, as directs us to think there isa distinct principle of thought and motion like until ourselves,accompanying and represented by it” (Berkeley 1710: Principle148). While some find in Berkeley’s work another earlyformulation of the argument from analogy (Urmson 1982), others arguethat his work should be read as putting forwards a causal argument: inthe case of God, I reason that He is the cause or Author of everythingin nature that I see around me; in the case of other finite spirits, Ireason that they are the cause of the movements in the bodies Iobserve and the words that I hear (Bennett 1971 and Falkenstein1990).

Some philosophers also find an argument from analogy in the work ofDavid Hume, while others interpret his work in a more naturalisticvein. One thing that cannot be denied is that Hume introduces animportant element into the discussion of others when he writes inThe Treatise, “No quality of human nature is moreremarkable, both in itself and in its consequences, than thatpropensity we have to sympathize with others” (1738–40[1888: 316]). It is by means of sympathy that we are affected by thepassions and mental states of others, which otherwise “remainconcealed in the minds of others” (ibid, 593).Precisely how this remarkable capacity operates is a matter of somedebate. There are those who agree with Reid and find Hume unable toescape the confines of his own mind. These philosophers argue thatHume recognizes the problem of other minds that arises for theCartesian framework that he endorses, and holds that sympathy can dono more than get us to feel our own feelings in response to what weobserve in the other. But there are others who take Hume to turn hisback on scepticism and the very business of providing reasons for thebelief that others have thoughts and feelings. They read Hume’swork as giving us a psychological account of how it is that we areable to understand the thoughts and feelings of our fellow men throughthe operation of sympathy (Greco 2012; see also work by Waldow2009).

Hume’s understanding of the working of sympathy was challengedby his contemporary Adam Smith. Smith rejects the idea that I can feelwhat another feels. He writes,

Though our brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are atour ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers. Theynever did, and never can, carry us beyond our own person, and it is bythe imagination only that we can form any conception of what are hissensations….

A little later he writes,

That this is the source of our fellow-feeling for the misery ofothers, that it is by changing places in fancy with the sufferer, thatwe come either to conceive or to be affected by what he feels, may bedemonstrated by many obvious observations, if it should not be thoughtsufficiently evident of itself. (1759: I.i.i.2–3)

With Smith’s work we take a step closer to the work of thesimulation theorists of more recent times (cf.§3.1).

It is Reid’s contention that, so long as one is working within aCartesian framework of ideas, our relations to others must be a takento be a matter of probability, hypothesis, or conjecture, and this hetakes to be at odds with the conviction with which, for example, thechild interacts with her nurse. While the Cartesian recognizes onlythe solitary operations of mind, Reid proposes that we also recognizethe social operations of mind (Reid 1785 [1969: 71]).

4.2 Before Descartes

Philosophers are inclined to trace the problem of other minds back tothe writing of Descartes. If it is true that there is something inDescartes’ philosophy that gives rise to this problem, then onemay expect to find the ‘problem of other minds’ lesspressing in the work of pre-Cartesian philosophy. With the possibleexception of Augustine (whose work is taken by some to be a pre-cursorto Descartes’), this is arguably the case.

While philosophers in ancient Greece raise sceptical questionsconcerning others, it is has been suggested that the problems theyraise tend to be ‘thin’ rather than ‘thick’ones (see§1 and Avramides 2001). Plato and Aristotle, for example, discuss thevalue of friendship, but do not ask why we should think others existto be friends. Sorabji claims that “it never occurs to Aristotleto raise doubts about other minds” (1974: 88). According toSextus Empiricus, sceptics of the Cyrenaic school raise problems aboutthe minds of others, but it is not clear that the problem they raisegoes beyond the ‘thin’ one, How can I knowwhatanother thinks and feels? (Tsouna 1998a).^[19]

