Reading : Western Philosophy III.8 "The Problem of Other Minds"
Mill says "We have no conception of Mind itself, as distinguished from its conscious manifestations". In other words, although we understand the mind to be present, we don't have direct experience of it; rather we have experience of the different types of mental processes such as thought, belief, desire, pain, etc. which we assume to be consequences of having a mind. An analogy to this might be the diaphragm of a loudspeaker: we infer its existence because when it vibrates we can hear various sounds, although we never hear the diaphragm per se. Similarly, we have the idea of the diaphragm continuing to exist when it's not vibrating, just as we have the idea that our minds continue to exist even at times when we are not conscious of anything.
Based on this definition of mind, and seemingly accepting Descartes' position that I can be sure of my own mind's existence, Mill addresses himself to three questions:
It might be argued that it is impossible to know that other minds exist. It is certainly true that since I am me, I cannot be someone else; therefore I can't ever have first-hand evidence that someone else has a mind. However, as Mill says: "..there is nothing in this doctrine to prevent me from conceiving, and believing, that there are other successions of feelings besides those of which I am conscious.." In other words, the fact that I can't be 100% certain that other minds exist doesn't prove that they don't. As Ayer says (p199-200):
| Let us allow it to be necessarily true that I cannot know the experiences of others in the way I know my own. It by no means follows that I cannot have good reasons to believe in their existence...Even if knowledge is defined so strictly that one can never rightly claim to know what others think or feel, it will still be true that we can attain to states of highly probable opinion. |
Mill says that when he examines his own behaviour, he can see that certain feelings (i.e. aspects of mind) are caused by antecedent events, and that they go on to have consequences. "I am conscious in myself of a series of facts connected by a uniform sequence, of which the beginning is modifications of my body, the middle is feelings, the end is outward demeanour." When he looks at other people, he can see the antecedents and consequences, but obviously not what's going on in between. However, he believes it is reasonable, based on personal experience, to infer that since other people behave as if they had minds like his, they actually do.
This "proof" that other minds exist is an inductive one. In an inductive argument "we move from premisses about objects we have examined to conclusions about objects we haven't examined" (Okasha 2002:19). In this case, the premise is "I have a mind", and the conclusion is "other people have minds". Mill defends this by quoting the example of Newton, who used the same method to "prove" that planets orbit the sun based on the example of an apple falling to the ground.
Mill also points out that all of the available evidence he has supports his contention: "having made this generalization, I find that all other facts within my reach accord with it".
Mill's argument here is known as "the argument by analogy".
Against this, it can be argued that the experience I have of my own mind provides a very small and specific set of data from which to form an argument to explain all the other minds that I believe to exist.
By recourse to some kind of behaviourist approach, we may be able to do away with the problem of other minds altogether. If we regard certain stimuli as provoking certain responses, we could theorise that it would be possible to predict the behaviour of anyone if only we had a complete description of all the stimuli they were being exposed to: there is no need in this case to have any concept of "mind" to explain the in-between part between antecedent and consequential events.
Using an extension of the previous argument, Mill claims proof for God's existence using evidence of "..works, more or less similar but superhuman, and superhuman thoughts and feelings". I.e. because we have evidence of these superhuman things, we can infer the existence of a superhuman mind.
"The real stumbling block is perhaps not in any theory of the fact, but in the fact itself...I think by far the wisest thing we can do is to accept the inexplicable fact without any theory of how it takes place"
In contrast to Descartes, who was a rationalist, and aimed to prove the existence of other minds using the force of logic alone, Mill is an empiricist, and aims to demonstrate that other minds exist using observable data. So his conception of mind is based on his own observation of what he feels.
Mill formulates a proof for the existence of other minds: