Post on 05-Mar-2023
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What problem of other minds?
After another instance of semi-regular and standard pre-somnolent sexual
intercourse, ostensively between an emotionally and physically committed
mating pair, we overhear the ensuing post-coital conversation concerning
what has just transpired. Further, we are also privy to the contents of the
minds of our lovers.
The man appreciatively—if not lovingly—glances knowingly at his partner as
he rolls off of her, confidently thinks to himself, and intones, ‘mmmmm that
was nice, wasn’t it?’ Out loud the women responds, sounding to all ears very
sincere, ‘yes it was…’ and seamlessly thinks to herself, ‘…now that it’s over’,
thus completing both her thought and the conversation. Sleep ensues for
both seemingly contented persons, perhaps as facilitated by diametrically
opposed subjective relations to the end of the act, however coincidentally
entwined by this particular end these relations might be.
What, you might ask, can a trite joke—one exploiting a stereotype, possibly
mythological—concerning a well-celebrated asymmetry between the
subjective valuing that a man and a women (as part of some specific couple
taken from the general pool of such couples) might report in regards to
either the same specific instance, or perhaps more tellingly, to some series
of instances of sex that both were voluntarily participating in have to do with
a serious discipline such as philosophy?
More specifically, what possible bearing can the scenario described have on
the question at hand to be resolved; the one to be inferred by the title of
this paper?
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It is the thesis of this paper that the problem of other minds, specifically how
we can know that others have minds—the epistemological problem—may be
cogently resolved as an abductive inference from the capacity of linguistic
deception, or more simply, lying. By exploring this imaginary, but
representative case I will attempt to explore the space in which lies are both
constructed and transcended, and in doing so demonstrate analytically that
other people do, in fact, have inner worlds just like our own (or at least that
it is strong claim, without inconsistency, to infer that they do).
As a corollary, I will propose a possible source of the puzzling supposition
that this was ever really a proper philosophical problem to begin with. On
this journey I will also cursorily explore the implications the resolution of the
problem has concerning the deeper premise on which the problem actually
hinges, and its consistency with the physicalist thesis in the context of
certain entailments of the solution. The premise in question, which remains
unquestioned even if the solution holds, is that a fundamental asymmetry
between our ability to directly experience our own inner lives versus
indirectly experiencing that of other’s inner lives exists. Finally, I will offer up
a limited case—one critical to the main argument—where epistemic certainty
holds, i.e. an instance of justified true belief that while derivative of facts of
the objective world, does not directly depend upon its truths or objective
means of justification, but must be seen to exist somewhat cogently and
independently, as absolutely knowable.
The Ethos of ‘The Lie’
There is something very important, and I believe, mostly overlooked, in the
nature of the linguistic exchange the joke captures. What has happened, and
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what sorts of belief, knowledge, meaning, and possibly even logical states
are our two protagonists, let’s call them Ray and Deb, in?
Clearly, Ray believes that the sex was nice both for him and Deb. In fact, at
least tacitly he believes he knows this; that he is justified in believing it.
When he said, ‘that was nice’ he also certainly meant that it was nice for him
and was also seeking justification for the belief that it was nice for Deb too in
asking, ‘wasn’t it?’ In so far as Deb is truthful Ray feels, after the exchange,
justified in knowing that it was nice for both of them. He is wrong and his
belief is not correct, but his inference is logical; it’s just that one of his tacit
premises is false. Deb is not being truthful. Further, Ray now—reasonably—
implicitly ascribes this whole set of inferred beliefs to Deb. Ray, while not
experiencing Deb’s inner world directly, assumes in this case that he has
reliable indirect access to these contents, and as a deeper tacit premise that
Deb does have a mind of her own. He is, at least, wrong on the first count.
What sort of belief, knowledge, meaning, and truth ascriptions does Deb
make in this scenario? Deb believes, and unless Ray is lying (which we are
assuming is not the case, objectively, for this argument)1 is justified in
believing this, and she knows that it was nice for Ray and that both he and
she know this. She is right about this. However, she also knows that the sex
was not nice for her and that Ray doesn’t know this.2 Further, she knows she
is not lying to herself, her private linguistic completion of her true meaning
confirms this for her and us, and she probably takes it that she is not wholly
lying in general, nor wholly telling the specific truth to Ray.3 Deb is
exploiting a fundamental ambiguity in the indexicals ‘that’ and ’it’ by
facilitating a slip in context from Ray’s use of ‘that’ to refer to the act as a
whole as good to her use of ‘it’ to refer to the fact that what was good was
not the act in itself, but simply that it was good that it ended. She further
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covers up this fact by an “objective-omission via subjective-completion” of
true meaning. She intends—possibly somewhat innocently and tacitly—that
the fact that this ambiguity is always live, and that such an objective-
omission via subjective-completion exists goes unnoticed by Ray (she is
counting on the fact that Ray does not have direct access to her mind, she is
banking on the asymmetry). She wants to have her cake and to eat it too.
She can’t help but experience and express the truth to herself, but likely for
psychologically motivated reasons does not want to express the truth to
Ray. She exploits the ambiguity and the completion by omission to facilitate
a certain belief ascription in Ray that she probably knows, but at least
assumes, anticipates, or hopes he will make. At this point, assuming Ray is
not being ingenuous himself, he does not know or believe any of this. It is
important to note, in support of my main thesis, just how much more it is
that Deb holds in terms of beliefs, knowledge, meaning, and truth than Ray
does, at least in regards to this instance. In fact, it could be argued that she
has subverted the entire justificatory chain of Ray’s ascriptions and that in a
very objective sense she has transferred what would otherwise have been
Ray’s actual mental states and contents—had she been truthful in regards to
the state and contents of her own inner world—to a meta-inner world
tracking such “what-he-really-should-believe” ascriptions about himself,
directly within her self.4 She knows both what Ray would otherwise believe
and know had he access to the whole objective truth, and what he does, in
fact, wrongly believe and wrongly know as a consequence (which are for Ray
the same single thing even though he does not know or believe this to be
the case). Ray simply thinks he knows—he, entertains a “thought” about
how a certain live belief is, on the basis of Deb’s deception, a justified true
one—what it was reasonable to assume that Deb literally meant by what she
said out loud, rather than what she intended for him not to believe by what
she said only to herself. She meant for this to happen. Deb not only tacitly
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assumes that Ray has an inner world she manipulates it directly (i.e. not by
experiencing his mind, but by giving it—what she takes as a premise, tacitly,
as existing—false or misleading information) and she also knows certain
facts directly about the wrongness of certain of these ascriptions, i.e. she
knows directly what Ray would otherwise (and will soon come) to know.
What Ray thinks he knows directly he does not in fact know he simply
believes it wrongly5. His access to his beliefs in this context is direct, but his
access to the better and larger truth, assuming the lie is maintained, is now
indirect, as Deb has blocked his direct access to this truth by lying and he
has blocked this same access by accepting the lie. They are both, if not
unequally, culpable in this. The only way he can obtain direct access is if,
firstly, the lie were to be exposed and, secondly, as a consequence his
ascriptions were to be corrected (and as we will see variously multiplied in
concert with and in expansion of Deb’s ascriptions in the face of the lie). The
conclusion to be made is that it would seem to be impossible to objectively
carry off such subtle deception and manipulation in the first place if they
both did not, in fact, have minds. This is the first argument that the
inference to other minds is sound. It is an abductive argument based on the
following burden of proof.
The premises start as the specific claims I have just made about what we
take to be objectively happening in this scenario. However, as this case is
imaginary and assumes we, as observers, are privy to both Ray and Deb’s
inner worlds, there are at least two main objections. One is that we are
assuming other minds exist and that we can experience them as such in
order describe the situation in the first place and I am, therefore, question
begging. This objection will be blocked when we follow through on this
scenario, find the lie exposed, and discover that we were never privy to Ray
and Debs inner world’s directly at any time or had to assume them, but
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simply that they had provided this information to us after the discovery and
transcendence of the original lie. This is an after-the-fact objective
“archeology” of the contents of two people’s objectively reported mental
states and evolutions thereof—of objective inner knowledge exposed—not
question begging. We have only to assume our own mind and come to
understand the scenario as it was objectively discovered to be, in those
minds, and then this interpretation is consistent with the overall abductive
argument.
The second objection might take the form that nothing exactly like this has,
ever, does, or could happen, as least as a particular. However, my premises
are only meant to start as the particulars of the descriptions of what is or
was known, believed, meant or true in this imagined case. That you find the
description of the case so far an apt one allows a further premise to be
inferred from the imaginary facts of the case itself. If you do not find these
descriptions apt you are likely to object fatally to this and to what follows,
and I have no answer for that, but question begging is a vague concept and
as a consequence where I beg you will assert, and vice versa.
These premises end in the abstracted premise that what was described
represents a real objective phenomena and that by exploring this case we
see that it is generally—across many instances—accurately representative of
the sorts of typical complex inner experience that people—who assume and
experience their own minds as existing—actually and objectively have
specifically in regards to the further premise that other’s have minds too. My
imaginary premises are then transferred to the general applicability of the
explanatory force the structure of the analysis has in accounting for what
people experience in similar (if not near identical) circumstances and how
they come to explain and understand it themselves in relation to the
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existence of other minds, not simply as isolated minds. I have, of course,
not yet met the main epistemological objection:
“[I]… still lack what I needed. What I need is the capacity to observe those
mental states as mental states belonging to that other human being. “6
However, in terms of the abductive argument the burden of proof is shifted
away significantly from this concern, and further the usefulness of the
concept of mind as representing things that really do exist objectively is
more deeply entrenched as an explanatory structure that must, without first
assuming the asymmetry between minds or inferring the problem of other
minds, need be explained without incurring significant violation of Occam’s
Razor on some, if not most, reductive theories of mind. If we take these
certain complexities presented concerning the facts of our or other’s inner
world’s as objective, if we start with either a hard reductive premise such as
Behaviourism or Eliminativism, or even a softer one such as Functionalism
we may find ourselves having to start with the premise that such an
explanatory structure need not be explained as it does not arise logically as
a consequence of the theory in the first place, but is (somewhat magically in
my opinion) explained away by it. This seems to me to be question begging
of a certain conspiratorial sort against what we take to be the source of all
such theories in the first place; the existence of minds, other’s and our own.
In other words, rhetorically, it is a much simpler explanation, and there is
much more explanatory force available if we simply take the existence of
minds, more fundamentally, as given. That to this point rational argument
has been unable to prove that other minds exist from different premises
does not arise in this case. The source of the paradox now becomes the false
relationship we hold between the existence of both our own minds and other
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minds, and the assumed ability of rationality being necessarily and
essentially capable of demonstrating this fact analytically in the first place.7
If you follow and take as strong and cogent the arguments that have lead us
this deep into inner worlds as objective facts that must be explained by a
sound theory about mind8, then the burden of proof has been multiplied by
the need to explain how Deb can better and directly know what correct
beliefs Ray should hold—were he to know what is, in fact, objectively true—
about both the objective facts of the outer world they share and the
objective facts about the inner worlds they don’t, if they both don’t have
minds.
The Transcendence of ‘The Lie’
Times passes and nights similar, and happily for Deb, dissimilar to the one
described ensue. But there is to be trouble in this, both Ray’s paradise and
Deb’s house of lies. How the lie is exposed is not a premise; that lies are
exposed, that this lie is exposed, and that all such lies are objective facts of
reality even if the lied-to parties never know of them, is the premise.
Perhaps Ray’s insecure brother who delights in Ray’s failures being brought
to light has overheard Deb complaining about the frequent poor quality of
Ray’s love-making and has let it slip as an objection to Ray’s subsequent
boasting—in a different context—about how satisfied Deb is with his, what
he must by now be reasonably taking to be near-perfect performance.