4.3 Another History

While philosophers in the West trace their lineage back to ancientGreece, it is worth remembering that philosophical ideas were alsobeing discussed elsewhere in the world. One tradition that has a longhistory of concern with issues to do with the minds of others is theclassical Indian tradition. While one should not read texts from otherphilosophical traditions only to find parallels with one’s own,it is striking that these early Eastern philosophers may be thought tohave grappled with many of the same issues concerning others as havephilosophers in the Western tradition. It is possible to finddiscussion of both epistemological and conceptual problems inconnection with others in these texts. There are two important worksin this tradition devoted to questions concerning others, one byDharmakīrti in the seventh century and another by Ratnakirti inthe 11^th. Indeed, Sharma (1985) writes that“Dharmakīrti is perhaps the first ever thinker to make asystematic attempt to come to grips with this problem [of otherminds]”. Dharmakīrti is an idealist who denies the realityof the external world and whose work, therefore, is open to the chargeof solipsism. In hisProof of the Existence of Other Streams ofConsciousness, Dharmakīrti first points out that the mind ofanother is imperceptible; he then goes on to argue that other mindsare inferred from observed speech and action. Many find in the writingof Dharmakirti an argument not dissimilar to the one found in thewriting of John Stuart Mill (see, for example, Chakrabarti 2020, Pt.3) Dharmakīrti is careful to acknowledge that there are limits toour understanding of others (we cannot know what it is like for them)(Inami 2001). Ganeri (2012) suggests that what we find inDharmakīrti’s text is “a sort of argument fromanalogy” for the existence of others. Responding toDharmakīrti here, Ratnakirti points out the difficulties inreasoning to the mind of another that one can never be in a positionto verify. In effect, Ratnakirti argues that other minds cannot betaken to exist, and solipsism must be accepted. However, Ratnakirti iscareful to draw a distinction between conventional and ultimateexistence—while other minds do not exist ultimately, they doexist conventionally. It is this conventional existence that explainsour actions with regards to others. According to Ganeri, we can alsofind in Ratnakirti’s work arguments to show that it is notpossible even to form a conception of another mind (2012: 203). Thisproblem is particularly pressing for the Buddhist philosopher for, asGaneri reminds us (2012: 202), without a conception of others it is aquestion how one can cultivate compassion.

