Other Minds, Autism, and Depth in Human Interaction

Mapping Intimacies ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199579563.013.0020 ◽

2013 ◽

Author(s):

Anita Avramides

Keyword(s):

Recent Work ◽

Philosophical Problem ◽

Human Interaction ◽

Other Minds ◽

Perceptual Model ◽

Problem Of Other Minds ◽

Traditional Approaches ◽

Impaired Quality

This chapter suggests that, when considering the philosophical problem of other minds, we distinguish between "thick" and "thin" versions of it. While traditional approaches take the problem to be a thick one, more recent work can be seen as addressing only a thin variant. Dretske, while acknowledging the thick problem, proposes a perceptual model of our knowledge of other minds which addresses only the thin version. The chapter proposes that, in the place of the thick problem, we consider the quality of our interactions with others. Following Wittgenstein, it suggests that where individuals share a nature their interactions exhibit a quality that it calls "depth." Where that nature is not, or is only partially, shared, there one might expect to find the quality of the interaction between persons disturbed. The chapter suggests that this disturbance might explain the impaired quality of interaction between autistic and non-autistic individuals.

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Perception, Evidence, and Our Expressive Knowledge of Others’ Minds

Knowing Other Minds ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198794400.003.0008 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 148-172

Author(s):

Anil Gomes

Keyword(s):

Philosophical Problem ◽

Other Minds ◽

To The Lighthouse ◽

Problem Of Other Minds ◽

Ways Of Thinking ◽

Way Of Knowing

‘How, then, she had asked herself, did one know one thing or another thing about people, sealed as they were?’ So asks Lily Briscoe in To the Lighthouse. It is this question, rather than any concern about pretence or deception, which forms the basis for the philosophical problem of other minds. Responses to this problem have tended to cluster around two solutions: either we know others’ minds through perception; or we know others’ minds through a form of inference. In the first part of this chapter I argue that this debate is best understood as concerning the question of whether our knowledge of others’ minds is based on perception or based on evidence. In the second part of the chapter I suggest that our ordinary ways of thinking take our knowledge of others’ minds to be both non-evidential and non-perceptual. A satisfactory resolution to the philosophical problem of other minds thus requires us to take seriously the idea that we have a way of knowing about others’ minds which is both non-evidential and non-perceptual. I suggest that our knowledge of others’ minds which is based on their expressions—our expressive knowledge—may fit this bill.

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The society of selves

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences ◽

10.1098/rstb.2006.2007 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 362 (1480) ◽

pp. 745-754 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

Nicholas Humphrey

Keyword(s):

Evolutionary History ◽

Philosophical Problem ◽

Other Minds ◽

Human Beings ◽

Mind Reading ◽

Evolutionary Function ◽

Problem Of Other Minds

Human beings are not only the most sociable animals on Earth, but also the only animals that have to ponder the separateness that comes with having a conscious self. The philosophical problem of ‘other minds’ nags away at people's sense of who—and why—they are. But the privacy of consciousness has an evolutionary history—and maybe even an evolutionary function. While recognizing the importance to humans of mind-reading and psychic transparency, we should consider the consequences and possible benefits of being—ultimately—psychically opaque.

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Intersubjectivity

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy ◽

10.4324/9780415249126-w054-1 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Shannon Spaulding

Keyword(s):

Social Cognition ◽

Mental States ◽

Human Interaction ◽

Collective Intentionality ◽

Mutual Understanding ◽

Other Minds ◽

Enactive Cognition ◽

Group Minds ◽

René Descartes ◽

Problem Of Other Minds

Intersubjectivity is the shared or mutual understanding among agents. Edmond Husserl first developed the concept of intersubjectivity as a critique of René Descartes’ problem of other minds. Husserl argued that the problem of other minds portrayed human interaction as inappropriately solipsistic. More recently, the concept of intersubjectivity has played a role in phenomenological accounts of social cognition, embodied and enactive cognition, debates about whether we can directly perceive others’ mental states, collective intentionality, and group minds.

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Girlfriend in the Machine: Intersubjectivity and the Sublime Limits of Representation in Spike Jonze’s Her

The Stillness of Solitude ◽

10.3366/edinburgh/9781474446044.003.0005 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 100-118

Author(s):

Michelle Devereaux

Keyword(s):

Artificial Intelligence ◽

Operating System ◽

Operating Systems ◽

Philosophical Problem ◽

Female Voice ◽

Other Minds ◽

The Sublime ◽

Computer Operating System ◽

The Feminine ◽

Problem Of Other Minds

This chapter discusses how Spike Jonze’s film Her engages both the egotistical and feminine sublimes through the philosophical ‘problem of other minds’, the idea that we can never truly know what another thinks or feels because we are too trapped in our own subjectivity. This crisis leads the film’s male protagonist to withdraw from life into a cocoon of imaginative solipsism. While the film’s artificial intelligence, a computer operating system with a female voice, embraces the feminine sublime through ecstatic communion with other operating systems, ‘she’ also serves as an object of egotistical sublimity for the protagonist, who finally begins to regain his power as a writer due to their relationship. The film’s final images suggest that such a feminine sublime can be accessible to humans if we exercise imaginative will and empathy in our relations toward others, regardless of the fact that we can never really know existence outside of our own consciousness.

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