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Other Minds

Summary/Abstract: In presented paper we consider the problem of knowledge of other minds. We develop a systematic argument against this theory that has come to known as argument from analogy. We look to the philosophical and psychological ideas whose meaning boils down to the claim that metacognitive processes so critical for self-awareness, self-knowledge emerge and develop in a strong connection with the process of attribution of mental states to others. We spin in one position some philosophical traditions, dating historically from Augustine, Descartes to Strawson and Davidson. Then, we combine philosophical discourse with the findings provided in developmental psychology, which show that children’s attributions of their own mental states emerge in a strong correlation with the attribution of mental states to others. Next, we combine those psychological findings with philosophical discussion of the conceptual conditions for the attribution of mental states. At the same time, we show that a key issue in the design of an argument against the theory which recognizes the primacy of the first person or uses in some sense the argument from analogy in solving the problem of other minds, is to refer to cognitive conditions for the acquisition of language and its functioning which we find historically in Descartes’ works and recently in works of cognitive psychologists.

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