Perhaps, more deeply, Ray’s boast was psychologically motivated by some
nagging doubts he already had, not based on what Deb was reporting to him
linguistically, but based on a certain growing lack of enthusiasm Deb
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objectively demonstrated from time to time that Ray found inconsistent with
her constant re-justification of his claim that it was nice for her too. It does
not matter how the lie is exposed, but it does matter that you take as apt
that this is representative of how lies of at least this character might be
exposed specifically, and generally representative—in meta-character—of
how lies are in fact exposed. In other words, the truth can and will out.
Ray now knows that Deborah lied to him and is justified in knowing this—
directly and objectively—simply because they and we simultaneously
observe (it has been honestly and accurately reported to us) that Deb,
presented with a weight of countermanding evidence, has finally admitted as
much. For simplicity we will focus on the original lie and assume its
explication reasonably covers, summarily at least, an explanation and
description of the possible exposure of all such related contiguous and non-
contiguous lies as they exist, whether they are explicitly transcended in this
or related discourse, or not. Ray now also knows he had an original specific
incorrect belief and has back-corrected this belief ascription.9 He will always
explicitly (still) know10 he held this ascription, that doesn’t change, but he
now adds an additional meta-inner world ascription that corrects this as
incorrect belief11 and now additionally holds the corrected true ascription as
a relatum12. Importantly, these new and old ascriptions and their brought-
forward and newly known relations are now precisely the true belief
ascriptions that Deb already held about what Ray would otherwise have
better-believed, i.e. what she knew he would have held if he had direct
access to the facts and meta-facts of her own inner world as directly
representative of the truth—a priori—and now realized as his corrected
inner-world. Ray, if he wanted to punish himself emotionally, could also
come to truly know that Deb held the same such ascriptions immediately at
the time she lied (and the possibly tacit ones that implied she hoped he
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would take the false ascriptions she intended, and are representative of an
intention to deceive—to manipulate—and as such possibly evidencing, at
least, a small act of evil, etc.) but probably doesn’t need to, even if this is
tacit knowledge that he can now recover. It depends on how bad,
psychologically or existentially, he takes this lie to be and other factors well
beyond the scope of this paper, such as how willing he is to forgive in an
effort to regain whatever lost trust he experiences, but there is no regress
here for reasons addressed earlier in the notes. The ground is the certain
fact that he was lied to and that he now knows the truths, both the objective
matters of fact and the objective incorrect and correct ascriptions as they
exist in simple temporal relation, and the more complex and mysterious
relation of correction itself. Additionally and critically, these are now truths
that both parties share and can now be certain that they collectively know,
they are justified true beliefs13. That the qualities of deception itself are deep
and bring forward an array of tacit ascriptions on resolution, on the
uncovering of a lie or lies, is not an avenue for objection; it also need be
explained, although not necessarily here. If you agree then, once again, that
we are taking what is described here as generally representative of many
specific instances of objective facts just like this then they, individually and
collectively, must already and can only be explained by a theory about
minds, not ever simply by a theory about a mind taken in isolation. If so,
then the problem of other minds is simply poorly conceived; it enters at the
wrong level of conception.
Deb now, having told the truth, explicitly or at least tacitly knows such a
finite regress of ascriptions in regards to Ray as well, but she knows or
believes nothing essentially new from when she first lied to Ray (other than
that Ray no longer believes the lie, which is also a new justified true belief
for Ray, et cetera, et cetera.). The structure (as relations from one inner
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world to another inner world they are inverted symmetrically across time)
and contents of their updated belief ascriptions are at least isomorphic and
identical, respectively, now that their knowledge—as matters of objective
and subjective fact—tracks in one another not simply as two separate two-
fold spaces within otherwise isolated minds (as remembrances of true and
incorrect belief and meta-belief ascriptions and their contents), but across a
single four-fold space of two minds of such true/incorrect and meta-
true/incorrect ascriptions. The detailed argument for this new conclusion is
presented in the next section.
Further to this claim I maintain that, barring a certain pathological regress of
deception being maintained by both parties (consciously or otherwise) they
are both absolutely justified in knowing what they believe, that while before
the lie at least one party could not be justified in being certain about their
belief ascriptions, that after the exposure of the lie both parties have
epistemic certainty about beliefs in which what is subjectively true does in
fact track what is objectively true in regards to both of their inner worlds and
to at least this one specific outer world experience they also intimately
shared. Expanding on what this entails: whatever problems exist in regards
to what is knowledge in the objective domain as matters of objective fact
and in how those facts are to be grounded in epistemology (i.e. whether one
holds to an Internalist or Externalism thesis, for example) that at least in
this limited case of knowing, the case facilitated by truthfulness following
deceit across two minds, that these parties (and parties generally
experiencing events in and over time like this in regards to lies) can be said
to be certain about what they believe—now, what they know—at least in
regards to the original lie. In the complete uncovering of lies we find things
we can know with certainty. The burden of proof in the abductive argument
has now being grounded on the aptness of the further claim that a cogent
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theory about mind must also explain this epistemic certainty (or show why
my claim that in this limited context that it is certain knowledge is wrong) as
it exists in regards to the two minds that experience it and additionally, in
regards to yours, the mind that understands and seeks to explain the
character of the described phenomena (assuming, of course, you have
experienced anything similar and find the description apt).
Thus, the following general objection to the analogical inference has been
met:
“…the analogical arguer's own experience is crucial to the analogical
inference. This becomes the target of the classical and ongoing objection to
this inference; that it is a generalization based on one case only and
therefore fatally unsound (e.g., Malcolm, 1962a, 152). This feature is seen
as so problematic that the one element common to all other responses to
the problem of other minds is a desire to avoid having our own experience
play the central role in the evidence.”14
While your own experience is involved and is crucial, it is no longer central,
simply pragmatically required. The object of inference by analogy now starts
as two minds, and as I will now argue, equally problematically, two bodies.
The inductive inference to be made can only head to that of more minds and
bodies, not back to yours alone.
