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Radical Conceptual Scepticism About Other Minds ( from book)

My aim in this essay is to resolve the conceptual problems of other minds, and in such a way as to accommodate rather than dismiss the kind of perplexity that is undiminished by solutions, this to be achieved by aligning it with an abiding sense of the ultimately mysterious.[i] Since we need the solution first in order to give shape to the mystery, let us discuss the problem. It concerns the everyday view that mental predicates are univocal irrespective of person, so that “pain”, for instance, means the same whether I say that I am in pain or that you are. This assumption of semantic identity is rejected by the radical conceptual sceptic, his basic argument running as follows: since the mental states I experience are necessarily mine, I cannot acquire the concept of a subject of consciousness other than myself.

In addressing this argument, I suggest that we defer for the moment any consideration of the deeper metaphysics of such radical scepticism, for on the one hand there is very little clarity at such depth, and on the other the surface features are in any case those of reductive behaviourism, whatever their submarine origins might be. This is to say that the conceptual sceptic has to give some account of his interactions with other people and his apparently attributing consciousness to them, and the only theory heaving into view, as far as I can see, is that of behaviourism. With regard to physicalism, for example, it concerns neural-mental identity rather than conceptual constraint; and functionalism, as usually understood, loosens the nexus between inner consciousness and outward behaviour but does not seek to equate them. Another reason for aligning the sceptic and the behaviourist, so that they sail in convoy, as it were, is that if radical conceptual scepticism entails behaviourism, then the converse also holds up to a point, so that they are indeed under the same command. We shall treat of the metaphysical question when we consider the detailed argumentation of the conceptual sceptic; but there are several ports of call before then — or perhaps only one, for we need to ask whether the waves created by the sceptical thesis are so disruptive of our system of interpersonal beliefs, thereby being strictly incredible, that any supporting arguments will always be washed overboard.

The fact is, after all, that philosophers bring to the issue a distinction which they, in common with everyone else, entirely take for granted, so that in that sense they are convinced that it holds. They distinguish, that is, between inner mental state and outward behaviour, a distinction they apply both to themselves and to others. Since they are not going to sacrifice it on the altar of radical scepticism unless there are compelling reasons, it is for the sceptic to supply them if he wishes to convert us to the cause. Secondly, it is arguable that such reasons cannot obtain, given the solipsistic implications of the scepticism at issue. If I cannot conceive of others as being conscious, then my ascription to them of mental states is to be equated with those references to their behaviour on which it is normally taken to be based. This is tantamount to psychological solipsism, the theory that all consciousness resides in myself, since I can conceive of only myself as being conscious.

13.2: Serving Notice on the Psychological Solipsist

Should the  psychological solipsist be taken literally? By way of answer, I shall now try to render as vividly as I humanly can the reality of other minds, so that we may realise how much is at stake when the sceptic denies that he can conceive of others’ mental states. Suppose, assuming a moratorium on scepticism in the present section, that another person and myself are looking at a uniformly blue wall, and that the similarity between our colour experiences is as great as possible. Then it is my contention that they may be exactly the same, and in the same way as my own such experiences, so that they are qualitatively identical. To bring out the essence of what this means, let us consider objections to it, one of which concerns personal identity. The argument, or perhaps unwitting assumption, is that even if my perceptual experience is the same as the other person’s, what this could mean is constrained by the fact that we have separate identities, so that for each of us our unique self runs through our own experiences like a name through a stick of rock. To this it may be replied, following Hume, that I am not acquainted with myself as a subject of whom experiences are predicated, for the self is not an introspectible object. One could argue, too, that even if it were such an object, the experience of it could be both the same for all of us and distinguishable from other kinds of experience, for instance that of blue. There is, of course, the grammatical subject, as when one says “I am immersed in blueness”, but again this reference to oneself may be exactly the same phenomenally as the other person’s. And, too, a question may arise, courtesy of the work of Thomas Nagel, of what it is like, if one has a particular experience, for one to have it. Using an illustration from chiropterology, Nagel asked what it is like for a bat when it deploys its echo-location sense, his point being that the answer lies outside our cognitive purview, since we lack that particular sense. I disagree, believing as I do that one cannot know what it is like for another person, however close to us, to be that person, let alone for a bat to be a bat; but also for oneself when younger to have been that younger self. If you think this is going too far, take out an old photo or video of yourself and ask yourself the question. The difficulty, in other words, inheres in the question itself. What counts for now is that this emphasis on the felt quality of experience precludes not at all the possibility of  multiple slices of a single phenomenal cake, or actual cake, eaten both by the same and by different individuals and always tasting the same. That leaves dispositional differences, but there is no reason why these, too, should not be similar. Again, then, we are back with my experience of blue being qualitatively identical with the other person’s. It follows that the felt reality of that experience may be the same for both of us.

