04/18/2014
Other Minds, by John Wisdom, Chapter 5: Basil Blackwell (pub), 1965
[This is a brief summary]
In this chapter, which is thoroughly set in the context of the previous ones, White asserts that it is in principle, that is either logically or metaphysically, impossible to know another mind. This seems to be agreement with Black, the skeptic, but instead it is taken to be a pointless statement. White (and Wisdom) believe it isn't meaningless, but it is silly, or having no point to talk about. The paper starts with re-hashing the lesson from the failed attempt at telepathy from the last chapter: that even if a question has sense, and even if you can even describe what would affirm or negate the proposition, if you can't figure out a way to test (affirm/negate) the proposition, the question might still be "unreal" (pg123). Hence Gray's claim that the mind of another is hitherto invisible but could be discoverable is taken to be refuted.
The alternative to something so-far invisible is something invisible by nature, or in principle, which is what Black asserted in the first place. (pg123-4) Before White takes up this possibility, one final option is considered: that knowledge of another mind wouldn't be sensory but somehow some kind of "direct" knowledge (pg124-5). White rejects this because he sees it as not categorically different from "knowledge of future behavior from present behavior" (pg125-9) White somehow takes sharing direct knowledge of one mind to be on the same continuum as seeing a physical object, like a dagger (pg126). And this is disqualified from knowledge of a mind, due to White's "disinclination" (pg126-7). Or, rather, White puts words into Black's mouth that this isn't really knowledge of another's mind (pg127) since it is akin to predictions of future behavior due to shared (public) inputs (and Black affirms it on pg129). Thus if there isn't sensory knowledge of another's mind (ch IV) and there isn't direct knowledge of another's mind (ch V), then knowledge of another's mind is in-principle impossible, or the mind of another is by-nature invisible.
The main thrust of the argument is put by the thing-in-itself advocate Brown, who interrupts to assert there is some special way of knowing, but not of actual mental conditions but only of appearances of them: the infallible and direct way of knowing is knowledge of appearances, not necessarily of mental facts. Mental facts like "being in love" are known indirectly as well, though the first-personal perspective has a source of information that the 3rd-personal perspective may not share. White goes through what he considers to be the many cases of indirect knowledge (pg130-1), and then Gray challenges Brown to lay out his argument, which Brown does (pg133-5). What Brown amounts to saying is thus: our knowledge of our own minds comes from direct, infallible access to content-ful appearances [a pain, footly!], which leads us to indirect belief about our bodies [My foot nerves are twitching in pain], which can of course be fallible [it was a pain, but it wasn't in the foot].
Having laid out this picture, Brown claims that direct knowledge of the appearances of another's mental contents is possible (perhaps using telepathy). White asserts that it is an "absurd idea" (pg135), and that knowledge of another mind is impossible. This apparent agreement with Black confuses Gray, but White goes on to argue that it is necessarily impossible, thus far less threatening than it originally appeared (pg135-6). Black confesses that he did not realize that his statement was necessarily true when he made it, but nevertheless he was referring to what he now acknowledges is a necessary truth (pg136-9). White sums up the argument, put by Brown, but put back into an absurdity or a paradox, by claiming that knowledge, if taken to be of the sort that Brown (and, by extension, Black) think it is, is not applicable to not only other minds, but not applicable to the future, the past, even our own bodies, and, perhaps, finally, the whole world of things (pg140).
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