Bibliography

• Albritton, Rogers, 1959, “On Wittgenstein’s Use of theTerm ‘Criterion’”,The Journal ofPhilosophy, 56(22): 845–857. doi:10.2307/2022315
• Apperly, Ian A. and Stephen A. Butterfill, 2009, “Do HumansHave Two Systems to Track Beliefs and Belief-like States?”,Psychological Review, 116(4): 953–970.doi:10.1037/a0016923
• Arnauld, Antoine, 1683 [1990],On True and False Ideas(Des vrayes et des fausses idées), Stephan Gaukroger(trans.), Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.
• Augustine of Hippo, AD 400,De Trinitate, translated inNicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Vol.III, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1974.
• Austin, J.L., 1946, “Symposium: Other Minds II”,Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, 20: 148–187;reprinted as “Other Minds 1” in hisPhilosophicalPapers, J.O. Urmson and G.J. Warnock (eds.), third edition,Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979, 76–116.doi:10.1093/aristoteliansupp/20.1.122doi:10.1093/019283021X.003.0004
• Avramides, Anita, 2001,Other Minds, (The Problems ofPhilosophy), London: Routledge.
• –––, 2013, “Other Minds, Autism, and Depthin Human Interaction”, inOxford Handbook of Philosophy andPsychiatry, K. W. M. Fulford, Martin Davies, Richard G. T. Gipps,George Graham, John Z. Sadler, Giovanni Stanghellini, and Tim Thornton(eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 275–293.
• –––, 2015, “On Seeing That Others HaveThoughts and Feelings”,Journal of ConsciousnessStudies, 22(1–2): 138–155.
• –––, 2019, “Perception, Reliability andOther Minds”, in Avramides & Matthew Parrott (2019), pp.107–127.
• –––, 2023, “Knowing and AcknowledgingOthers”,Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, firstonline 20 September 2023. doi:10.1093/arisoc/aoad017
• –––, forthcoming, “Exploring a Duality inthe Problem of Other Minds”, in Lucy Campbell (ed.),Formsof Knowledge: Essays on the Heterogeneity of Knowledge andUnderstanding, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Avramides, Anita and Matthew Parrott (eds.), 2019,KnowingOther Minds, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Ayer, A. J., 1953 [1954], “One’s Knowledge of OtherMinds”,Theoria, 19(1–2): 1–20. ReprintedinPhilosophical Essays, London: MacMillan, St Martin’sPress: 191–215. doi:10.1111/j.1755-2567.1953.tb01034.x
• –––, 1956,The Problem of Knowledge,Harmondworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books Ltd.
• Baker, G., 1974, “Criteria: A New Foundation forSemantics”,Ratio, original series, 16:156–189.
• Barlassina, Luca and Robert M. Gordon, 2017, “FolkPsychology as Mental Simulation”,The Stanford Encyclopediaof Philosophy (Summer 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2017/entries/folkpsych-simulation/>
• Baron-Cohen, Simon, Alan M. Leslie, and Uta Frith, 1985,“Does the Autistic Child Have a ‘Theory ofMind’ ?”,Cognition, 21(1): 37–46.doi:10.1016/0010-0277(85)90022-8
• Bartha, Paul, 2016, “Analogy and AnalogicalReasoning”,The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,(Winter 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/reasoning-analogy/>
• Bennett, Jonathan, 1971,Locke, Berkeley, Hume: CentralThemes, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• –––, 1978, “Some Remarks aboutConcepts”,Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1(4):557–560. doi:10.1017/S0140525X00076573
• Berkeley, George, 1710,A Treatise Concerning the Principlesof Human Nature, inPhilosophical Works, Michael Ayers(ed.), London: Dent, 1975.
• Bilgrami, Akeel, 1992, “Other Minds”, inACompanion to Epistemology, Jonathan Dancy & Ernest Sosa(eds.), Oxford: Blackwell, 319–323.
• Blackburn, Simon, 1994, “Other Minds”, inTheOxford Dictionary of Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.
• Burnyeat, M.F., 1982, “Idealism and Greek Philosophy: WhatDescartes Saw and Berkeley Missed”,Royal Institute ofPhilosophy Supplements 13, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,19–50.
• Call, Josep and Michael Tomasello, 2008, “Does theChimpanzee Have a Theory of Mind? 30 Years Later”,Trends inCognitive Sciences, 12(5): 187–192.doi:10.1016/j.tics.2008.02.010
• Cassam, Quassim, 2007,The Possibility of Knowledge,Oxford: Oxford University Press.doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199208319.001.0001
• Cavell, Stanley,The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein,Scepticism, Morality, and Tragedy, New York & Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.
• Chakrabarti, Arindam,Realisms Interlinked: Objects Subjects,and Other Subjects, London & New York: BloomsburyAcademic.
