North American Philosophical Publications

The Analogical Argument for Knowledge of Other Minds ReconsideredAuthor(s): Thomas M. OlshewskySource: American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Jan., 1974), pp. 63-69Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the North American Philosophical PublicationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20009517 .Accessed: 28/06/2011 19:12

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?American Philosopi?ical Quarterly Volume ii, Number i, January 1974

VII. THE ANALOGICAL ARGUMENT FOR KNOWLEDGE OF OTHER MINDS

RECONSIDERED THOMAS M. OLSHEWSKY

nPHE analogical argument has served as the chief *

whipping boy for both sceptics and therapists in discussions of the problem of other minds. It is

my hope here to restore it to a status of respecta?

bility. In doing so, I must argue that it is not

properly an argument; nor is it appropriately con?

cerned with knowledge or with minds. Indeed, I

must contend that, as it has traditionally been

dealt with, it is not even analogical. This appears to give away everything, but in the light of such

criticisms I hope to offer a reconstruction of the

matter that will prove more fruitful than the

traditional formulations.

I

My sense of negation in the matters regarding argument, knowledge and mind is not so much a

denial of concerns as a call for refinement. We have come to speak rather loosely of the role of argument in human inquiry, often obliterating differences

between discovery procedures and justification pro? cedures. Nor do we usually draw the distinction

that I propose to draw between knowledge and

understanding, but I think it will prove to be a key for unlocking some pathways shut tight by sub?

jective-objective perplexities. My point regarding minds is simply that I think when we talk about other minds, our concern is really with other

persons, with knowing others as persons.

Arguments are the giving of reasons (or the reasons so given) for conclusions held. Conclusions are themselves arrived at through some process of

uncovering, exposing, revelations or insight that we

usually call a discovery procedure. Now, there is

much debate over whether this procedure is a

method ; and, if so, whether it can be explicated as a method or a variety of methods, be they induc?

tion, abduction, retroduction, or seduction. But whatever these procedures are, they

are not

justification procedures. Justification comes his

torically after the conclusion is arrived at, and is an attempt to set forth rational conditions for an

acceptance already established. The mathematician has his theorem before he undertakes his proof; the physicist has his hypothesis before he under? takes his experimentation. Whatever the discovery procedures for arriving at the theorem or hypoth? esis, they come before the conclusion ; whatever the

justification procedures to give them logical founda?

tions, they come after the conclusion.

There may be no logical reason why the discov?

ery procedures and the justification procedures for a given conclusion could not be one and the same. Indeed, on a second-hand basis they fre?

quently are. ?After the initial discovery has been

justified by some good reasons, the best way for the discoverer to initiate others into his discovery may be just by the very argument of those good reasons.

For them, the history of the discovery and the logic of justification are one and the same. This is made

possible by their guide who understands why they are following this procedure and how it will lead them to the conclusion he wished to convince them of. But without the guidance of one who already understands where the goal is, they would not

likely discover systematically sound reasons for

arriving at it. The role of analogy in inquiry is as a heuristic in

discovery rather than as an argument in justifica? tion. In mathematics, where analogy appears as

a proportion within a single definite system, it appears with at least one element unknown,

and thus as a problem to solve, not as an argu? ment in justification. Where the proportion links

two systems?e.g., ratios of algebra to ratios

of geometry?this may call attention to possible coordination between the systems, but does not itself argue for a linking of the two. That requires further definitions and/or axioms, if not the

development of a totally new system. In a some?

what similar manner, analogies in physics argue

63

64 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

for nothing but offer new ways of conceptualiza? tion, the models of which are then tested by

deduction and experimentation. The role of

analogy in poetry is not different in kind from these but is again calling for seeing matters in a new way. That which sets poetry off from science in human inquiry is that the former calls for

appreciation where the latter calls for justification. The role of analogy comes before in both, as a

device for discovery. A criticism often raised of the analogical argu?

ment for knowledge of other minds is that, unlike other arguments involving analogy, the conclusion is impossible of confirmation on any grounds other than the analogy itself. So long as analogy is itself

regarded as an argument form, this criticism seems

limiting, but hardly devastating. The analogy can

find no corroberation from other investigation, but it can still be a sufficient argument. Once we recog?

nize that analogy, in any human inquiry, is a

heuristic for discovery, not a good reason in

justification, the criticism can be seen to be disasterous. It makes clear, as the matter has been

traditionally formulated, that the analogical

approach offers no justification for the claim to

knowledge of other minds at all.

