In the following essay, one wishes to discuss why there can never be any justification for a belief in Other Minds. Descartes offers up “I think therefore I am” in First Meditations on Philosophy (Descartes, 1641), which has it’s fair share of problems but one wishes to use this quote to illustrate that while Descartes only proved that ‘I’ exist within one 's own mind, there is nothing to say that this must extend to others too. Or even to anyone but Descartes and Myself. And while that may seem an irrational claim, one shall go on to justify why this claim may hold as much rationality as its negation.
The problems which arise from the issue of Other Minds (OM) are as follows; the Epistemological Problem is concerned with the question of What …show more content…
This argument entails that it is written in human psychology, through evolution, to blindly accept the existence of other minds, because this is beneficial to survival to believe that one is acting for the happiness of oneself and for others. Again, however, this explanation is flawed in that if it is the case that OM is just a dispositional psychological belief then this is an argument for conscious solidarity as well, as it shows one 's belief in OM to be just an evolutionary delusion. Thus showing that we are perhaps justified in our belief in OM, but only as far as one takes an evolutionary disposition to be justification. To oneself, this seems like an empty argument, perhaps because it reduces human to merely thought processes and removes the emotional processes that lead to the questioning of OM in the first …show more content…
One wishes to argue that this unjustified assumption impedes the pursuit of an answer to the issue of OM.
One finds it disturbing that so many people can invest in the consciousness of all humans and even in aliens and AI but reject it harshly when one tries to ascribe the same to animals. There is no logical reason to ascribe minds to humans, as one has previously discussed, and as such there is no reason not to ascribe minds to animals. This is a topic which is becoming more fashionable to discuss, notably from Peter Singer in the 70’s and continued by many, including the work of Kate Jeffery who argues that “If we have minds, creatures with brains very like ours probably do too” (Jeffery, 2014). Thus showing the broadening of the OM discussion, away from justification and towards acceptance that we can never truly know we’re not consciously alone and so there is no reason not to ascribe consciousness to everything with a
The problems which arise from the issue of Other Minds (OM) are as follows; the Epistemological Problem is concerned with the question of What …show more content…
This argument entails that it is written in human psychology, through evolution, to blindly accept the existence of other minds, because this is beneficial to survival to believe that one is acting for the happiness of oneself and for others. Again, however, this explanation is flawed in that if it is the case that OM is just a dispositional psychological belief then this is an argument for conscious solidarity as well, as it shows one 's belief in OM to be just an evolutionary delusion. Thus showing that we are perhaps justified in our belief in OM, but only as far as one takes an evolutionary disposition to be justification. To oneself, this seems like an empty argument, perhaps because it reduces human to merely thought processes and removes the emotional processes that lead to the questioning of OM in the first …show more content…
One wishes to argue that this unjustified assumption impedes the pursuit of an answer to the issue of OM.
One finds it disturbing that so many people can invest in the consciousness of all humans and even in aliens and AI but reject it harshly when one tries to ascribe the same to animals. There is no logical reason to ascribe minds to humans, as one has previously discussed, and as such there is no reason not to ascribe minds to animals. This is a topic which is becoming more fashionable to discuss, notably from Peter Singer in the 70’s and continued by many, including the work of Kate Jeffery who argues that “If we have minds, creatures with brains very like ours probably do too” (Jeffery, 2014). Thus showing the broadening of the OM discussion, away from justification and towards acceptance that we can never truly know we’re not consciously alone and so there is no reason not to ascribe consciousness to everything with a