• Chalmers, David J., 1996,The Conscious Mind: In Search of aFundamental Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Chihara, Charles S. and Jerry A. Fodor, 1965,“Operationalism and Ordinary Language:A Critique ofWittgenstein”,American Philosophical Quarterly,2(4): 281–295. Reprinted in Pitcher 1966: 384–420.
• Clarke, Andy, 1997,Being There: Putting Brain, Body, andWorld Together Again, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Collingwood, R.G., 1946,The Idea of History, Oxford:Oxford University Press.
• Cook, John W., 1969, “Human beings”, inStudies inthe Philosophy of Wittgenstein, Peter Winch (ed.), London:Routledge & Kegan Paul, 117–151.
• Davidson, Donald, 1991 [2001], “Three Varieties ofKnowledge”,Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement,30: 153–166. Reprinted inSubjective, Intersubjective,Objective: Philosophical Essays, Volume 3, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2001, 205–220. doi:10.1017/S1358246100007748doi:10.1093/0198237537.003.0014
• De Jaegher, Hanne, 2009, “Social Understanding throughDirect Perception? Yes, by Interacting”,Consciousness andCognition, 18(2): 535–542.doi:10.1016/j.concog.2008.10.007
• De Jaegher, Hanne, Ezequiel Di Paolo, and Shaun Gallagher, 2010,“Can Social Interaction Constitute Social Cognition?”,Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14(10): 441–447.doi:10.1016/j.tics.2010.06.009
• Dennett, Daniel C., 1978, “Beliefs about Beliefs [P&W,SR&B]”,Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1(4):568–570. doi:10.1017/S0140525X00076664
• Descartes, René, 1641 [1985],Meditations on FirstPhilosophy (Meditationes de prima philosophia).Translated inThe Philosophical Writings of Descartes, volume2, John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch (trans.),Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
• Dharmakīrti [c. 6th/7th century CE], 1960,Santanatara-siddhi (Proof of the Existence of OtherStreams of Consciousness), Tibetan text, edited and restored intoSanskrit by J.S Negi and again by M.R. Chinchore, Varanasi: CentralInstitute of Higher Tibetan Studies; H. Kitagawa (trans.)
• Dilthey,Wilhelm [1833–1911], 1976,W. Dilthey: SelectedWritings, H.P. Rickman (trans./ed.), Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.
• Dretske, Fred, 1969,Seeing and Knowing, Chicago: ChicagoUniversity Press.
• –––, 1971, “Conclusive Reasons”,Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 49(1): 1–22.doi:10.1080/00048407112341001
• –––, 1973, “Perception and OtherMinds”,Noûs, 7(1): 34–44.doi:10.2307/2216182
• –––, 2005, “The Case AgainstClosure”, in Steup and Sosa 2005: 13–26.
• Duddington, Nathalie A., 1919, “Our Knowledge of OtherMinds”,Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 19:147–178. doi:10.1093/aristotelian/19.1.147
• Dummett, Michael, 1969 [1978], “The Reality of thePast”,Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 69(1):239–258. Reprinted in hisTruth and Other Enigmas,Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978, 358–375.doi:10.1093/aristotelian/69.1.239
• Evans, Gareth, 1982,The Varieties of Reference, JohnMcDowell (ed.), Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Fabricius, William V., 2010, “True or False: do 5-year-oldsunderstand belief?”,Developmental Psychology, 46:1402–1416.
• Falkenstein, Lorne, 1990, “Berkeley’s Argument forOther Minds”,History of Philosophy Quarterly, 7(4):431–440.
• Gallagher, Shaun, 2008, “Direct Perception in theIntersubjective Context”,Consciousness and Cognition,17(2): 535–543. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2008.03.003
• Gallagher, Shaun and Anika Fiebich, 2019, “Being PluralistAbout Understanding Others: Contexts and CommunicativePractices”, in Avramides & Parrott (2019), pp.63–78.
• Gallagher, Shaun and Daniel D. Hutto, 2008, “UnderstandingOthers through Primary Interaction and Narrative Practice”, inThe Shared Mind: Perspectives on Intersubjectivity, JordanZlatev, Timothy P. Racine, Chris Sinha, and Esa Itkonen (eds.),(Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research 12),Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 17–38.doi:10.1075/celcr.12.04gal
• Gallagher, Shaun and Dan Zahavi, 2008,The PhenomenologicalMind, London: Routledge.
• Gallese, Vittorio, 2001, “The ‘Shared Manifold’Hypothesis: From Mirror Neurons to Empathy”,Journal ofConsciousness Studies, 8(5–7): 33–50.
• Gallese, Vittorio and Alvin Goldman, 1998, “Mirror Neuronsand the Simulation Theory of Mind-Reading”,Trends inCognitive Sciences, Dec 1; 2(12): 493–501.doi:10.1016/S1364-6613(98)01262-5
• Ganeri, Jonardon, 2012,The Self: Naturalism, Consciousness,and the First-Person Stance, Oxford: Oxford University Press.doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199652365.001.0001