This is a startling result, and it does need to be emphasised, one reason for which is that in everyday life we are all pragmatic behaviourists up to a point — or, better, we are functionalists in our ordinary transactions with other people. That is, we may care very little what experience another person has, for instance when serving us at a counter, and even less what it is like for that person to have that experience, the practical emphasis being on the associated behaviour and action. Again, If a passenger in a car knows that the driver is colour blind, her concern is with whether he stops at red and starts again at green, just as it would be if she herself as a driver was afflicted in the same way; and in both cases she need not know exactly what the visual difference consists in or would consist in. This may be generalised, and there is much more that could be said; but it will always fall short of the actual philosophical theory of functionalism, if only for the reason that if I observe a person exhibiting pain behaviour, and if everything points to her being in pain, perhaps because the driver did not, after all, stop at red, then that is what I believe: that she is in pain. The point is that I may not know exactly what she is feeling, or remember exactly what I felt after my own traffic accident at some time in the past, but I can conceive of her present and my past pain being exactly the same, just as I can of any future pain of mine being exactly the same. And what applies to sensations also applies to colours. That mentalistically we have so much in common with others is, to repeat, an astonishing fact; and what it shows is that there is not just a gap but a chasm between premiss and conclusion when I infer to another’s particular conscious state; for its existence is not demonstrable, the same being true of the blanket belief, as it were, that consciousness, irrespective of its particular form, resides in this other person, as also my belief that it resided in me in the past as it does at present.

What we are trying to establish is that since radical scepticism about conceiving of other minds is counter-intuitive to an extreme, a question is raised as to whether we should take it literally, the conceptual problem being, rather, an academic exercise in which it is as if the sceptic’s claims have literal meaning. This, in my view, points in the right direction, albeit only as a first attempt, and certainly it is true that the present sceptical problem is not in any straightforward way an academic exercise. I do not betray a lack of understanding of the sceptic when initially I take him literally, for what this boils down to is that I take him to mean what he says, on which basis I argue against him that very likely he does not mean it, or not unless cognitive dissonance is in play, in which case he should not expect to be taken seriously. It would be in play because very likely the sceptic would admit, when confronted, that of course he takes other people to be conscious and therefore can conceive of it; and then, in philosophical garb, he would very likely deny that this is the case.

Now consider the following variation on cognitive dissonance: that the psychological solipsist means quite literally that conceiving of other minds is impossible; but also, that he acknowledges that he cannot help believing that he does conceive of them — indeed that he goes beyond it and believes that other minds exist. It is in a similar way, after all, that Hume, epistemologically rather than conceptually is taken by some commentators to radically reject in theory the scheme of reasoning by which in practice he survived from one day and one moment to the next, for instance by electing to exit his house via the stairs as opposed to the window. Nevertheless, it is not as if the sceptic is admitting to a particular belief or set of beliefs that he recognises as being irrational at the same time as he is unable to divest himself of them — or, in Hume’s case, to defenestrate himself. If such recognition obtains, then the sceptic and his critics are remarkably adept at dissembling on this point, for they give not the slightest sign of struggling manfully with irrational belief, neither in their interactions nor, indeed, in their philosophising. Believing that one conceives of other minds is not a form of conceptual arachnophobia, as if we are caught in a web of irrational thought; rather, it permeates the whole system of beliefs, concepts, predictions and explanations, conditions and connections by which we  observe and interact with other people and with ourselves.

      What I have shown, I trust, is that the sceptical treatment of the problem is very likely incoherent, the only coherent approach being as follows: that if we assume that radical conceptual scepticism is correct, which is to say that I am unique in being conscious, then this constitutes a reductio ad absurdum argument against that form of scepticism, which must therefore be rejected. That we are on solid ground is evidenced by the fact, otherwise inexplicable, that philosophers compartmentalise with admirable insouciance a very long train of clearly connected problems, one that I have sought, throughout this book, to run into the buffers of inconsistency.