The Problem of Other Bodies
While the main challenge has now been fully laid out—to refute this solution
to the problem—there still remains another chink in the armour of the
insistence of the problem to be exposed. Perhaps you will find several chinks
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in my own arguments, but as a denouement I will leave you with a further
concern. In the face of this concern perhaps you will see that the problem,
as posed, simply vanishes into another problem that we are simply not being
philosophically honest about. The roots of this new problem, if I am correct
about it, are psychological and ideological and they may poison and
prejudice philosophical discourse fundamentally. Even if you cogently take a
skeptical stand to my resolution I still further propose you will stand in a
more entrenched intellectual dishonesty in regards to this further problem. I
am attempting to get ahead of your inevitable objections.
Before this problem can be described certain technical distinctions need be
drawn. The premise is that the asymmetry exists; that I only have direct
access to my mind/inner world and indirect access to yours, and vice
versa.15 Consider the following words: interior, exterior, within, without,
body, and mind. I will restrict the following arguments to use, as precisely as
possible, these terms alone and block and forthwith largely if not completely
abandon the use of more common synonyms such as inside, outside,
objective, subjective etc.16 Further, I will then take the physicalist premise
and block the use of my more precise definitions of ‘within’ and ‘without’ as
this is a sound and fundamental entailment of the physicalist thesis.
‘Interior’ I take to mean that physical space occupied, and all the matter and
complex relation that exists in it, from what we take to be the physical
object’s surface boundary (what in other contexts is ultimately somewhat
vague and escapes absolute reference through conception) into, across, and
through this space and matter in such a fashion that only points, lines,
areas, and all sub and/or hyper-spaces to be denoted, in or across time, that
both originate and/or terminate in/from/at this boundary do so in a finite
fashion in isolation from what is not so defined.17 ‘Exterior’ is the physical
negation of ‘interior’. What is not interior to an object or person is therefore
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exterior to the object or person, consistent with the law of the excluded
middle. All philosophical or scientific problems aside I hope in this case we
can agree to transfer the common sense notions of ‘inside the body’ to
‘interior to the surface boundary of the body’ or more simply ‘the interior’
and ‘outside the body’ to ‘exterior to the surface boundary of the body’ or
more simply ‘the exterior’, without grave objection. ‘Body’ I now take to be
an unproblematic term; the relation of interior to exterior with the
aforementioned asymmetry, and equivalently the relation of exterior to
interior, with the same asymmetry inverted, demarks it, and interior and
exterior are its relata, with the body being the whole finitely limited part of
the dichotomy. The term or concept ‘mind’, possibly where the root of all our
problems begin, is much harder to define. I will vaguely define the (ego)
mind as, impartially and equally the generator, container, and utilizer of our
sensations, emotions, intuitions and thoughts. What is initially at issue is
whether or not a mind is interior or exterior, or somehow both, in relation to
the body. Following the physicalist theory we take it as interior, as within the
boundary that describes the limits of the spatial-material-temporality of the
body of a person. If it is exterior then it is hard to understand what that
might mean so the premise is rejected by Occam’s Razor.18 There is another
possibility, although as previously described it will be immediately blocked.
The possibility is that the mind is within all bodies and that all bodies are
simply without, and that this is not the same dichotomy as interior and
exterior in representation or fact. This is not meant to imply Dualism; this is
not why it is blocked. I am suggesting a space of conception not inconsistent
with the physical—the without—that exists in an independent “direction” to
those used to express the without-ness of all bodies. On this view all bodies
are without in regards to each other consistently and all minds are within in
regards to each other consistently and, additionally, body and mind are
without and within in regards to one another, not exterior to one another as
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bodies and interior to one another as minds as we take them to be. But this
premise is now summarily blocked, as it is inconsistent with the physicalist
theory and an admittedly and fundamentally paradoxical conception. I will
now show, having restricted talk of bodies and minds to interior and exterior
in regards to spatial-material-temporality that an isomorphic (or embedded)
problem exists in regards to the un-conceived problem of other bodies, a
problem I take to be equivalent to the problem of other minds (assuming
this is a real problem in the first place). This new philosophical problem, not
a skeptical concern but an inference by analogy on physicalist accounts of
mind, is how can we know that other people have bodies, which is also an
epistemological problem and not posed here as a conceptual one.19
Back to the lie exposed in question. On the physicalist account when Deb hid
the true contents of her inner world, ones that represented both exterior and
interior truths, this was only possible because of the assumed asymmetry
that exists in access between her and Ray’s minds. She has, literally, hidden
the truth inside of her body. But there is a problem here, or perhaps it is a
solution. It is simpler to explain this fact not by inferring a problem of other
minds, but simply by explaining it as a direct consequence of the fact that
Ray also does not have any direct access to Deb’s inner body. Think about it.
How do you know that other people have an experience of being in their
bodies, even if you accept, on the basis of inferences from perception based
on the direct sensations you assume you have of your own body and the
direct (and indirect) but critically different sensations you have concerning
other bodies? You can’t directly experience this in others; you only
experience the possibility that they do indirectly, albeit tangibly20, there is
another omission by subjective completion here. The premise that you
directly, that you literally sense and therefore perceptually infer your inner
world is not supported; it is not justified. Inner worlds are fundamentally
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intangible to all experiencers of them regardless as to whether it is your
mind (or mine) or another’s. The problem of other minds simply serves to
cover this up because we are individually and/or collectively lying about this
fact for possibly psychological, existential, or ideological reasons.21 Once the
unexplained fact of the relative, or possibly absolute intangibility of the
experience and contents of inner worlds is exposed then it is no longer
consistent to claim there is a problem of other minds if there is not also an
analogous problem with other bodies.
Let’s revisit the epistemological concern (with a key substitution):
“[I]… still lack what I needed. What I need is the capacity to observe those
physical states as physical states belonging to that other human being.”
If there is a problem of other minds then there is, logically and analogously
a problem of other bodies. Further, if this is not an isomorphism, on the
physicalist account, then it is an embedding due to the fact that the contents
of the sensation of physicality are “in addition” to the contents of mentality
in so far as the mind is embedded in the body, and in so far as the surface of
bodies offers up tangibility while the surface of minds seems not to. Minds
and bodies may be perceived directly and indirectly, but only bodies may be
physically sensed directly and indirectly. The unpalatable premise for the
physicalist is that intangibility might be more fundamental or as fundamental
as tangibility. That would, at least, explain why we seem—with our minds, or
simply in our inner worlds—able to believe more than what can be true
without the need to entertain paradoxes of meaning or vagueness, but I am
not defending such theses here.22
Further Problems for Physicalism
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From here matters get worse for the physicalist if we take a step by step
exposition of what happened—in the context of language as a tool for both
truthfulness and deception—about these certain objective facts of interiors
(physical or mental, there is now no difference), as they were uncovered
when the lie was exposed.