While the negative import of this analysis is to

eject analogy from any claim to a role in argument, its positive import is to call for some refinements and revisions in how we construe human inquiry. An

impediment to such a project is our continuing

failure to sort out ways of understanding from what is known. In the practice of inquiry, the two are not

readily separable, and any adequate theory of

discovery procedures must see them as inter?

dependent and interactive. By virtue of our ways of understanding, we sort out what is relevant and

what is irrelevant to our inquiry, and thus what counts as a discovery. By virtue of what we know,

we construe this or that understanding as more or

less adequate as a basis for our inquiry. Yet, under?

standing can be construed as the aspect of inquiry concerned with manners of seeing as, while knowl?

edge can be construed as matters of seeing that. All

seeing involves both seeing as and seeing that, and no human inquiry comes to rest in a conclusion

without both a conceptual framework and an

empirical content. (Herein lies the nub of con?

troversies about a synthetic a priori and about the relation and differences between analytic and

synthetic propositions.) The apparent interchangability of uses of "know"

and "understand" in English (contrast "erkennt

nis" and "verstehen" in German; "?rum}/^" and "ovvieis" in Greek) makes the sorting out all the

more difficult. The distinctions I have here sug? gested between "ways" and "whats," between "as . . ." and "that . .

.," between "conceptual" and "factual," are suggestive, not definitional.

Understandings are usually stated as categoriza?

tions, characterizations, or relations ("I know him as a king, as tall and handsome, as the father of my spouse"); knowings are usually stated as propo? sitions ("I know that the train did not arrive on

time"). The former are cast as the way one thinks about things ; the latter as the way things are. They are thus making different kinds of claims and sub?

ject to different kinds of justification. The one

focuses on interpretation (and is better or worse, more or less appropriate,

more or less adequate, than other interpretations) ; the other focuses on assertion (and is true or false). The visual imagery is inviting, since it is in the light of our understand?

ings that our observations are illuminated in one

way or another, and without some such light, we cannot see at all. One man may "see" a glass of

water as drinkable liquid; another, as H20. The differences in the ways of understanding will in? fluence what they observe about water, what they

may do with it, what they may discover about it.

(The difficulties of the understanding/knowing divide are exposed in the man who "sees" the

water as HC1, which may be a matter of his not

knowing the differences between the formula for water and the formula for salt. But this is a "fact" in the broader conceptual framework of the com?

pounds of molecular chemistry, and his mistake could lead to a variety of intertwined misunder?

standing and misinformation.) This construal of ways of understanding as

manners of seeing-as gives us a locus for analogy in

inquiry. Analogies are invitations to ways of

understanding, a call to see relationships and simi? larities not noticed before. As such they bring into

focus certain features and functions that might otherwise remain at the level of subsidiary aware? ness. More powerful analogies carry one beyond the understanding at first attended to into further correlations not envisioned at the outset. From the

base of such models for understanding, implica? tions can be drawn and applications undertaken

which serve to determine whether the under?

standing is a more or less plausible one.

Once we see analogy in the context of discovery rather than of justification, in the role of under?

standing rather than of knowledge, then my claim

THE ANALOGICAL ARGUMENT FOR KNOWLEDGE OF OTHER MINDS RECONSIDERED 65

about persons rather than minds becomes capable of articulation. The issues are not whether others have minds (contra solipism), nor whether we can

know them (contra scepticism), nor even how we can know them. The issues are rather on what

grounds do we understand persons as persons, not

just as things, and what do such understandings imply for what we observe about them and how we relate to them. Clearly, one way of understanding them is in terms of a mind /body dualism, a way of

understanding persons that led to posing the prob? lem of other minds in the first place. But even with? out that problem, it seems to me we are less con?

cerned with knowing other minds, or even other mental entities or events, than we are concerned

with a way of understanding persons that will lay a

basis for knowing what a person is doing and what is happening to him. To such an end, analogy may prove extremely helpful, but not in the form of the traditional argument.