But why, in that case, do we qualify the incoherence as being very likely rather than state it as a fact? Because I was assuming, in order to prove otherwise, that it is possible in theory that one might be a genuine psychological solipsist, either unable to conceive of humanoid objects, despite their behaviour resembling one’s own in so many ways, as being conscious⸻ or, inhering in that inability, not perceiving them as behaving similarly. Proving otherwise, note first that this individual, who should never be invited to a party, would have to be me, since I am conscious and consciousness is exclusive to one individual; therefore it is myself. I should imagine, I suppose, that the solipsistic argument convinces me, at which point I retrospectively attribute it to the automaton Colin McGinn. This is not inconsistent, nor need it be, for to refute the sceptic it suffices that I have to imagine that I am that individual, contrary to the reality, which is that I believe that I can conceive of others as being conscious, this arguably being an avowal on my part: that I have that belief even after being exposed to the solipsistic argument. [ii] Secondly, suppose that my belief is overturned by the argument, perhaps elaborated in one way or another; and now I say that I have always believed that others are conscious; but that during a business lunch today I had a Damascene moment on the road to, as has now become apparent, career catastrophe and marital misfortune. The locks had been changed by the time I got home from the pub, where the automatonic bartender banned me, just as the security robots refused to let me back into the office. But now, is there not an incoherence here? How, after all, would I describe the day’s momentous events in a journal? I would have to say that during lunch, having encountered the solipsistic argument as bedtime reading last night, I suddenly realised that the conceptual sceptic could not be gainsaid, therefore I was the only conscious entity. At breakfast I took for granted that my wife was conscious, implicit in which was my ability to conceive of it; and the same for my colleagues at work. And then, during lunch, the lightning struck, and it reduced other people to automata. One moment I conceived of them as being conscious; and the next moment I was no longer able to conceive of them as being conscious. But if I write this latter sentence down, how can I say that I conceived of them as being conscious when I am unable to conceive of them as being conscious? Wishing to avoid an intricate discussion of the finer points of conceptual implication, I rest my case.

13.3: The Sceptical Arguments and Revision of Theory

If psychological solipsism, otherwise known as radical conceptual scepticism, is not to be taken seriously on its own terms, then it is in this context that we now consider the particular arguments by which the conceptual sceptic presents his thesis. Since we know in advance that their intended sceptical conclusion is unsound, which must also be true of themselves, our treatment of them will be in line with our being able to conceive of others’ mental states. The place to start is with the views of Colin McGinn, whom we have already encountered in connection with intentionality being irreducible. In his contribution to a journal article on the conceptual problem of other minds, McGinn relates it, via some remarks of Wittgenstein’s, to what is known as Molyneux’ Question, which runs as follows.[iii] Suppose that a congenitally blind person acquaints herself by touch with objects having a square cross-section, so that she thereby acquires the concept, or at least the tactual concept, of squareness. As the “at least” implies, the question is just that of whether the woman, if newly sighted, would immediately be able to recognise square objects without having to touch them first, thereby indicating that she possessed that ability or disposition, albeit unrealised, when she was blind. According to McGinn, the analogy here is with the question of whether the concept of another’s pain, for instance, can be derived from that of one’s own pain. We shall ask later whether this analogy is apt.

McGinn’s argument is that the concept of a particular mental state, or the acquiring of it, is necessarily linked to one’s experience of it. This brings to mind Nagel’s thesis, which I said that I disagree with, it being enough for the moment to note that the present assumption is obscure as it stands, inviting as it does a number of questions. How close, for instance, must the connection be? Do I need to have had toothache in order to grasp the concept of it?  Suppose that the sceptic concedes that I do not and grants that past experience of a headache may be a suitable substitute, provided that it throbbed in a similar way to a toothache. But in what way might that be, and how is one to form a judgement on the matter?  Not only that, but if this is a prerequisite then by what criterion is felt pain location exempted? Perhaps we should include it, in which case the concept-forming desiderata are as follows: one is able to grasp the concept of toothache if one has had a toothache-like throbbing pain phenomenally located in one’s tooth — in other words if one has had toothache. We shall pass over the question of whether one’s previous toothache would qualify only if the affected tooth was the same as the one at the centre of one’s present pain. On second thoughts, let us not pass over it, for by what metaphysical intuition do we dismiss it, whereas a similar question about felt location is taken more seriously, despite our being free to answer it as we like? But this is to imply that very little hangs on it.

