The problem of other minds: what is it and what theories address it?

The problem of other minds is a centuries-old field of philosophical research.

The mind is very mysterious, so much so that sometimes we ourselves do not even understand how our own mind works. But as much as we can understand what are the reasons that make us think about something, there is no doubt that the only ones who have access to our own minds are ourselves.

We cannot enter the minds of others directly, but we can infer what goes on in the minds of others, as we can demonstrate with the theory of mind... or can we?

Do others really have minds? How can we empirically demonstrate that other people have mental states? These and many more are the questions that have led to a curious and intricate philosophical issue: the problem of other minds..

What is the problem of other minds?

One of the topics most studied by epistemology, which is the branch of philosophy focused on knowledge, is the famous problem of other minds. This problem refers to the difficulty in justifying our belief that other people possess minds such as our own.. We infer that others have mental states, that there must be something behind their behavior, and that it cannot be that the rest of the people who roam the world are mere automatons in human form.

Although we speak of the problem in the singular, it can be divided into two problems: the epistemological problem and the conceptual problem of other minds. The epistemological one refers to how we can justify our belief that others possess mental states, while the conceptual one refers to how we can fabricate a concept of another person's mental state, i.e., on what basis we can imagine what the mental processes of others are like.

The main defining feature of the problem of other minds is that it is a problem of justifying intersubjectivity, i.e., demonstrating that everyone has his or her own mind, an aspect that is entirely subjective and cannot be observed objectively or scientifically from the outside, apparently. We can only believe that others have minds based on our own experience, since this is the only subjectivity to which we have access. Only we know our mind, and it is only our mind that we can know first hand..

But although the only mind we will ever know is our own, we can "understand" how others work. The idea of believing that others have minds arises from an intuition regarding the mental life of other people, confident that those other human beings who resemble us must feel the same things we do, such as emotions, pains, thoughts, beliefs, desires... But no matter how much we see similarities between them and us or believe we understand how their minds work, this does not rationally prove that they do indeed have mental states.

Far from giving up or believing that only we have a mind, human beings trust that others do. Despite not having the ability to directly access the minds of others, this does not detract from our belief that other minds exist and that each person we see walking down the street has his or her own. We cannot justify it, we probably never can, but we believe it, probably because, among other reasons, we are terrified of the idea of being alone in the world..

A philosophical problem with many possible solutions

As might be expected, the problem of other minds has been long debated in the history of philosophy. No philosopher can resist wondering whether others have mental states, since this problem is so unlikely to be solved one day that it serves well as endless entertainment for the most reflective thinkers who have a lot of time on their hands.

For centuries and centuries people have been trying to "prove" that others have minds by using every possible intellectual effort to to develop a theory that justifies that belief.. None has been sufficiently convincing, since how can one empirically justify that others have minds based on one's own belief, our own? Three have obtained the greatest consensus.

Other minds as theoretical entities

This gives strength to the justification that other minds exist based on the idea that the mental states that make up the mind are the best explanation for explaining the behavior of other people. We infer that the thoughts of others are the cause behind their behavior, even though this inference is made solely and exclusively with external and indirect evidence..

2. Criterion and other minds

This criterion consists of saying that the relationship between behavior and thought is conceptual but not a strict link or an infallible correlation. That is to say, behavior does not prove that there is a mental state or a mind per se behind a given behavior. Nevertheless, this approach to behavior plays the role of a criterion for the presence of mental states, this approach to behavior plays the role of a criterion for the presence of mental states, serving as an indicator that there must be something behind it.It serves as an indicator that there must be something behind it.

3. The argument by analogy

This solution is basically based on how we are and extrapolate it to others, being the most accepted of the three proposed solutions. Although the possibility that others are mindless automatons could be true, there are enough reasons to believe the opposite and that others, having a similar appearance to ours, must also have a similar way of thinking to ours.

Since we do not have direct access to the experiences of others, we can only have knowledge of them indirectly, using their behavior. by using their behavior. Their behaviors serve as clues that allow us to understand what would happen in the minds of others. For this we resort to the logical resource of analogy, taking as a case our own case.

From our own case we realize that our mind and body are in constant relationship, seeing stable correlations between thoughts and behaviors. For example, if we are nervous it is normal that our hands tremble, we sweat or even stutter and when we are sad, we cry, our face is red and our voice is cracked. Looking at these body-mind relationships, if we see that other people's bodies behave the same way, we assume that the mental processes behind them are the same..

Criticism of the argument by analogy

The only mind that we can justify its existence is our own, as Rene Descartes thought when he said "cogito, ergo sum". For this reason, it is considered that the argument by analogy does not give sufficient confidence to justify belief in other minds, responding to it with several criticisms. One of them is that, as an induction, it is too weak since it relies only on a single case: our own experience. However much we may rely on the correlations we establish between our mind and our behavior, we are talking about our personal experience.

Another criticism is that the relation postulated by the argument between mental states and behavior is too weak because it is contingent, without providing the assurance that behaviors are unequivocal signs of a particular mental state. It makes sense to think that, at some point in time, a certain behavior might be related to a particular state of mind, but in the future it might not be so. The same thought may imply different behavior in ourselves as well as in others.

The third criticism is that we cannot conceive of someone else's experience, and therefore cannot know it.. It is true that we can imagine what is going through a person's mind after doing something but, in reality, we are simulating how we would behave, based only on the way we act and without knowing how others actually do it. That is, we cannot understand a mental state of another person because the experience we have is based on our mental states, and these are not extrapolable to others.

Bibliographical references:

• Robles-Chamorro, R. (2014) Filosofía y ciencia: el problema de las otras mentes y las neuronas espejo. Revista Observaciones Filosóficas, Nº 18 ISSN 0718-3712.
• Avramides, A. (2001) Other Minds, (The Problems of Philosophy), London: Routledge.
• Ayer, A. J., 1953 [1954], “One’s Knowledge of Other Minds”, Theoria, 19(1–2): 1–20. Reprinted in Philosophical Essays, London: MacMillan, St Martin’s Press: 191–215. doi:10.1111/j.1755-2567.1953.tb01034.x