Perception and Other Minds

Abstract

Assuming for the moment that I know it, how do I know that there are any other people in the world besides myself, conscious human beings who think and feel in ways similar to the way I think and feel? One of the answers that I can think to give to this question-an answer that strikes me as both true and appropriately responsive-is that I can see that there are other people, a great many of them. If asked how I know that there are any other Volkswagens in the world (besides my own) I would reply, similarly, that I see them wherever I go. Volkswagens, after all, are easy to spot. But so are people. We may someday have a more difficult time (Is this a person or a cleverly contrived robot? Is this a person or a highly evolved orangoutang ?), but as things now stand a person is, in normal circumstances, quite an easy thing to pick out-easier, certainly, than apple pie. This being so, what or where is the problem of other minds ? Being minded is, I take it, part of what we mean to attribute to something when we speak of it as a person. If there is no problem about identifying people, there should be no special problem about deciding whether there are other minds or how we come to know this. We routinely speak about seeing that there are some people in the waiting room, passengers on the bus, students in the office, and a crowd of people listening to the speaker. If what we routinely say is true, if we do see this sort of thing, then this is how we know (or, at least, one of the ways we know) that there are other minds. Furthermore, there are a great many other things of a more specific nature that we commonly say we see that imply that we know that there are other conscious beings in the world besides ourselves. I do not always know when my wife is angry, and some of the times that I do know this it is not because I can see that she is; but there are occasions, or so I believe, when I can see that she is angry. Knowing her as I do I can also see when she is tired, bored, irritated, uncomfortable, frustrated, and interested. Since