• Goldman, Alvin I., 2006,Simulating Minds: The Philosophy,Psychology, and Neuroscience of Mindreading, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press. doi:10.1093/0195138929.001.0001
• Gomes, Anil, 2011, “Is There a Problem of OtherMinds?”,Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,111(3): 353–373. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9264.2011.00314.x
• –––, 2015, “Testimony and OtherMinds”,Erkenntnis, 80(1): 173–183.
• –––, 2018, “Scepticism about OtherMinds”, inSkepticism from Antiquity to the Present,Diego E. Manchuca and Baron Reed (eds.), London: Bloomsbury,700–714.
• Gopnik, Alison, 2009,The Philosophical Baby: WhatChildren’s Minds Tell Us about Truth, Love, and the Meaning ofLife, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
• Gopnik, Alison and Henry M. Wellman, 1992 [1995], “Why theChild’s Theory of Mind Really Is a Theory”,Mind &Language, 7(1–2): 145–171. Reprinted inFolkPsychology: The Theory of Mind Debate, Martin Davies and TonyStone (eds), (Readings in Mind and Language, 3), Oxford: Blackwell,1995, 232–259. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0017.1992.tb00202.x
• Gordon, Robert M., 1986, “Folk Psychology asSimulation”,Mind & Language, 1(2): 158–171.doi:10.1111/j.1468-0017.1986.tb00324.x
• –––, 1995, “Simulation WithoutIntrospection or Inference from Me to You” inMentalSimulation: Evaluations and Applications—Reading in Mind andLanguage, Martin Davies and Tony Stone (eds.), Oxford: Blackwell,53–68.
• Greco, Lorenzo, 2012, “The Force of Sympathy in the Ethicsof David Hume”, inHume Readings, Lorenzo Greco andAlessio Vaccari (eds), Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura,193–210.
• Green, Mitchell, 2010, “Perceiving Emotions”,Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, 84: 45–61.doi:10.1111/j.1467-8349.2010.00185.x
• Gurwitsch, Aron, 1977 [1979],Die mitmenschlichen Begegnungenin der Milieuwelt, Alexandre Métraux (ed.), Berlin: deGruyter; translated asHuman Encounters in the Social World,Fred Kerstin (trans.), Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.[This is the author’sHabilitationsschrift,Göttingen, which was finished in 1931 but not published.]
• Hacker, P. M. S., 1997,Wittgenstein: On Human Nature(The Great Philosophers Series), London: Phoenix.
• Hampshire, Stuart, 1952, “The Analogy of Feeling”,Mind, 61(241): 1–12. doi:10.1093/mind/LXI.241.1
• Harman, Gilbert H., 1965, “The Inference to the BestExplanation”,The Philosophical Review, 74(1):88–95. doi:10.2307/2183532
• –––, 1978, “Studying theChimpanzee’s Theory of Mind”,Behavioral and BrainSciences, 1(4): 576–577. doi:10.1017/S0140525X00076743
• Hawthorne, John, 2005, “The Case for Closure”, inSteup and Sosa 2005: 26–43.
• Heal, Jane, 1998 [2003], “Understanding Other Minds from theInside”, inRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement,43: 83–99. Reprinted inMind, Reason and Imagination:Selected Essays in Philosophy of Mind and Language, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2003, 28–44.doi:10.1017/CBO9780511615894.005
• Heidegger, Martin, 1927 [1962] ,Sein und Zeit.Translated asBeing and Time, John Macquarrie and EdwardRobinson (trans.), Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962.
• Hill, Christopher S., 1984, “In Defense of TypeMaterialism”,Synthese, 59(3): 295–320.doi:10.1007/BF00869337
• Hobson, Peter, 2002,The Cradle of Thought: Exploring theOrigins of Thinking, London: Pan Books.
• Hume, David, 1738–40 [1888],A Treatise of HumanNature, L.A. Selby-Bigge (ed.), Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Hutto, Daniel D., 2008,Folk Psychological Narratives: TheSociocultural Basis of Understanding Reasons, Cambridge, MA: MITPress.
• Husserl, Edmund, 1931 [1960],Méditationscartésiennes: Introduction à laphénoménologie, Gabrielle Peiffer and EmmanuelLevinas (trans.), Paris: Armand Collin. Based on lectures given in1929. First published in German in 1950 inHusserliana, S.Strassser (ed.), Haag: Martinus Nijhoff. Translated asCartesianMeditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, Dorion Cairns(trans.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Press, 1960.
• Hyslop, Alec, 1995,Other Minds, Dordrecht: KluwerAcademic Publishers. doi:10.1007/978-94-015-8510-1
• Hyslop, Alec and Frank C. Jackson, 1972, “The AnalogicalInference to Other Minds”,American PhilosophicalQuarterly, 9(2): 168–176.
• Inami, Masahiro, 2001, “The Problem of Other Minds in theBuddhist Epistemological Tradition”,Journal of IndianPhilosophy, 29(4): 465–483.doi:10.1023/A:1013151011789