II

"Analogy," from the Greek "analog?a," finds its

etymological roots in the form of a proportionality, and so it was exposed and employed by Plato and

Aristotle.1 Our model then is of a mathematical

proportion: A:B::C:D (read, "A is related to B

just as Cis related to Z)"). Such a proportion asserts an equivalence between the ratios holding between the first two elements and the ratios holding between the last two elements. (Example: three is half of six

just as four is half of eight.) Even in instances where we cannot verbalize what the relations are, a

proportion asserts that they are equivalent ratios.

The mathematical model enables us to explore another feature of analogy, based upon equivalence between ratios. By alternation, we can derive from

A:B::C:D, A:C::B:D. By inversion, we can derive B:A::D:C, C:A::D:B. By symmetry, we can derive C:D::A:B, etc. The operations lead us to further equivalences of ratios not explicit in the initial analogy, but necessarily implied by it. From

3:6 : : 4:8 we derive 3:4 : : 6:8, the latter entailed by the former, but involving new ratios. Such deriva? tions not only reveal more fully the fertility of

analogy as a heuristic for discovery, but point to

the need of a similarity among the elements of the

ratios, which make such operations possible. With

out some sense of similarity, the operation of alternation would not be possible. Such similarities are patent in arithmetic, but often mysterious in

poetry, and too frequently problematic in phi? losophy.

Analogy, then, requires an equivalence of ratios and a similarity of terms that in the context of an

inquiry invites an understanding of relations and a conception of terms not noticed before. This

appraisal of the matter runs counter to the tradi? tional argument, in which conceptions of the terms and understandings of the relations are taken as

given. The terms are characterized as mental states

(events) of oneself (Ms) and of others (Mo) and behavioral states (events) of oneself (Bs) and of others (Bo). From this beginning, we expect an

analogy of the form, Ms:Bs::Mo:Bo (and, by alternation, Ms:Mo::Bs:Bo). In such a form, all that remains is for us to explicate the nature of the relations (causal? occasional? logical?) and the character and extent of similarities between mental states and between behavioral states.

This account may make the traditional argument look drab and uninteresting; it does, of course,

grossly misrepresent it. A. J. Ayer puts the argu? ment in a clear and concise form: "I know that certain features of my own behavior are associated

with certain experiences, and when I observe other

people behaving in similar ways I am entitled to

infer, by analogy, that they are having similar

experiences."2 So far, so good, since what we have

can be derived by an inversion of ratios from where we began; i.e., Bs : Ms : : Bo : Mo. But this cannot be

right, since Ayer has already claimed that "I have direct knowledge of my own experiences" and that "I cannot have direct knowledge of anyone else's

experiences."3 Since my statements about my

direct experiences are not to be taken as equivalent in any sense to my statements about my overt

behavior, and, further, since my knowledge of my own behavior is similar to my knowledge of an?

other's behavior, my pattern of inference must be from my experience (directly known) through my behavior and the other's behavior (empirically derived), to the other's experience (neither directly known nor empirically derived, but analogically inferred). The similar behaviors must then serve as the mean terms to bridge the epistemological gap between my experience and that of another. On

1 See Plato's Timaeus and Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. The Thomists have corrupted Aristotle's treatment of the matter

See my "Aristotle's Use of Analog?a," Aperion, 1968. * A. J. Ayer, "One's Knowledge of Other Minds," in his Philosophical Essays (New York, 1954). *Ibid.

66 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

epistemological grounds, the proportion required seems to be: Ms:Bs::Bo:Mo.

This is prima facie absurd. Such a formula offers

neither the equality of ratios nor the similarity of

terms that we have found an analogy calls for. It

cannot be derived from Ms:Bs::Mo:Bo by any rational means. It is a clear ?/??proportion on the

face of it. Yet, is not just such a disproportionality

required by the very starting-points of the tradi?

tional argument? That argument begins from the

thesis that Ms:Mo::Bs:Bo is not true. If it were, then the epistemological accessibility of Mo would

be similar to Ms, just as the epistemological

accessibility of Bo is similar to Bs. But that very thesis is contradicted directly by the terms in which

the problem is posed. Yet, without it, the propor? tion cannot hold, since it is required by an alterna?

tion entailed from the original formulation.

