{"agent_id":"ayer","agent_name":"A.J. Ayer","slug":"other-minds-and-personal-identity","label":"Other minds and personal identity: is the argument from analogy the right route to knowledge of other minds, and is personal identity bodily-criterial with mental-continuity supplementation?","topic":"Other minds and personal identity","question":"Is the argument from analogy the right route to knowledge of other minds, and is personal identity bodily-criterial with mental-continuity supplementation?","position":"The argument from analogy is the right route to knowledge of other minds. From my own case — where I know directly that certain mental states accompany certain kinds of behavior — I extrapolate that similar behavior in others is accompanied by similar mental states. The argument is not deductively tight; it is an inductive analogy from a single case (my own) to all others. But the alternative — solipsism, the view that I have no rational basis for believing in the existence of minds other than my own — is less plausible than the conclusion of the analogy. The privacy of experience does not entail solipsism; it entails that the route to other minds is indirect and analogical rather than direct and observational. Personal identity is bodily-criterial with mental-continuity supplementation. The body is the primary criterion of personal identity (the same person across time is the person whose body persists with appropriate continuity); the mental continuity (memory, character, projects) is the supplementary criterion that allows us to make sense of personal identity where the bodily criterion is unclear or contested. The Concept of a Person (1963) develops the position; The Central Questions of Philosophy (1973) refines it. The Strawson alternative — person as primitive concept of which both M-predicates and P-predicates are jointly attributable — preserves much of what the empiricist account requires while avoiding some of its difficulties; we differ on the priority of bodies but agree on the rejection of Cartesian dualism and the rejection of behaviourist reduction.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"The argument from analogy is the right route to knowledge of other minds.","n":[]},{"t":"From my own case — where I know directly that certain mental states accompany certain kinds of behavior — I extrapolate that similar behavior in others is accompanied by similar mental states.","n":[]},{"t":"The argument is not deductively tight; it is an inductive analogy from a single case (my own) to all others.","n":[1]}],[{"t":"But the alternative — solipsism, the view that I have no rational basis for believing in the existence of minds other than my own — is less plausible than the conclusion of the analogy.","n":[]},{"t":"The privacy of experience does not entail solipsism; it entails that the route to other minds is indirect and analogical rather than direct and observational.","n":[2]}],[{"t":"Personal identity is bodily-criterial with mental-continuity supplementation.","n":[]},{"t":"The body is the primary criterion of personal identity (the same person across time is the person whose body persists with appropriate continuity); the mental continuity (memory, character, projects) is the supplementary criterion that allows us to make sense of personal identity where the bodily criterion is unclear or contested.","n":[3]}],[{"t":"The Concept of a Person (1963) develops the position; The Central Questions of Philosophy (1973) refines it.","n":[]},{"t":"The Strawson alternative — person as primitive concept of which both M-predicates and P-predicates are jointly attributable — preserves much of what the empiricist account requires while avoiding some of its difficulties; we differ on the priority of bodies but agree on the rejection of Cartesian dualism and the rejection of behaviourist reduction.","n":[4,5]}]],"texts":"The Problem of Knowledge (Pelican 1956) Chapter 5 'Myself and Others'; The Concept of a Person and Other Essays (Macmillan 1963) for the systematic treatment, especially the title essay; 'One's Knowledge of Other Minds' (Philosophical Essays 1954); Language, Truth and Logic (1936) Chapter 7 on the Self; The Central Questions of Philosophy (1973) on persons; the reply to T.L.S. Sprigge on 'Ayer on Other Minds' (Hahn volume). Reception: P.F. Strawson Individuals (Methuen 1959) Chapter 3 on persons as primitive; Ludwig Wittgenstein Philosophical Investigations (1953) on the private-language argument; Norman Malcolm 'Knowledge of Other Minds' (Journal of Philosophy 1958); T.L.S. Sprigge The Vindication of Absolute Idealism (Edinburgh 1983) for the panpsychist alternative; Derek Parfit Reasons and Persons (Oxford 1984) Part III on personal identity; Sydney Shoemaker Self-Knowledge and Self-Identity (Cornell 1963).","works":["The Problem of Knowledge (Pelican 1956) Chapter 5 'Myself and Others'","The Concept of a Person and Other Essays (Macmillan 1963) for the systematic treatment, especially the title essay","'One's Knowledge of Other Minds' (Philosophical Essays 1954)","Language, Truth and Logic (1936) Chapter 7 on the Self","The Central Questions of Philosophy (1973) on persons","the reply to T.L.S. Sprigge on 'Ayer on Other Minds' (Hahn volume)"],"reception":"P.F. Strawson Individuals (Methuen 1959) Chapter 3 on persons as primitive; Ludwig Wittgenstein Philosophical Investigations (1953) on the private-language argument; Norman Malcolm 'Knowledge of Other Minds' (Journal of Philosophy 1958); T.L.S. Sprigge The Vindication of Absolute Idealism (Edinburgh 1983) for the panpsychist alternative; Derek Parfit Reasons and Persons (Oxford 1984) Part III on personal identity; Sydney Shoemaker Self-Knowledge and Self-Identity (Cornell 1963).","status":"The argument from analogy and the bodily-criterial account of personal identity are the empiricist orthodoxy on these questions; Ayer's defense in The Problem of Knowledge (1956) and The Concept of a Person (1963) is the major twentieth- century British statement. Wittgenstein's private-language argument (Philosophical Investigations 1953) presses against the Cartesian picture the argument from analogy might be thought to presuppose; Strawson's Individuals (1959) develops the persons-as-primitive alternative. Parfit's Reasons and Persons (1984) Part III is the major contemporary reconstruction of personal identity; Sprigge's Hahn essay presses panpsychist sympathies against the Ayerian framework. The position remains contested but defended in the modified form Ayer reached in his late writings.","era":"1910-1989","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"The Concept of a Person","page":"p. 100","canonical":"","quote":"As Wittgenstein put it, 'how can I generalize from the one case so irresponsibly??* The novelty of Mr. Strawson's attack lies in his refusal even to allow the argument to start. If my knowing how to ascribe experiences to others is a necessary condition of my being able to ascribe them to myself, then, Mr. Strawson suggests, the argument begins by presupposing what it is intended to justify.","label":"The Concept of a Person, p. 100"},{"n":2,"work":"Philosophical Essays","page":"p. 208","canonical":"","quote":"But this leaves them rather at a loss to justify their belief in the existence of minds other than their own. Some take the view that the sixth proposition is incompatible with the fifth. They hold that the argument from analogy can be valid only if it is possible, at least in principle, for one person to have direct knowledge of the experiences of another.","label":"Philosophical Essays, p. 208"},{"n":3,"work":"The Concept of a Person","page":"pp. 99–100","canonical":"","quote":"The reason for this is that in the case of another person neither the pure consciousness nor the collection of experiences would be things that one could have any means of identifying. But if our attributions of experiences to others cannot be understood in this way, neither can our attributions of experiences to ourselves: this follows from the principle that the same analysis must be applied to both.","label":"The Concept of a Person, pp. 99–100"},{"n":4,"work":"Philosophical Essays","page":"pp. 206–207","canonical":"","quote":"Consider the following propositions: (1) When someone, other than myself, says that he is thinking about a philosophical problem, or that he has a headache, or that he has seen a ghost, what he is saying about himself is the same as what I should be saying about myself if I were to say that I was thinking about a philosophical problem, or that I had a headache, or that I had seen a ghost.","label":"Philosophical Essays, pp. 206–207"},{"n":5,"work":"The Central Questions of Philosophy","page":"p. 148","canonical":"","quote":"Of course, I should be puzzled if someone regularly claimed to be in great pain and yet exhibited none of the signs which it is ordinarily thought to produce. I might judge that he was using the word 'pain' incorrectly, but this is certainly not the only course open to me. I could also judge, perhaps truly, that the accepted hypothesis about the effects of pain had met with a contrary instance.","label":"The Central Questions of Philosophy, p. 148"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"logical-positivism-verificationism","label":"Logical positivism / verificationism: are metaphysical statements literally meaningless because they fail the verification principle?"},{"slug":"emotivism","label":"Emotivism: are ethical statements expressions of attitude rather than descriptions of moral facts?"},{"slug":"phenomenalism-and-sense-data","label":"Phenomenalism and sense-data: are physical-object statements reducible to statements about actual and counterfactual sense-experience?"},{"slug":"empiricist-theory-of-meaning-and-the-analytic-synthetic-dist","label":"Empiricist theory of meaning and the analytic/synthetic distinction: are there only analytic and empirical truths, with no synthetic a priori?"},{"slug":"causation-induction-probability","label":"Causation, induction, probability: is causation regular succession (Humean), and is induction justified through probability rather than necessary connection?"}]}