There were facts of the matter concerning the act introduced at the start of
this paper, but it is complicated. It was good for Ray in an exterior and
interior sense. It was bad for Deb in an interior and exterior sense. We will
ignore the true facts concerning its ending. Notice the apparent paradox: the
same event was both good and bad for different people but not due to what
went on in regards to the exterior of persons (which was reflexively identical
at their surface boundaries) but due to what went on, in addition, in the
interior of persons. Clearly Ray wanted it to be as good for Deb as it was for
him, and she tacitly understood that. This is, at least partially, what
motivated her to lie and justified (not epistemically of course) her lying. She
must have wished for it to be good for her as well unless we entertain
certain perverse or confused self-sacrificial reasons for Deb having sex with
Ray in the first place. Generally, the main reason people have sex is because
it is very enjoyable as a relation between the exterior of bodies in regards to
those same interiors. How, then does the lie get exposed? Of course, it is
due to extra facts about exteriors (and, indirectly, about other interiors)
available to Ray (and Deb), but that does not explain the justificatory or the
physical mechanisms. The information concerning Deb’s interior physicality
and mentality was omitted by Deb. How does it get to Ray? Simply, it must
be conveyed physically through language or otherwise inferred by Ray
through other exterior means. By this I mean it must become appropriately
structured as an exterior fact in a way that proves consistent with interior
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facts about Deb in sound waves, behaviours, etc. In other words what is in
Deb’s mind must be first placed exterior to her mind for Ray to know it. But
not only does Ray end up knowing as a certainty as a consequence of this
exteriorization both of his original wrong belief and subsequent certain
knowledge, which he then co-temporally interiorizes, he also as a
consequence simply comes to know what was already in Deb’s interior. If he
now knows this directly then it seems perverse to me not to say that what
he now knows and experiences directly is not also what Deb already knew
and still knows directly, and that as a consequence they, at least intangibly,
have exactly the same thoughts experienced in—except for the temporal
inversion—exactly the same direct way, and that were it not for the temporal
lag created by the lie there would never have been any significant
asymmetry in their respective experiences in the first place23. Would you
argue on seeing me eat some ice cream at a time later than when you ate
some essentially identical ice cream, even the same ice cream, i.e. it was
from the same container and eaten under near-identical physical conditions
and contexts (you could suppose that we are identical twins) that although
what you ate was ice cream that what I ate was not, and on that basis argue
that nothing in our experience of eating ice cream could possibly be directly
equivalent as a consequence? I don’t believe you would, and you might be
considered irrational if you did, or at least you would be fairly accused of
being deliberately obtuse and obscure, of failing to mean anything sound or
cogent. The conclusion is that after the lie they are simply, in regards to
both what is exterior and what is interior, of one mind, at least in regards to
the original lie. Any asymmetry that persists is due only to the “temporal
residue”. It is not necessary for the claim that we do have direct access to
another’s mind that we have it all the time or at the same time, just like
what ice cream is doesn’t depend on it being eaten all the time or at the
same time by more than one person. Additionally, this could not be
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facilitated unless the still essentially intangible contents of other minds were
not also first made tangibly exterior to one another as well, albeit in a
fundamentally different manifestation or representation as language (sonic
or otherwise). There is no asymmetry outside of time, only along time. Only
we (meaning I and you in isolation) can, conceivably, know all the lies that
determine the asymmetry that is ultimately only essentially demarked by the
boundaries of our bodies. There is no problem here, except for physicalism.
These more complete and transparent minds, in which both truth and
truthfulness subsist, are both exterior and interior propositions; there are
simply intangible vehicles of thought in the interior and tangible ones in the
exterior24 but both are required for certain and direct knowledge of the kind
proposed. The sort of mind that contains a deception—any deception—is
only an interior one; it does not exist as part of a problem of other minds—
as an asymmetry of intangibility—but simply as an inevitable consequence of
the deeper problem of other bodies, of the more fundamental limits of
knowable tangibility. Reality always covers both the interior and exterior;
here we may still always find mind that knows with certainty. As the path to
this (albeit limited) interior epistemic certainty must always pass through
the exterior the premise that what is rightly in the mind is only in the
interior is also violently shaken. Although it seems that the body was here
first—at least temporally—perhaps instead there was always and
fundamentally “Mind” at least in potentia both on the outside and within, and
that when the first lie (the original sin?) structured a body, one both interior
and without, it did so just so that it could hide there and call itself that
“mind” even though it was, in fact, never more than a body that had to
explain to itself why it came to perceive that it had a mind in the first place.
In Conclusion: Double Jeopardy?
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To conclude and summarize, here are the major proposals:
1. The main thesis is that a cogent abductive argument for the claim that we
do know that others have minds has been made. At least it is strong, i.e. if
you take the description of lying presented as representative of a class of
objective phenomena in this specific case, and as generally representative of
the objective character of lying, then if both these premises are true it
seems difficult to explain how this could be if both persons did not, in fact
have minds, or inner worlds. In other words, the conclusion that we can
know that others have minds can’t probably be false if these premises are
taken as probably true. As constructed, if it is to be refuted it must be done
by reconsidering lines I have already attempted to block, by non-question
begging of a reductionist sort that provides a complete theory about minds
that does not simply assume the phenomena in the first place be fully
presented, or by arguments and evidence I have missed.
2. The second, and I’ll admit much more contentious conclusion is that we
do have a limited direct experience of other’s minds, but that it is simply
“drowned out” by what is represented as two additional facts. One, that you
are already in your body all the time in an isolated sense in a strictly
analogous way to how you take your mind to be also in you all the time, i.e.
you gain direct access to your mind because it is simply there in your body
all the time (in some not completely explained way, of course). On the
account presented here you only have direct access to other minds in a
limited way, just some of the time and under special circumstances. We
have just mistaken the first fact, that you experience your own mind as
always—intangibly or otherwise—existing in the interior of a tangible body,
for absolute evidence of a complete lack of direct access to other minds,
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even as we have missed it as absolute evidence for a complete lack of direct
access to other bodies. If I can know you have a body by directly accessing
its surface boundary I might also be—in some similar way—accessing your
mind directly at the same time or neither of us learns anything through the
use of our senses (or language) at all in the first place. Secondly, you may
only gain this limited direct access as the consequence of transcended lies of
the character described; you can’t have this access all the time, nor is it
required for the argument that you do. This conclusion takes it that there is
no additional asymmetry of minds in addition to the one presented by
bodies. In fact, the claim is reversed; the problem of other minds becomes
the problem of other bodies more fundamentally and is the true but still
unexplained ground on which the—now less puzzling—lack of normal direct
access to other minds derives (and potentially exhibiting a live intellectual
dishonesty being present in philosophical discourse).25
3. The third claim is that language in so far as it facilitates an exterior
representation of interiors—in this limited case of transcended lies—is only
possible if what language is as something that at least partly exists exterior
to bodies arises as a consequence of what is at the same time interior to
those minds, which as it is simply and still somehow interior to these
respective bodies, is now also to be found outside both these minds and
bodies (as derived from the assumed instance of Deb and Ray). The more
plausible solution to how this is possible is to conceive of what is outside of
these two private bodies as an exteriorly shared body with an interior of its
own, now existing as this, a body-mind, but as one existing only relative to
those other personal (and more complex) exteriors and interiors, as a
shared non-interior exterior mind. This, the complete exterior of any two or
more body-minds, always has as its own interior, its own (less complex)
mind. This would invert, or at least equalize, the ontological priority of mind
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over body from the assumed evolutionary or bare temporally inferred ontic
context, but this entailment is not defended here.
The double jeopardy comes if I have remained consistent with the physicalist
thesis in these arguments.
If you reject the first claim and it is right that you do so then we go no
further, there is no jeopardy. The problems begin if you entertain the
correctness of the first claim, which is the main aim of this paper. If you now
accept that there is no problem of other minds then you must either accept
or reject the problem of other bodies.
If you accept that the problem of other minds is solved, but reject that the
problem of other bodies is its explanandum, and you are a physicalist, then I
propose you are being inconsistent. If you accept both problems and are a
physicalist then you have accepted the simple double jeopardy.
If you accept the first claim but reject my second and third sets of claims
then you have simply re-introduced the problem of other bodies again in an
abstracted form; you must explain how words can mean and this is
nowadays taken as a much more important and deeper problem than that of
other minds. This is a complex double jeopardy. If, instead, we take as our
fundamental premise—simply extending the physicalist account beyond its
reductive self—that all exteriors, as those exteriors as must also be seen to
have their own isolatable interiors, that these interiors together, as relata,
are now consistently taken to be “inverted” minds (taking the intangible to
the tangible and back again, and vice versa) then it is proposed that certain
paradoxes of language do not need to arise in the first place; meaning now
arises—predictably—as, and IS, this non-local surface of interaction as it
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exists between all bodies and minds. It becomes instead a (daunting)
technical problem of un-covering the nature of isomorphic-ness or
embedded-ness of all bodies in one mind and, equivalently the problem of
the nature of isomorphic-ness or embedded-ness of all minds in one body.
Not two paradoxes wrongly conceived on the basis of one problem, but two
counter-balancing solutions to one reality in which the real paradox is ©©why
we continue believe in these false dichotomies in the first place. In other
words, if you accept physicalism it is possible you may have to live with
certain paradoxes or puzzles as fundamental, but never know or accept that
this is so, and as consequence never have to abandon either a hard or soft
reductionist thesis as a direct consequence, all without being wrong about
anything at all, or being wholly right about anything at all, either. You will
simply continue to live within the space of wrong belief that you hide in your
body—wrongly believing that you know—and will never know the truth as
either a belief or an objective fact.
I will leave you, unapologetically, with this:
A metaphor for reason:
A knife is a tool such that you only really know how sharp it is if you use it.
The better your knife, the deeper the cut, but either way expect blood when
you use it. Maybe truth is a thing that bleeds when you cut it?
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Notes
1. I feel it is fair to block any regress via intended and conscious or
unintended and non-conscious “layers of subterfuge” of the sort where Deb
is lying and Ray knows she is, but then lies to her about knowing, which she
suspects, etc. etc. as evidencing viciousness of the sort that is objectionable.
Additionally, I am blocking the proposal of there being any sort of absolute
pathological and/or objective fundamental lack of accurate access to the
both the qualities and contents of one’s inners world vis. a vis. lying as this
case investigates, i.e. I am assuming we all have the ability to know our own
beliefs reliably enough to ward off a similar regress as viscous. We are
assuming that given the right objective and subjective evidence that both
Deb and Ray can tell what the lies and truths are, and what the lies and
truths propose. At worse the regress, be it via layers of lies, a pathology or
error is finite and not vicious, and is also flat. By flat I mean that although
the set of all lies to be uncovered may never be reached ideally by any
individual that as they are uncovered they will all be grounded in the same
space of finite regress (it is hard to imagine more than three nested levels
even being possible without stretching the limits of plausibility to the
breaking point, e.g. “I know she believes she knows the truth” is ok, but “I
know she believes she knows the truth I believe” seems to add nothing. Like
the regress of reflections between two facing mirrors there is no path to the
infinite here, just a finite degradation). Finally, although it is psychologically
possible for us to be wrong about whether what we belief is based on a lie or
not, either one made to ourselves or by others, intended or otherwise, this
complexity is not addressed here and does not suggest a path for objection
either; in fact its possibility only makes what I am describing more
objectively complex and may strengthen my main thesis. Further
explanatory force is also suggested immediately. For example, does
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something miss-remembered simply become a lie one did not intend to
make to oneself? Is memory subject to an identical analysis but with regards
to only one mind?