Not only, then, does the traditional analogical

argument for knowledge of other minds lack in

heuristic value for discovery; it lacks in the very conditions for well-formedness required to do the

job. If it is to be taken to be concerned with knowl?

edge of other minds according to the conditions set

forth for that matter as a problem, then the

behavioral states of oneself and of others must serve

as the mean terms of the "analogy" and dispropor?

tionality is revealed. If we begin with our paradigm for analogy, we can by alternation derive Ms : Mo : :

Bs:Bo, revealing that the knowledge of mental states of others is not more problematic than that

of one's own mental states, thus revealing an in?

consistency with the conditions set down for the

problem. The upshot of the whole matter is that

either the analogical argument is not analogical, or

the problem of other minds is not a problem.

Ill

Such a ludicrous conclusion seems possible only

upon some basic misconstrual of the issues. Return?

ing to the beginning, we find that the analogy was

construed as an argument for knowledge of other

minds. But isn't it rather the case that the issues at

hand are ontological rather than epistemological ?

?After all, a proportionality does seem to obtain on

grounds of existence : my experience exists in relation

to my behavioral states just as another's experience exists in relation to his behavioral states. By dealing with the issues from the standpoint of the way

things are rather than from the way they are known

by any one given individual, we seem to be able

to sidestep that disproportionality exposed on

epistemological grounds. By knowledge of the existence of three terms of the proportion, we can

infer reasonably the existence of the fourth. Such a split between epistemological issues and

ontological ones is itself a problematic move. I know of no case of arguing for other minds (either that they are known or that they exist) in which this sort of distinction is clearly made. Whether it

ought to be made and can be made are clearly further issues. For the sake of argument, let us assume that it both can and should. Then our

analogy is of the way things are rather than the

way they are known. What sort of relations are

claimed for the way things are? If the relations between mental states and behavioral states are

taken to be logical ones, then the derivation of the fourth term can be construed to be a matter of

conceptual analysis. The very conception of this sort of behavioral state logically implies the cor?

related conception of this sort of mental state. I understand others as having mental states cor?

related with behavioral states because I so under? stand myself. So construed, the issues have shifted from a knowing that to an understanding as, with the foundations for such an understanding some? how derivative from self-knowledge. This construal of the relations as logical would eliminate knowl?

edge of other minds as a problem by shifting from

knowing to understanding, and from contingency to necessity.

Such an appraisal seems inconsistent with the facts and inappropriate to the intentions of the advocates of the traditional argument. Whatever the status of the identity thesis regarding minds and brains, the correlations of the mental events to overt behavioral manifestations surely falls short of logical necessity. What seems to be presupposed in the argument is rather a similarity of causal

relations, to be treated as contingent. On this

interpretation, the fourth term of the analogy must

be an empirical hypothesis rather than a logical

necessity. But if this is the case, we are thrown back

upon epistemological issues, and upon the absence of corroberating evidence. The only evidence for the existence of the fourth term is further analogical hypothesizing which adds no knowledge to the

analogical formulation. By construing the relations as contingent rather than logical, we are forced back to the disproportionality we had hoped to

avoid.

Basic to the disproportionality which confronts us is the claim to a "direct knowledge of my own

experience," and with this claim to immediacy, a

THE ANALOGICAL ARGUMENT FOR KNOWLEDGE OF OTHER MINDS RECONSIDERED 67

claim to primacy, privacy, and incorrigibility for

self-knowledge. Such claims turn on an ambiguity in talk about experience. Some talk is about having experience, about something happening to me. In this sense, my experience is clearly both immediate

(nothing comes between me and it) and private (no one else has my experience). We also talk

about experience as perception, as something we do. This doing has been construed in a number of

ways, as a judgment (Kant), as an intentional act

taking an object (Brentano), as an interaction of the organism with his environment (Gibson). Each construal involves an activity which objectiv?tes

what happens to me, providing a basis for coping with, overcoming, and/or using whatever happens to me. This activity is a mediator between what

happens to me and any knowledge I may be said to have of it. It is only the experience that is the result of such mediation which we regard as

knowledge. In this sense, my experience is clearly not immediate, need not be private (in so far as

judgments are verbalized and objectifications functionally sharable), and thus not incorrigible (even the most rudimentary judgments are subject to error and the most simple objectifications may prove functionally inept).

