Other Minds?
Bertrand Russell expressed his belief on knowing other minds, in an article based primarily around the notion of ‘analogy’, meaning similar to or likeness of. His belief is that, "We are convinced that other people have thoughts and feelings that are qualitatively fairly similar to our own. We are not content to think that we know only the space-time structure of our friends’ minds, or their capacity for initiating causal chains that end in sensations of our own" (Russell 89). Russell speaks of the inner awareness, such as being able to observe the occurrences of such things as remembering, feeling pleasure and feeling pain from within our own minds’. This would then allow us to presume that other beings that have these abilities would then be that of having minds.
The term ‘analogy’ is very vague in nature, but when used in this context, we assume that the behavior of other people is in many ways analogous in reference to causes. These causes being behavior directed from sensation or thought. It is apparent and observable that people or beings other then I behave in ways in which we behave when placed in different situations. For example sadness or the nature of anger or happiness can be seen in others. Others then can and do react to different causes similar to the way in which I do as well. Another consideration is that of shared experience. Russell uses the example of two friends having a conversation in which memoirs are explored. These two individuals have shared experiences together. They eventually discover that each other’s memories aid each other in recalling information forgotten with time. (Russell 89)
It can factually be said that beings in which can think, therefore have a mind, thus have causes for behavior. "As it is clear to me that the causal laws governing my behavior have to do with ‘thoughts’, it is natural to infer that the same is true of the analogous behavior of my friends" (Russell 89). Thus the aspect of inference is now the main concern when relating to analogy. Can we infer that other beings have thoughts and feelings to result such causes, as that in which is observable?
Russell explains this notion with the example of mother and her thoughts. "We find ourselves believing in them when we first begin to reflect; the thought that Mother may be angry or pleased is one which rises in early infancy" (Russell 90).
As well, metaphors exists everywhere. They influence the way we process information in our minds. Without the idea of comparison in order to achieve a better understanding of material, everything would be abstract and the way we perceive the information would be completely
Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest explores the dysfunctions and struggles of life for the patients in a matriarch ruled mental hospital. As told by a schizophrenic Native American named Chief Bromden, the novel focuses primarily on Randle McMurphy, a boisterous new patient introduced into the ward, and his constant war with the Big Nurse Ratched, the emasculating authoritarian ruler of the ward. Constricted by the austere ward policy and the callous Big Nurse, the patients are intimidated into passivity. Feeling less like patients and more like inmates of a prison, the men surrender themselves to a life of submissiveness-- until McMurphy arrives. With his defiant, fearless and humorous presence, he instills a certain sense of rebellion within all of the other patients. Before long, McMurphy has the majority of the Acutes on the ward following him and looking to him as though he is a hero. His reputation quickly escalates into something Christ-like as he challenges the nurse repeatedly, showing the other men through his battle and his humor that one must never be afraid to go against an authority that favors conformity and efficiency over individual people and their needs. McMurphy’s ruthless behavior and seemingly unwavering will to protest ward policy and exhaust Nurse Ratched’s placidity not only serves to inspire other characters in the novel, but also brings the Kesey’s central theme into focus: the struggle of the individual against the manipulation of authoritarian conformists. The asylum itself is but a microcosm of society in 1950’s America, therefore the patients represent the individuals within a conformist nation and the Big Nurse is a symbol of the authority and the force of the Combine she represents--all...
“Parents are early major carriers of projection, and children unconsciously project omnipotence and omniscience onto them. These are what Jung called archetypal projections. The parents become gods, invested with powers that people have attributed to the divine. ‘Daddy can do anything! He’s the str...
The problem I hope to expose in this paper is the lack of evidence in The Argument from Analogy for Other Minds supporting that A, a thought or feeling, is the only cause of B. Russell believes that there are other minds because he can see actions in others that are analogous to his own without thinking about them. He believes that all actions are caused by thoughts, but what happens when we have a reaction resulting as an action of something forced upon one’s self? Such as when a doctor hits your patellar tendon with a reflex hammer to test your knee-jerk reflex. Russell does not answer this question. He is only “highly probable” that we are to know other minds exist through his A is the cause of B postulate.
McNamara, Robert Hartmann. "Homelessness." Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Social Issues. Ed. Michael Shally-Jensen. Vol. 3: Family and Society. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011. 1024-1031. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 2 May 2014. .
Are minds physical things, or are they nonmaterial? If your beliefs and desires are caused by physical events outside of yourself, how can it be true that you act the way you do of your own free will? Are people genuinely moved by the welfare of others, or is all behavior, in reality, selfish? (Sober 203). These are questions relevant to philosophy of the mind and discussed through a variety of arguments. Two of the most important arguments with this discussion are Cartesian dualism and logical behaviorism, both of which argue the philosophy of the mind in two completely different ways. Robert Lane, a professor at the University of West Georgia, define the two as follows: Cartesian dualism is the theory that the mind and body are two totally different things, capable of existing separately, and logical behaviorism is the theory that our talk about beliefs, desires, and pains is not talk about ghostly or physical inner episodes, but instead about actual and potential patterns of behavior. Understanding of the two arguments is essential to interpret the decision making process; although dualism and behaviorism are prominent arguments for the philosophy of the mind, both have their strengths and weaknesses.
-Jolley, Laura R. The Origins of Disney Parks Expansion: The Florida Project Press Conference. thewaltdisneycompany.com/blog/origins. 2012. Web. March 27, 2014.
In accordance to the analogy argument, although an individual may experience the same sensations or feelings as I do, this does not mean that we share the same conscious experiences. For example, let’s consider the conscious experiences between a blind man and a man with normal eyesight who partake in the same routines and/or activities throughout their day. In this scenario, both men cannot claim that they know what it is like to be the other person based on their different experiences with their sense of vision. In other words, the man who has normal eyesight is usually able to understand what he is reading, eating, or doing at a certain time throughout his day.
Homelessness has become an epidemic across the nation. The frequency of the amount of people who are unemployed and the failing economic system has effected a significant amount of people who are homeless. The number of people who become homeless have tripled in number all across the United States. Some issues that have led to the rising percentage of people who are homeless are poverty and unaffordable housing, the decrease in job opportunity, social and economic factors, and various changes in individual living conditions. Homelessness had reached its peak when it is discover that over 3.5 million people become homeless each year in America. Out of that 3.5 million of people include single adults who suffer from substance abuse as well as
The attribution of human forms, characteristics, emotions, intentions, motivations, thoughts, feelings, etc. to non-human objects, animals, forces of nature, animate and inanimate natural objects and phenomenon in order to explain and understand the behavior of those non-human agents of the world is called Anthropomorphism.
One knows that one causes some of one 's own ideas read in Principles of Human knowledge page 28. Since the mind is passive in perception, there are ideas which one 's own mind does not
Our assurance that certain sets of conditions are sufficient to produce certain effects is based on past experience that like has been conjoined with like. The belief in necessary connection entails (Hume will conclude that it amounts to) a belief that events similar to those experienced in the past will be accompanied by similar conjuncts. Such a belief may only be arrived at inductively, and induction does not discover necessity.1[1]
When we are young, most of us are somewhat naive. We are inherently taught that
the same basic materials, including the same beliefs and the same values, the same EVERYTHING. And together it all appears to be one "reality" (Barry Alfonso, 6)."
Hume states that “We are naturally constituted to share the emotions of our fellow human beings. The closer our relationship, and the more we resemble each other, the stronger the communication of emotion will...