2. Ibid
3. This is not meant to imply she is using a private language in Wittgenstein
or Locke’s senses. The premise is that she could not make this private
semantic act if she and Ray were not part of the same language community.
It is simply private in the sense that it was correctly thought as a sentence
of English, but not publicly shared.
4. The point to take away here is that in a very real sense she knows what
the experience of Ray’s inner world would (and will) be like if the lie were to
be exposed and certain stable and uncontestable objective facts of matter
made known and acknowledged with both parties present. Her
representations concerning what Ray would, in this case, actually believe
and could still come to know are of better quality in regards to epistemic
certainty, logical soundness, and semantic accuracy. She knows the whole
truth. Additionally, her representations are of greater quantity (essentially
tripled?) in that she knows what certain beliefs Ray holds, that these certain
beliefs are wrong, and in addition knows what the correct ones should be.
What she knows that is “extra” in regards to what Ray believes he knows
(wrongly) is what Ray would, in the full light of truth and truthfulness, really
know. Further to the noted sentence I am using ‘meta-inner world’ not to
imply a mind above mind within Deb, nothing so complex or controversial
should be assumed. I am using ‘meta’ in the flattest sense possible to mean
a thought (be it propositional, logical, semantic, etc.) about the factual-ness,
form, and contents of another thought. How this sort of very complex
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remembering and relating of thoughts, especially for lying, is maintained is a
technical problem that belongs to cognitive science as a whole to solve
(assuming it is solvable) and I am not inviting new problems here. You
either take as a premise that minds can do this, or not. How they do it does
not undermine the argument. ‘Meta’ can be replaced with whatever technical
term is appropriate once we know how this works without changing the
quality of the premises or the inferential quality of the argument.
5. My use of ‘wrong belief’ instead of ‘false belief’ is deliberate and is meant
to be consistent with another claim, not made in this paper, that belief
ascription that is not made certain in the way this paper explores does not
ever rise to the level of truth designation, i.e. belief ascriptions that turn out
to be simply wrong, that do not track the objective true facts, should not be
called false, but more fundamentally simply incorrect or wrong. On this view
only true belief is ever objectively possible, but then this is no longer just
true belief, it is knowledge; wrong belief becomes a “ghost of reality”,
regardless as to how well it might help guide us into the future. We climb up
to the truth, inevitably, on a mountain of false beliefs.
6. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/other-minds/
7. None of this is meant to infer that I do not hold to the premise that we
have separate ego minds as part of the asymmetry that exists between mine
and other’s inner worlds although that inference is apt. However, part of the
thrust of this article is meant to suggest that it is simpler, albeit somewhat
paradoxical, to assume as a premise that our experience of our own inner
states—at least potentially—is also directly the experience of other’s mental
states and that the possibility of lying, that lies themselves are the source of
this asymmetry in the first place. But, as this is likely to be a far more
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contentious claim I am attempting to make the main argument for other
minds not depend on this premise, but simply to show now, transparently,
that it is where my claim that this is not a real philosophical issue in the first
place actually originates.
8. There is a problem I wish to avoid by my use of ‘theory about mind’
instead of ‘theory of mind’. While the thrust of this paper is to solve, or
possibly dissolve, the problem of other minds it is not meant to belong
specifically to the theoretical area that already exists within the philosophy
of mind already well-known as ‘theory of mind’ that (mostly) assumes minds
as existing and then attempts to explain how it is we can infer the mental
states of others. I intend my use of ‘theory about mind’ to be as inclusive as
possible, i.e. to cover all of cognitive science and philosophy regardless as to
how those disciplines stand in regards to, or would claim to resolve (or not
need to) the problem of other minds.
9. Again, I am not inviting a attack here just pointing out that there is some
cognitive process that facilitates both the corrected and the original belief
ascription now existing in some relation in Ray’s mind, on any theory about
how minds, or at least memory works.
10. For the purposes of this argument I am necessarily assuming a certain
temporally extended infallibility of memory in regards to at least these
specific past and present events, for both Ray and Deb. I am not attempting
to block any objections of the sort that we don’t actually have any reliable or
even any real memories at all, or that they are simply constructed after the
fact, as an objection. Besides the fact that such claims might support some
of the entailments of my more controversial claims it also would seem quite
perverse to propose them consistently with the claim that the problem of
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other minds is not solved directly if any of these claims turn out to be true.
The ontological status of mind and memory seem inextricably entangled;
denying the existence of one seems to necessitate denying the existence of
the other, however mysterious the ontology of their interdependence
remains.
11. Again, this is not false knowledge. Knowledge on this account can only
be true belief, he thought he knew something but it was only the content of
a maliciously facilitated lie that he knew, not the objective or the subjective
truth concerning Deb’s world.
12. It is difficult to un-entangle the nature of this relation without invoking
metaphor. Is the old ascription subsumed, is it flatly or hierarchally linked in
memory retrieval systems? These are separate technical problems not
addressed here. That such “mechanisms” be explainable is not required,
simply that you take it that they exist and are un-coverable to some limit, at
least introspectively and phenomenally, i.e. that you experience such
relations existing in regards to similar experiences vis. a vis. lies exposed or
of incorrect beliefs you have held that you mistook for knowledge.
13. It is important to note that certainty in the face of upfront truth telling is
not possible on this basis; we can only know something is both objectively
and subjectively true after we have first been lied too, although this does not
preclude that we can be partly or mostly right in believing in certain
instances of uncomplicated truth-telling, just that we can’t be justified in the
way I have described for Ray and Deb’s subsequent and limited epistemic
certainty. I have no problem with this inference, but recognize that how
things could actually be this way needs further explanation. This argument
inverts the ontological grounds for knowledge fundamentally into the nature
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of mind and abstracts it away from physicalist grounds for knowing objective
facts, again, as an intended premise, but one not directly addressed here.
14. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/other-minds/
15. This premise is at least supported by the need existing for me to be able
to intend to mean what I find in my inner world by writing this and by your
understanding what I intend for you to understand, assuming that there is,
in fact some semantic content, something true to know and understand in it;
that it is not simply a bunch of confused parts and/or a confused whole, a
language game.
