What problem of other minds MBrian Palmer(embp123@gmail com)

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permission of the author, M. Brian Palmer, [email protected]

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?



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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?



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,



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



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



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?



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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.



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



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.

What problem of other minds MBrian Palmer(embp123@gmail com)

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