 To show just how little that is, imagine this time that I have just eaten chocolate as a treat for my oral bacteria and that I now anticipate the onset of toothache, perhaps because of my experience of dental caries and perverse bacterial ingratitude. But if there is a necessary connection between previous pain experience and my grasp of the concept of toothache, then the claim is not that they are logically connected, presumably by way of being analytic. This would be the claim if, for instance, the contention was that one cannot have the concept of toothache if one does not have the concept of pain. What this trades on is the fact that toothache is a form of pain; and whether the contention is correct, if one can be bothered to ask, will depend, uninterestingly, on this and that. The actual claim, however, is that the necessary connection is not between concepts but between the experience of pain and the concept of toothache; and the crucial point is that it would have to be contingent. For if my previous experience of toothache, headache or pain in general effects a concept-enabling change, which we may suppose to be cerebral in character, whereby I now have the concept of toothache, then it is possible that the resulting brain state obtain even in the absence of any history of mental or physical suffering, this also being true of the prediction of toothache that I make. There is, after all, nothing in the conscious phenomena of my understanding of toothache to suggest that previous pain of any kind is non-contingently — or even contingently in a different sense of “necessary” — a necessary condition of my grasp of the concept. It is true that understanding is dispositional as well as occurrent, but here again there is no contradiction in supposing that the appropriate dispositions also obtain.

Note, too, that naturalistically a similar point can be made. That is, it is arguable that in everyday reasoning we make unwarranted assumptions about the closeness of the relation between understanding and experiencing particular kinds of mental state. One example would be that of what it feels like to give birth, which we are said to appreciate only if we ourselves have had babies, it not being an acceptable surrogate that mothers, however articulate, should describe their experiences to us. That leaves witnessing the event at first hand, preferably while the mother-to-be gives a running commentary on her feelings and sensations — but this, too, would perhaps be regarded as failing to deliver the unique insight that only experiencing childbirth for oneself can bring into the world. Interestingly, I did experience childbirth for myself at one time, but I would not say that it gave me any special insight into the feelings and sensations one has while being born.

Let us now consider whether the same reasoning holds for the cognitive circumstances of the blind woman. It is a contingent fact, if it is a fact at all, that newly sighted she will have to learn to associate the visual and the tactual, thereby revealing this limitation on her previous grasp of shape concepts. But it is easy to imagine otherwise, for instance that upon opening her eyes for the first time she immediately recognises and identifies objects familiar to her from touch, including square tables, round walking sticks and her husband. Moreover, I am about to argue that the two scenarios are not mutually exclusive. If this is correct, as also the claim about contingency, then why exactly is the Molyneux problem thought to be of interest to philosophers? To make the question clear, suppose that the woman is recovering from a successful eye operation, the dressing having just been removed, and that she knows that the person sitting in the chair next to her bed is her husband, having recognised him by his voice. He is pointing at the object in his lap and telling her that she has made daily use of it for years, hence his disappointment at her failure to recognise it. 

‘A failure easily rectified’, she thinks, whereupon she grasps the object and immediately recognises it as her white walking stick. ‘So this is what white looks look like’, she exclaims. Running her hand along the stick, knowing in advance that it will feel the same for the whole of its length until the tip is reached, she thereby associates that feeling with visual straightness. Arriving at the tip, she visually identifies the ferrule before touching it, because it looks different from the body of the stick. Should we say, then, that the answer to Molyneux’s questions with regard to the ferrule is that she can identify it by sight alone, whereas the stick itself had first to be felt? Clearly, we can say it if we like, but we may also suppose that the woman handles the ferrule first, thereby associating the look of it with the feel of it, and that she then recognises the body of the stick by sight alone — or, there again, that she immediately recognises both. The important point, as always, is that perception and observation belong within a system, the present case being such that the newly sighted woman immediately engages in a process of incorporating the deliverances of a newly acquired sense into the dynamics of her system of perceptual knowledge.

Why, to return to it, is Molyneux’ Question thought to be of philosophical interest? Because the answer will indicate whether the woman had visual identificatory ability when she was blind, this being a necessary condition of her concepts of physical shape being visual as well as tactual. If, as common sense would suggest, there is indeed such a condition, then the conceptual sceptic would have to maintain, in allowing for the possibility that the condition is fulfilled, that it is necessary but not sufficient; for his thesis, after all, is that the blind woman’s grasp of the concept of physical shape is purely tactual. But what, in that case, would the sceptic grant as a sufficient condition? The answer cannot be given in terms of brain states or dispositions, which contingently might obtain, whereas the sceptic’s thesis is meant to go deeper; hence my reference to metaphysical truth. His claim is that the woman’s experience of the physical world is purely tactual; therefore, on that account alone, the same must be true of her conception of that world, this being a non-contingent conclusion that is metaphysical in character. The appeal, it might be said, is to our deepest empiricist intuitions.

