Wisdom, John - Other Minds III

04/04/2014

Other Minds, by John Wisdom, Chapter 3: Basil Blackwell (pub), 1965

[This is a brief summary]

 In this chapter, a continuation from the dialogue from the previous chapter, a new character, "Grey" is introduced. Grey wants to convince White that Black's skeptical position is not warranted, nor is the externalistic meaning of "S believes that P" exhausts it. Grey tries to tell White that we know what is in other minds by analogy to our own, similar to how we know by analogy about other in-principle invisible phenomena. Grey uses the example of germs, which are known to be causes of many maladies. If the measles fit all the criteria for a germ-based disease but, upon inspection, no germs were to be found, Grey argues that we could still reasonably believe the disease was caused by germs, just invisible ones. This is the analogy Grey tries to give to White regarding mental states and other minds.

White complains early (pg62) that there are three replies to the problems of induction, or the "step" taken from evidence of P to asserting Q: Skeptic: 'don't take the step', Phenomenalist: 'there is no step to take, don't worry', Intuitionist: 'there is another mode of knowing that Q from P; it's ok'. White argues that merely stating: 'we know Q from P, but we can't justify it' is not an answer, but merely restates the problem.

After Grey gives his analogy of the invisible germ case, White talks at length of the 'queerness' (pg72) of the analogy argument: that while we might agree that our knowledge is by analogy, it is a weird sort of analogy since it relies on "the peculiar grammar of the expression of 'invisible things'" (pg72-3). The knowledge by analogy argument, White claims, is "satisfying" (pg74) and "soothing" (pg79) but not a justification since the satisfaction is "unstable" (pg74). The instability comes as follows: looking for the visible germs in a measles patient seems to be the right thing to do using the argument by analogy: measles is germ-caused. But, after no germs are found, to say it is in-principle invisible germs is to go a further step-- to move the goal posts-- to change the analogy (pg74-8).

White agrees that perhaps it is somehow "correct" to use analogy to argue for other minds, but there is something "misleading or tiresome" (pg75) about it. White tries to summarize the way the argument by analogy fails on pg 80-81, by claiming that using normal inductive reasoning to answer skeptical arguments either allows for unintelligible or false premises, or just builds into the grammar a "logical principle" that would not take the form of induction (pg81). Later in the chapter, White argues that Grey is close to simply re-stating the initial conditions that are taken to give evidence, in other words, collapsing the meaning of "will be colorblind" to "will fail the relevant tests" (pg83-5). Grey ends the chapter by trying to salvage the argument by analogy by saying the measles/invisible germs analogy wasn't apt.