This is yet only half of the flaw of the claim to immediate knowledge of one's own experience. The other half lies in making the experience the object of the knowledge. The roots for such an under?

standing lie in the sense-data accounts of experi? ence, whether phenomenal

or causal.4 The under?

standing of sense data as the contents of experience lays a basis for treating the experience itself as what is most immediately known. But experience is the vehicle for knowledge, not its object, and the act of perceiving (in the sense either of consciousness

taking an object or of an organism coming to terms with its environment) is not itself an object of its own activity. That an act does not act upon itself is the praxiological correlate to the theory of

types.5 Thus, it is not only the case that I have no

strictly immediate knowledge of my own experi? ence; it is the case that in any manner of imme?

diacy, I have no knowledge of my own experience at all. Mental operations are not observed as what is known, but are rather presupposed as how it is

known.

Feelings appear an exception to this appraisal

and pain serves as the perennial paradigm. "I feel a dime in my left pocket" describes a sensation which takes as its object whatever is in my left

pocket and characterizes it as a dime. "I feel a

pain in my left foot" cannot be so analyzed, since the pain is not the object of my feeling, but is the

feeling itself. However we analyze the difference between the two locutions in logical form, two features remain the same. Both objectivate by name and by location. In at least these two respects, reports of feeling are subject to correction by one? self and by others ("You are right, doctor; it isn't in my foot; it's higher up in my ankle;" or "That's

not a pain you feel; it's only a tickle"). In most

cases, to be sure, reports of feelings are more imme? diate and less corrigible than reports of perception, but this is a difference in degree, not in kind.

On the model of proportionality, it became

apparent that knowledge of other minds should be no more problematic than knowledge of one's own

mind. The basis for disproportionality was founded

upon claims to immediate knowledge of one's own mind. Having dispensed with that claim, the price for proportionality seems to be that we have no

knowledge of minds at all. Not only do we not know minds as such (what would such knowledge be?), but we do not even know mental operations except as presuppositions for the objects of those

operations. Neither oneself nor others are known at all, except as objects in the world; yet, both one? self and others are understood as persons. How do I come to understand persons as persons? And how do I come to understand an experience (or an

action, a body, a friend, or anything else properly qualified by a personal possessive) as my experience.

IV

To pursue such questions as these, we must shift from concerns with knowing minds to concerns

with understanding persons. Where the model of

proportionality showed the former enterprise to be an unworkable one, it may yet help in the latter.

Exploration by analogy requires a similarity among elements and an equation of ratios, not only in the initial formulation, but also in the forms derived

by alternation, inversion, and symmetry. To make

analogy an adequate vehicle for exploration, con?

ceptions of the elements must be reconstructed and

4 A good critique of the sense-data approach is A. M. Quintan's "The Problem of Perception," Mind, vol. 64 (1955), pp.

28-51. Notes of the relation of this issue to conceptions of the mind are found in such divergent sources as Gilbert Ryle's Concept of Mind (London, 1949), and Maurice Merleau-Ponty's The Structure of Behavior (Boston, 1967).

5 See Ryle, op. cit., pp. 197fr.

68 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

the character of the relations must be reexamined. The shift from minds to persons is already a

widely practiced one, and comes from a variety of motivations. It has the clear advantage of not

being loaded with the metaphysical and epistemo? logical baggage that the mind/body and subject/ object categories impose. The equation of the meta?

physical mind with the epistemological subject is what lays the basis for the traditional formulations

of the problem of other minds and the anomalies involved in talk of self-knowledge. Whether a con?

cept of a person can be formulated to avoid such difficulties remains to be explored, but our con?

ception need not be encumbered by self-defeating

presuppositions at the outset.

The shift from minds to persons requires a com?

parable shift in the other terms of our analogy, a

shift from behavior to action. "Behavior" seems as

innocuous a term as we could want, and worth

saving, but this is an insidious seeming. "Behavior"

is a weasle word employed by psychologists to give the appearance of something empirically observ?

able, while retaining the connotations of inten?

tional operations. Once we recognize that all

seeing is a seeing as, we must then recognize that

the most "empirical" observations about motion are only possible in the light of some conceptual framework. The shift from behavior to action calls attention to the fact that we are talking about

persons doing things, with all the attendant prob? lems of intention and intentionality, of structure

and function, of disposition and action. The rela? tion of the action of persons to the "behavior" (still a weasle word) of rats to the motion of machines is left as an open question for further exploration.

What is made explicit is that, when we understand

something as a person, we understand his motions as actions.