16. I find the various uses of subjective and objective particularly
problematic, confused, and often ambiguous. For example, what are
objective facts of the subjective world or subjective facts of the objective
world supposed to be taken to be if there are not, in fact, two worlds
represented by these terms? How do you get 4 from 2 if you are not allowed
the use of 2, there is no 3 + 1 here? Wouldn’t they all, on the physicalist
premise, have to reduce to objective facts, so why do we maintain the
distinction, especially in philosophy, if metaphysicalism is not a live
proposition? I have used the term ‘subjective’ as little as possible and take
the word ‘objective’ to ultimately be about the world in which truth and
truthfulness holds in regards to matters of fact, regardless as to their interior
or exterior-ness. Later arguments should clarify this point.
17. I am assuming that the universe is unbounded. In other words, what is
interior is what we take to be inside the boundary that defines the
embodiment of the object, which for this argument are simply persons, and
that what is exterior may not be precisely or even absolutely defined except
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as the negation of ‘interior’, i.e. in regards to what is not “inside” the body of
a person. (Sub Note: There seems to be no way of escaping this regress of
metaphor so, on this unavoidable thesis, impugn away if you will).
18. What a strange universe it would be if my thoughts and yours were
exterior to both our bodies yet still directly accessible to me and not to you
and vice versa!
19. One difference will be, of course, that we can conceive of our and other
bodies directly through our senses while we cannot do this with other minds.
The deeper problem is what evidence do we actually have for the claim the
others physically experience their own inner physical or body-worlds as we
do. This might entail, as I will argue, that the problem of other minds is
simply embedded in the problem of other bodies, which makes the problem
worse for physicalism, not better.
20. Getting inside, i.e. surrounded by or physically violating the surface and
the interior of another body does not give you this experience at all.
21. These reasons are barely and only cursorily discussed here.
22. It seems to me that the paradoxes of language revolving around identity
and substitutivity are misconceived. Beliefs may look like logical inferences
in certain cases and imply that it is reasonable for a belief to be assigned a
certain truth-value, but this seems premature. The problem, one I am
dancing around in this paper, is that the intension that arises from a false,
what I have called a wrong premise is not the same one—is not identical
with—the one that arises from a true one. If Lois Lane believes Clark Kent
can’t fly, but Superman can, then although the inferences and tacit
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arguments she might make support the truth of her holding these separate
beliefs, they must now be conceived as beliefs with different tacit intensions
because Lois must also tacitly, or even explicitly, believe that Clark Kent is
not Superman. If we make substitutions by privileging the fact that the
extensions of Clark Kent and Superman pick out only one thing, and are
therefore referring identically and claim that we have found a paradox we
are simply and stubbornly misrepresenting the apparent “virtuality” of belief
states as an objective phenomena; the space I am trying to expose in this
paper. As a consequence proposing identity relations and substitutions
because extensions are in fact uniquely identical glosses over this fracturing
of intensional reference and introduces paradox, not as a fundamental
problem, but through a conflation of the validity of belief acquisition as
resulting from logical inference with assumed truth values for tacit premises,
versus sentences being—under arbitrary semantic evaluation and
manipulation—logically true. The deeper problem is hierarchal or holoarchal.
If beliefs are logically constructed but can’t submit to semantic analysis are
they prior to or posterior to rationality, language, or logic on this analysis.
This is where the fundamental paradox lies and I hope to develop this line of
inquiry as a resolution to Frege’s problem (and others) in a future paper
although the way has certainly not been made entirely clear. Here is where,
I believe the analysis of Frege’s wrongness goes wrong, i.e. not in proposing
‘senses’ of meaning, but earlier: “Those same expressions as they occur in
(1) and (4), however, refer to different ways that Lois has of representing
the man Superman.” (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/prop-attitude-
reports/, Part 2, Frege’s Theory). Lois is not representing the same man
differently; she is representing one as two, wrongly. I have not followed
through on all the rebuttals, re-defences, or alternate solutions of the
problem in detail, but if this quote still represents where philosophers take
the problem as arising they have not yet uncovered Frege’s essential error.
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Naïve Rusellianism also seems to import this error: “Lois, the Naive
Russellian claims, is rational in believing a contradiction because she has two
modes of presentation of Superman such that she does not believe that they
are modes of presentation of the same object.” (Ibid, Part 5, Schiffer’s
Iteration Problem). So too, Contextualism: “So, for example, suppose Lois is
ascribing beliefs to Superman and Clark Kent. Because she believes that
Superman is not Clark Kent, she takes herself to be ascribing beliefs to two
different people, depending on how she conceives of Superman.” (italics
mine, ibid, Part 6, Contextualism)
23. Admittedly, I am assuming a certain sort of telepathy here, or at least
that, based on a history of shared intimacy and truthfulness that moves
inexorably towards perfection, that the need not to speak with words yet to
directly know shared sensation and meaning immediately is possible
between two body/minds as an ideal. I am pessimistic that as the concept of
‘human’ is generally expressed in the West we may achieve this, but
optimistic that human beings can transcend this limitation through the
avowal of the concept as it, and its foundational premises stand.
24. Is this a possible source/end of asymmetry as well; mind is interiorly
intangible and exteriorly tangible, while body is interiorly tangible but
exteriorly intangible, i.e. you can’t reach what a specific body is like on the
interior from the exterior of that same body but you can reach the interior of
a mind from something exterior to it?
25. The direct experience of each other’s interior bodies is always mediated
by the exterior of both bodies unless they are in intimate contact, and this
only as a limit. Similarly, but perhaps tellingly, our experience of each
other’s interior minds is directly mediated by what is exterior to both bodies
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through language; yet no intimate surface interaction is apparently required
for this unless we assume that all exteriors are the surface of mind. It is in
this sense that one could argue that the body is embedded in the mind, as
the capacities of mind, in this regard, must be seen as “in addition” to that
of bodies.
26. If I have not earned this indulgence of a metaphor, then I sincerely
apologize. In and out, with a bang.