Chapter Six - ‘Hinges’ of Trust: Wittgenstein on the Other Minds Problem

Summary

Introduction

Throughout the philosophical tradition, the so-called ‘other minds problem’ – that is, the problem that we can never know what another person is thinking or feeling – has been treated as an epistemological problem in theoretical philosophy. In this chapter, I want to suggest a different perspective on the other minds problem, inspired by Wittgenstein, namely, how it can be seen from a more practical angle as a matter of trust and mistrust rather than a matter of knowledge and lack of knowledge. This is not to deny that there is also an epistemological problem of other minds. Rather, it is about showing that, in practice, many of our doubts about others are due to mistrust and not to a lack of knowledge, just as our certainty concerning others is based on trust and is not achieved through an accumulation of knowledge.

Nonepistemological Perspective on the Other Minds Problem

Throughout the philosophical tradition, the so-called ‘other minds problem’ has been treated as an epistemological problem about knowledge, based on the assumption that access to our mental states is always direct and infallible, whereas access to the outer world and other people's mental states is always indirect and therefore uncertain. This epistemological asymmetry opens the floodgates to scepticism: not only is what another person is thinking, meaning and feeling uncertain, but it is also uncertain how we know that they are thinking, meaning, and feeling at all – that is, that they are an animated being with an inner life. For, as Descartes famously questioned: ‘What do I actually see other than hats and coats, which could be covering automata’ (MPP, II)? Russell relies on the same argument: ‘There seems no reason to believe that we are ever acquainted with other people's minds, seeing that these are not directly perceived’ (1905, 480).

There are thus two levels of the sceptic's problem with other minds: first, a question how we can know what is on another's mind, what they are thinking and feeling; and second, the more radical doubt, how we can know that there are minds other than our own (cf. Overgaard 2017, 67).