To appeal to empiricism or conceptual foundationalism is not, however, to terminate the discussion, as if it were the last port of call. Indeed, I now propose to lead the sceptic into deeper waters, this time dropping anchor above what appears to be the abyss which separates the phenomenal and the intentional, this latter, or so I have argued, being irreducible within a system. The fact is, after all, that the blind woman’s conception of squareness is of square-shaped objects in a physical world which exists independently of being perceived. This transforms the problem, for the three-dimensional world inhabited by the blind woman is the same as that of sighted people, the difference being that the woman cannot see it or any of it occupants. That, at least, is what my deepest intuition tells me, and much of the earlier chapter on perception would be relevant at this point.

If, armed with the findings of that earlier chapter, we now return to the question of the blind woman’s conception of a world visually perceived, then our conclusion is that the different senses available to her reveal the same physical objects as those that are seen. This is truistic at one level, for clearly the woman is able to feel her stick when she touches it, to hear it when she taps it and to see it and recognise it after the operation, either immediately or very shortly after the other senses have been brought into play. If it turns out that this latter is needed, so that before the operation she was not disposed to recognise any objects by sight alone, then strictly speaking she did not possess visual concepts. This, I suggest, is of no great import, the point being that they are easily accommodated, a place already marked out for them, in the system of empirical knowledge and observation by which her existing senses are co-ordinated and function separately or in concert. They are intentional in character and inform her of the presence of an independently existing physical world.

If this is correct, then the issue goes far beyond what should, strictly speaking, be said, and, rightly or wrongly, it is metaphysical in the arguments deployed. It concerns the relation, in terms of necessary and contingent, between the concept and the experience of particular mental states; and noteworthy here is that irrespective of the sense modality involved, very little that is at all specific can be said, this being in itself a significant fact. That is, if initially I posit a close connection between concept and experience, then I still have to acknowledge that it is not so close that, for instance, I understand toothache, or what it is like to feel it, only if I have actually felt it myself. There is, as we have seen, a sense of “understand” such that one knows what it is like to have toothache only if one has had it, the same being true of labour pains, with half the human race thereby being cognitively excluded. These combine into an even more exclusive club, the members of which enjoy that esoteric insight vouchsafed only to those who have given birth in a dentist’s chair. This is, it seems to me, a very confused and obfuscatory use of the concept of understanding, which perhaps we should eschew not only in philosophy but also in everyday discourse, where it lends itself, in this latter case, to a particularly irritating form of life-event snobbery.

This returns us to the original question re-interpreted: not whether one can ascribe consciousness to other people but how it is that certain difficulties of conceptual analysis attending that ascription may be resolved. And the answer is implicit in the arguments already presented. The question, it may be recalled, was phrased as follows: how can one derive the concept of another’s pain from one’s own pain experience? But this is to presuppose that the relation at issue is that of derivation, and it is this implied metaphysical thesis that I have attempted to overturn. If my own pain or ability to feel it is not a necessary condition of my grasp of the concept of pain, which I may possess even if I am not able to feel pain, provided that I am aware of that mixed blessing, then the question of how I can ascribe pain to other people on the basis of my own must lapse. This terminates the voyage of the conceptual sceptic about other minds, who now finds himself utterly capsized and all at sea.   

13.4: Limitation and Mystery

If the foregoing arguments are correct, then it seems that the conceptual sceptic credits herself with metaphysical access to fundamental laws governing the acquisition and content of psychological concepts. Finding in my own case that the door is always locked, I have tried to show that the positing of a very particular metaphysical connection between experience and concept acquisition or application is illegitimate. This is not to deny that there are metaphysical constraints, just as there are necessary conditions; and both of these are fundamental. But they and our understanding of them obtain within a system — and intrinsic to the notion of a system is that of epistemic limitation of metaphysical scope, beyond which there is only mystery. This notion of a system is one that we shall now deploy against those who deny not that they can conceive of other people but that they have any reason to believe that other minds exist. Here, if anywhere, one’s inability to answer the sceptic may momentarily chill into loneliness, as if a window suddenly opens onto winter and is hastily slammed shut. But other people should be inside with us, not out in the cold, the exception being the conceptual sceptic about other minds..

 

 

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[i] This is a revised version of my treatment of the conceptual problem as part of the problem of other minds chapter in the book. This latter chapter now treats only of the epistemological problem.

[ii]

[iii] See Peacock, Christopher and McGinn, Colin in bibliography.