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5364
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It is hard not to believe that speaking humans are expressing thoughts, just as we do ourselves [Russell]
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Full Idea:
When human beings speak, it is very difficult to suppose that what we hear is not the expression of a thought, as we know it would be if we emitted the same sounds.
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From:
Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912], Ch. 2)
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A reaction:
This is partly the 'argument from analogy', which seems a bit suspect (induction from a single instance), but it is also the rather undeniable Humean idea that we have a 'natural belief' in other minds, which we could never disbelieve.
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6416
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Other minds seem to exist, because their testimony supports realism about the world [Russell, by Grayling]
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Full Idea:
Russell gives an argument that other minds exist, because if one is entitled to believe this, then one can rely on the testimony of others, which, jointly with one's own experience, will give powerful support to the view that there a real spatial world.
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From:
report of Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 3) by A.C. Grayling - Russell Ch.2
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A reaction:
I rather like this argument. It is quite close to Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument, which also seems to refute scepticism about other minds. I think Russell's line, using testimony, knowledge and realism, may be better than Wittgenstein's.
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5379
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If we didn't know our own minds by introspection, we couldn't know that other people have minds [Russell]
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Full Idea:
But for our acquaintance with the contents of our own minds, we should be unable to imagine the minds of others, and therefore we could never arrive at the knowledge that they have minds.
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From:
Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912], Ch. 5)
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A reaction:
Not only does this depend on the notorious 'argument from analogy', but it actually strikes me as false. If a robot observed a human to be writhing in pain, it would be mystified, until it inferred that we have minds in which we actually 'feel' damage.
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