• Kenny, A., 1967, “Criterion”, inThe Encyclopediaof Philosophy, Vol. 1, Paul Edwards (editor in chief), New York:MacMillan Publishing Co., Ink & The Free Press:258–261.
• Kripke, Saul, 1982,Wittgenstein on Rules and PrivateLanguage, Oxford: Blackwell.
• Krueger, Joel, 2014, “The Phenomenology of PersonPerception”, inCognition, Literature and History, MarkJ. Bruhn and Donald R. Wehrs (eds.), London: Routledge, ch. 8.
• Krueger, Joel and Søren Overgaard, 2012, “SeeingSubjectivitiy: Defending a Perceptual Account of Other Minds”,inConsciousness and Subjectivity, Sofia Miguens and GerhardPreyer (eds.) (Philosophische Analyse/Philosophical Analysis 47),Heusenstamm: Ontos, 297–319.
• Jacob, Pierre, 2019, “Challenging the Two-Systems Model ofMindreading”, in Avramides & Parrott (2019), pp.79–107.
• Leslie, Alan M. and D. Roth, 1993, “What Autism Teaches Usabout Metarepresentation”, inUnderstanding Other Minds:Perspectives from Autism, Simon Baron-Cohen, HelenTager-Flusberg, and Donald J. Cohen (eds.), Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress: 83–112.
• Levinas, Emmanuel, 1979,Le Temps et l’autre,Paris: Fata Morgana.
• Lipton, Peter, 2000, “Inference to the BestExplanation”, inA Companion to the Philosophy ofScience, W.H. Newton-Smith (ed.), Oxford: Blackwell,184–193.
• Locke, Don, 1968,Myself and Others: A Study in Our Knowledgeof Other Minds, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Locke, John, 1689,An Essay Concerning HumanUnderstanding, P.H. Nidditch (ed.), Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1986.
• Luper, Steven, 2016, “Epistemic Closure”,TheStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (Spring 2016 Edition),Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2016/entries/closure-epistemic/>
• Malcolm, Norman, 1954 [1966], “Wittgenstein’sPhilosophical Investigations”,The PhilosophicalReview, 63(4): 530–559. Reprinted in Pitcher 1966:65–104. doi:10.2307/2182289
• –––, 1958, “I. Knowledge of OtherMinds”,The Journal of Philosophy, 55(23):969–978. doi:10.2307/2021905
• Malebranche, Nicolas, 1674–5 [1980],The Search afterTruth, Thomas M. Lennon and Paul J. Olscamp (trans. & eds.),(Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy), Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1980.
• McDowell, John Henry, 1978 [1998], “On ‘the Reality ofthe Past’”, inAction and Interpretation: Studies inthe Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Christopher Hookway andPhilip Pettit (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,127–144. Reprinted in MacDowell 1998: 295–314.
• –––, 1982 [1998], “Criteria,Defeasibility, and Knowledge”,Proceedings of the BritishAcademy, 68: 455–479. Reprinted in MacDowell 1998:369–394.
• –––, 1986 [1998], “Singular Thought andthe Extent of Inner Space”, inSubject, Thought, andContext, Philip Pettit and John Henry McDowell (eds.), Oxford:Clarendon Press, 137–168. Reprinted in MacDowell 1998:228–260.
• –––, 1995 [1998], “Knowledge and theInternal”,Philosophy and Phenomenological Research,55(4): 877–893. Reprinted in MacDowell 1998: 395–414.doi:10.2307/2108338.
• –––, 1998,Meaning, Knowledge, andReality, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• –––, 2006, “The Disjunctive Conception ofExperience as Material for a Transcendental Argument”,Teorema: Revista Internacional de Filosofía, 25(1):19–33. Reprinted inDisjunctivism: Perception, Action,Knowledge, Adrian Haddock and Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2008, 376–389.doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199231546.003.0017
• McGinn, Colin, 1984, “Consciousness and Other Minds II: Whatis the Problem of Other Minds?”,Aristotelian SocietySupplementary Volume, 58: 119–137.doi:10.1093/aristoteliansupp/58.1.97
• McNeill, W. E. S., 2012, “On Seeing That Someone IsAngry”,European Journal of Philosophy, 20(4):575–597. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0378.2010.00421.x
• Melnyk, Andrew, 1994, “Inference to the Best Explanation andOther Minds”,Australasian Journal of Philosophy,72(4): 482–491. doi:10.1080/00048409412346281
• Meltzoff, Andrew N., 1995, “Understanding the Intentions ofOthers: Re-Enactment of Intended Acts by 18-Month-OldChildren.”,Developmental Psychology, 31(5):838–850. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.31.5.838
• Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 1945 [2003],Phénoménologie de la perception, Paris:Éditions Gallimard. Translated asPhenomenology ofPerception, Colin Smith (trans.), London: Routledge and KeganPaul, 1962. Page numbers from the 2003 edition, London: RoutledgeClassics.
• Mill, John Stuart, 1865 [1872],An Examination of Sir WilliamHamilton’s Philosophy, fourth edition, London: Longman,Green, Reader and Dyer. First edition, 1865.