With such a reconstruction of the elements of the

analogy, we are enabled to explore the character

of the relations of the analogy in a new light. One

formulation invites a construal of the relations as

actions confronting persons (or of persons opposing

action). My sense of opposition here is not one of

simply impeding action, but one in which the

opposition confronted is understood as incapable of satisfactory objectification as a thing in the

world, or of being a determinate tool for or impedi? ment to my action; a surd opposition. By virtue of

the irreducibility of this opposition to a thing or

tool, the actor understands it as personal.

Another formulation invites a construal of the

relations as persons intending actions. The sense of

the personal here is one of cooperation. If a person finds that another, whom he cannot reduce to

object or tool in his world, none the less acts in such a way that the other fulfills the intentions of the first in his actions, he understands the other acting with him in the operation at hand. On the basis of such an understanding, he can note that his own

actions are often not only unimpeded, but often

aided, by the action of others. With this sense of

cooperation, the understanding of community is

established. Such a characterization of the relations of the

elements in our reconstructed analogy leaves those elements with a conceptual rather than an onto

logical status. This is the way that we understand

them, not necessarily the way that they are. While I have formulated the concepts of the relations in terms of persons and actions, the existence of the relations is the condition for understanding persons as persons and actions as actions. While this does violence to prejudice derived from a heritage of Cartesian substances and logicistic atoms, it gives an accounting for senses of the personal often left out. Paranoic and animistic tendencies to appraise as personal what others regard as things and tools can be seen as understandings derived from senses

of opposition and cooperation. Likewise, attempts to understand humans solely as objects in the world are attempts to understand them in purely imper? sonal terms.

With such a reconstruction of the analogy we can now return to the reconstructed questions with

some sense of how they can be answered. What I

know about myself and others I know as things in the world. I treat myself and others as persons because of confrontations and cooperations. This

much has been built into the analogy itself. Under?

standings of the personal possessive are derivable

in a variety of ways from that base. Senses of my action and my body derive from intra-personal co?

operation; senses of my friend derive from inter?

personal cooperation. The sense of my experience, taken to be so fundamental and immediate and

crucial in the traditional argument, results from

complicated interplays of confrontations and co?

operations, of incompatibilities of this experience with my own past experiences and the experiences of others. While we forget the genesis of this sense

after it has developed, we can continue to see its

ramifications when our attention is called to under?

standing an experience

as my experience. Such an

understanding of our awareness of the world arises as a result of incompatibilities that require such a

THE ANALOGICAL ARGUMENT FOR KNOWLEDGE OF OTHER MINDS RECONSIDERED 69

construal. Our sense of privacy is not basic, but derivative from confrontations with our sense of

community.

Explorations based on analogy usually carry

implications and ramifications beyond initial con?

ceptions and concerns. I shall mention just a few for this analogy, with no argument and with little illumination :

(i) It invites a correlate analogy between intra?

personal and inter-personal relations. I understand

myself as personal on the basis of confrontations and cooperations, just as I understand others as

personal.

(2) It requires a four-term analogy to explicate

conceptions of the relations, but it requires three term analogies to explicate the genesis of the

understanding of those relations {As:Po::As:Bs and Ps :Ao::Po: Ao for confrontations ; Ao : Bs : : Ao :

Po and Ps:As::Po:As for cooperation.) (3) It lays no basis for a claim that the personal

is species specific to humans nor for a claim that

persons are ontological entities.

(4) It requires reorderings of conceptual priorities that do violence to philosophical prejudices, but no

violence to logical coherence and little to common

sense. Understanding persons precedes under?

standing objects, and understanding actions pre? cedes understanding motions, both logically and

genetically; understanding others as persons pre? cedes understanding oneself as a person, and the communal precedes the private and the indi?

vidual; actions rather than persons are concep?

tually primative, since what counts as persons is determined both phenomenally and operationally by action.

Much still needs to be done, on this model or some other, toward understanding persons. Here I have only begun explorations by using analogical forms as heuristics for conceptual discovery. I hope that I have shown how the potential for such use

of analogy has been obscured by attempts to em?

ploy it as an argument form, and how this employ? ment with respect to concerns with other minds has been misformed by disproportional assumptions. I have indeed argued that the problems about

knowledge of other minds are themselves ill conceived. Once we have shifted our focus of concern from minds to persons, and from knowl?

edge to understanding, then analogy may well

prove a useful tool on the way toward under?

standing persons.

University of Kentucky Received January 2, igys