• Moore, Harry James, 2023, “Nathalie Duddingham andPerception of Other Minds”,Studies in Eastern EuropeanThought. doi:10.1007/s11212-023-09592-4
• Mulhall, Stephen, 1994,Stanley Cavell: Philosophy’sRecounting of the Ordinary, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Nagel, Thomas, 1986,The View From Nowhere, Oxford:Oxford University Press.
• Newen, Albert, 2015, “Understanding Others: The Person ModelTheory”, inOpen MIND, Thomas K. Metzinger and JenniferM. Windt (eds.), Frankfurt am Main: MIND Groupm, 26(T).doi:10.15502/9783958570320
• Newen, Albert and Tobias Schlicht, 2009, “UnderstandingOther Minds: A Criticism of Goldman’s Simulation Theory and anOutline of the Person Model Theory”,Grazer PhilosophischeStudien, 79(1): 209–242.
• Nichols, Shaun and Stephen P. Stich, 2003,Mindreading: AnIntegrated Account of Pretence, Self-Awareness, and UnderstandingOther Minds, Oxford: Oxford University Press.doi:10.1093/0198236107.001.0001
• Noë, Alva, 2004,Action in Perception,(Representation and Mind), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Nozick, Robert, 1981,Philosophical ExplanationsCambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Oktay-Gür, Nese and Rakoczy, Hannes, 2017,“Children’s difficulty with true belief tasks: competencedeficit or performance problem?”,Cognition, 166:28–41.
• Onishi, Kristine H. and Renée Baillargeon, 2005, “Do15-Month-Old Infants Understand False Beliefs?”,Science, 308(5719): 255–258.doi:10.1126/science.1107621
• Overgaard, Søren, 2006, “The Problem of Other Minds:Wittgenstein’s Phenomenological Perspective”,Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 5(1): 53–73.doi:10.1007/s11097-005-9014-7
• –––, 2007,Wittgenstein and Other Minds:Rethinking Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity with Wittgenstein,Levinas, and Husserl, (Routledge Studies in Twentieth-CenturyPhilosophy, 29), New York: Routledge.
• –––, 2019, “Embodiment and SocialPerception”, in Avramides & Parrott (2019), pp.127–147.
• Pargetter, Robert, 1984, “The Scientific Inference to OtherMinds”,Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 62(2):158–163. doi:10.1080/00048408412341341
• Pitcher, George (ed.), 1966,Wittgensten: The PhilosophicalInvestigations, Garden City, NJ: Anchor Books.
• Plantinga, Alvin, 1966, “Induction and Other Minds”,The Review of Metaphysics, 19(3): 441–461.
• Premack, David and Guy Woodruff, 1978, “Does the ChimpanzeeHave a Theory of Mind?”,Behavioral and Brain Sciences,1(4): 515–526. doi:10.1017/S0140525X00076512
• Ratnakirti [c. 11th century CE], 1957,Santanantara-dusana, in Anantalal Thakur (ed.),Ratnakirti-niband-havali, Patna: KP Research Institute.
• Reid, Thomas, 1785 [1969],Essays on the Intellectual Powersof Man, B.A. Brody (intro.), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969.
• Rizzolatti, Giacomo, Luciano Fadiga, Vittorio Gallese, andLeonardo Fogassi, 1996, “Premotor Cortex and the Recognition ofMotor Actions”,Cognitive Brain Research, 3(2):131–141. doi:10.1016/0926-6410(95)00038-0
• Russell, Bertrand, 1923, “Analogy”, inHumanKnowledge: Its Scope and Limits, London: George Allen and Unwin,501–505. [Russell 1923 available online]
• Sartre, Jean-Pierre, 1943,L’Être et lenéant : Essai d’ontologiephénoménologique, Paris: Éditions Gallimard.Translated asBeing and Nothingness: An Essay on PhenomenologicalOntology, Hazel E. Barnes (trans.), New York: Washington SquarePress, 1956.
• Scheler, Max, 1913 [1954],The Nature of Sympathy(Wesen und Formen der Sympathie), Peter Heath (trans.),London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1954.
• Sharma, Ramesh Kumar, 1985, “Dharmakīrti on theExistence of Other Minds”,Journal of IndianPhilosophy, 13(1): 55–71. doi:10.1007/BF00208527
• Shoemaker, Sydney, 1963,Self-Knowledge andSelf-Identity, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Smith, Adam, 1759,The Theory of Moral Sentiments, NewYork: August M. Kelley Publishers, 1966.
• Smith, Joel, 2010, “Seeing Other People”:,Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 81(3):731–748. doi:10.1111/j.1933-1592.2010.00392.x
• Sorabji, Richard, 1974, “Body and Soul in Aristotle”,Philosophy, 49(187): 63–89.doi:10.1017/S0031819100047884
• Soteriou, Matthew, 2016, “The Disjunctive Theory ofPerception”,The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,(Winter 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/perception-disjunctive/>
• Stein, Edith, 1917 [1989],Zum Problem derEinfühlung, Halle (Saale). Translated asOn the Problemof Empathy, Waltraut Stein (trans.), Washington DC: ICSPublications, 1989.
• Steup, Matthias and Ernest Sosa (eds.), 2005,ContemporaryDebates in Epistemology, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
• Stueber, Karsten, 2018, “Empathy”,The StanfordEncyclopedia of Philosophy, (Spring 2018 Edition), Edward N.Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2018/entries/empathy/>
• Stout, Rowland, 2010, “Seeing the Anger in Someone’sFace”,Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume,84(1): 29–43. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8349.2010.00184.x
• Strawson, P.F., 1959,Individuals: An Essay in DescriptiveMetaphysics, London: Methuen.
• Trevarthen, Colwyn, 1979, “Communication and Cooperation inEarly Infancy: A Description of Primary Intersubjectivity”, inBefore Speech: The Beginning of Interpersonal Communication,Margaret Bullowa (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,321–347.
• Tsouna, Voula, 1998a, “Remarks About Other Minds in GreekPhilosophy”,Phronesis, 43(3): 245–263.doi:10.1163/156852898321119722
• –––, 1998b, “Doubts about Other Minds andthe Science of Physiognomics”,The Classical Quarterly,48(1): 175. doi:10.1093/cq/48.1.175
• Urmson, J.O., 1982,Berkeley, Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.
• Varela, Francisco J., Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, 1991,The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience,Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Waldow, Anik, 2009,David Hume and the Problem of OtherMinds, (Continuum Studies in British Philosophy), London/NewYork: Continuum.
• Wimmer, Heinz and Josef Perner, 1983, “Beliefs aboutBeliefs: Representation and Constraining Function of Wrong Beliefs inYoung Children’s Understanding of Deception”,Cognition, 13(1): 103–128.doi:10.1016/0010-0277(83)90004-5
• Wisdom, John, 1940, “Other Minds”,Mind,49(194): 369–402. doi:10.1093/mind/XLIX.194.369
• Wittgenstein, Ludwig [d. 1951], 1953,PhilosophicalInvestigations (Philosophische Untersuchungen), G. E. M.Anscombe (trans.), New York: The Macmillan Company.
• –––, 1958,Preliminary Studies for the“Philosophical Investigations” Generally Know as The Blueand Brown Books, Oxford: Blackwell.
• –––, 1992,Last Writings on the Philosophyof Psychology, Volume two: The Inner and The Outer,1949–1951, G. H. von Wright and Heikki Nyman (eds.) andC.G. Luckhardt & Maximillian A.E. Aue (trans.), Oxford:Blackwells.
• Wright, Crispin, 1980 [1995], “Realism, Truth Value LinksOther Minds and the Past”,Ratio (Original Series), 22:112–132; reprinted inRealism, Meaning &Truth,2^nd edition, 1995, Oxford: Blackwell: 85–107.
• –––, 1984 [1993], “Second Thoughts aboutCriteria”,Synthese, 58(3): 383–405. Reprinted inRealism, Meaning and Truth, second edition, Oxford:Blackwell, 1995, 357–383. doi:10.1007/BF00485248
• –––, 1998, “Self‐Knowledge: TheWittgensteinian Legacy”, inKnowing Our Own Minds,Crispin Wright, Barry C. Smith, and Cynthia Macdonald (eds.), Oxford:Oxford University Press, 13–46.doi:10.1093/0199241406.003.0002
• Zahavi, Dan, 2010, “Max Scheler”, inThe Historyof Continental Philosophy, volume 3: The New Century: Bergsonism,Phenomenology and Responses to Modern Science, KeithAnsell-Pearson and Alan Schrift (eds.), Durham, UK: Acumen,171–186. [Zahavi 2010 available online]
• –––, 2014,Self and Other: ExploringSubjectivity, Empathy, and Shame, Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199590681.001.0001
• –––, 2016, “Analytic and ContinentalPhilosophy: From Duality Through Plurality to (Some Kind of)Unity”, inAnalytic and Continental Philosophy: Methods andPerspectives. Proceedings of the 37th International WittgensteinSymposium, Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl and Harald A. Wiltsche (eds.),Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 79–94.doi:10.1515/9783110450651-006

Academic Tools

	How to cite this entry.
	Preview the PDF version of this entry at theFriends of the SEP Society.
	Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO).
	Enhanced bibliography for this entryatPhilPapers, with links to its database.

Other Internet Resources

• Hyslop, Alec, “Other Minds,”Stanford Encyclopediaof Philosophy (Spring 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/other-minds/>. [This was the previous entry on Other Minds in theStanfordEncyclopedia of Philosophy — see theversion history.]

[Please contact the author with other suggestions.]

Related Entries

analogy and analogical reasoning |animal: cognition |cognition: embodied |Dharmakīrti |empathy |epistemic closure |folk psychology: as a theory |folk psychology: as mental simulation |imagination |Malebranche, Nicolas: theory of ideas and vision in God |perception: the disjunctive theory of |private language |zombies