Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Remarks On Perception and Other Minds
Remarks On Perception and Other Minds
3403
ARTICLE SECTION
Edmund Dain
edmunddain @ gmail.com
Abstract
It is a simple truth about the ways in which we speak about others that
we can see or hear or feel what others are thinking or feeling. But it is
tempting to think that there is a deeper sense in which we cannot really
see or hear or feel these things at all. Rather, what is involved must be
a matter of inference or interpretation, for instance. In these remarks, I
argue against a variety of ways in which that thought, the thought that
we cannot really see or hear or feel what others are thinking or feeling,
might be developed.
1
The traditional problem of other minds, as I refer to it here, is the problem of justifying
our belief in the existence of other minds, but the idea that we cannot observe others’
mental states is of course also often a premise in the further problem of justifying our belief
that others’ mental states resemble our own.
2
Further examples of this claim from the recent literature are given in Overgaard (2017:
743–745) and Varga (2017: 787–788). The idea that we can, in one way or another, observe
or perceive others’ mental states is defended in (for instance) Austin (1946), Cassam (2007),
Dretske (1973), McDowell (2001) and Overgaard (2017).
3
Rejecting one of the central premises upon which that scepticism is based is one way of
rejecting that scepticism, but I nevertheless do not think that knowledge of the existence of
other minds is a straightforward consequence of our seeing (e.g.) the anger in another’s
face, or our seeing that they are angry. (For the contrary claim, see Cassam 2007: 62.) That
suggestion, I think, mistakes the nature of our belief in other minds, and in doing so
threatens to trivialize it. I argue for an alternative conception of belief in other minds in
terms of what Wittgenstein calls “an attitude towards a soul” (Wittgenstein 1958: Part II,
178) in Dain (forthcoming).
32
Nordic Wittgenstein Review 6 (2) 2017 | pp. 31-45 | DOI 10.15845/nwr.v6i2.3403
4
There are substantive differences between the senses in relation to our perception of
others’ mental states in some respects: for instance, it is, I think, true to say that we can see
(in (e.g.) someone’s eyes, face, or movements) a greater range of feelings than we can hear
in their voice, and that we can also hear a greater range than we can feel. Some of the
different things we might mean by perceiving apply more readily in the case of seeing than
in relation to other senses in a way that in some respects assists the thought that we cannot
see others’ thoughts or feelings: for instance, whereas there is a clear sense of seeing in
which one sees whatever passes before one’s (open) eyes, whether one notices it or not, I
think we are more unwilling to admit of such a sense in relation to hearing, and even more
so in relation to feeling. Those differences might be thought to assist the argument that we
cannot really see someone’s thoughts or feelings insofar as that sense of seeing might be
thought to be in some sense basic, and so definitive of what seeing really is in some sense,
in contrast with those senses of seeing that involve some further interpretation of what is
seen in that first sense by the mind. The focus on seeing then might be thought in some
respects to be prejudicial in favour of the kind of view that I am here rejecting. In defending
the possibility of perceiving others’ mental states, and our ordinary forms of expression in
this respect, however, I do not want to defend every case in which we speak of perceiving
others’ mental states: for instance, though people do sometimes talk of “smelling fear” (for
instance, in a packed exam hall), I do not find it tempting to take such talk literally.
5
See Dretske (1973) for further discussion of this distinction, and of the relation between
seeing and seeing-that. Dretske argues that we can see that someone is, e.g., angry, but he
nevertheless rejects the idea that we can see their anger.
33
Edmund Dain CC-BY
6
In particular, my argument draws on Wittgenstein (1958; 1969; 1970; 1988; 1990, and
1993).
34
Nordic Wittgenstein Review 6 (2) 2017 | pp. 31-45 | DOI 10.15845/nwr.v6i2.3403
7
See Dretske (1973: 36–37) for a discussion of this claim.
35
Edmund Dain CC-BY
2. “You cannot really see, or hear, or feel these things. Mental states
are not the kind of thing that can be observed.”—But if it is the
ordinary uses of these expressions that we are talking about, then we
can correctly be said to see and hear and feel these things on certain
occasions. So in what sense can one not? In what sense are these
things not observable?
4. “But the anger itself cannot be seen.”—I can see you, and see your
anger rising or subsiding, for instance.—“The anger itself is not what
you see. Anger is a feeling, and you cannot see a feeling at all. Anger
itself is not something that can be seen.”—The thought here is not
that there is some practical obstacle that prevents us from seeing
feelings, but that there can be no such thing as ‘seeing a feeling’ at
all. But then it is not clear that that is true: we do, after all, talk of
seeing feelings in some contexts. So what we need is rather the
thought that there is no such thing as ‘seeing a feeling’ in a certain
sense. But then our problem is that if this is true, then there will be
no way of specifying what that certain sense is, and so no way of
specifying what it is that we cannot do here.
There is, all the same, I think, both something right and
something wrong about this thought. We could put what is right
about it in this way: feelings, just as they are, are not even potential
objects of sight. (I do not, for instance, see my own anger in this
sense. Either I am angry or I am not; there is no room for seeing in
this case at all, unless what is meant is that I catch sight of my
reflection, or see my actions mirrored in another’s, and suddenly see
my own behaviour in a new light as if through the eyes of another,
for instance.) But that only tells us that the object of sight in this case
is different, is not what we might be inclined to think that it is: it is
not a bare feeling, but rather a person who feels something.
Insofar as it makes sense to say that one sees a feeling at all, one
can see the anger in another’s face, or in another’s behaviour: this is
what it is to ‘see a feeling’.
36
Nordic Wittgenstein Review 6 (2) 2017 | pp. 31-45 | DOI 10.15845/nwr.v6i2.3403
5. “You cannot see someone’s anger, for instance, directly. You must
infer the presence of anger from what you can see.”—We do infer
what others are thinking or feeling in many cases. But those cases
stand in contrast to those cases where we simply see, or hear, or feel
what another person is thinking or feeling without inferring
anything. (We do not for instance typically infer, from someone’s cry
of pain, the existence of pain; rather, we hear the pain in their cry.)
“But that contrast is not between an indirect inference and a
direct perception, but between an inference that is made explicitly
on the basis of someone’s behaviour, and one that is implicit, one
that has been internalized, for instance.”—An implicit or
internalized inference here is the idea of an inference that has
become so natural, so immediate, as to be automatic, unthinking.
One simply does it. One simply concludes. As a result, it does not
seem to us as though we are making an inference at all.
Is this still an inference? We can compare it with what we might
call an internalized calculation. If someone asks me to add five and
five, I do not calculate anything: I simply answer without hesitation.
The process of calculation has been replaced by the automatic
answer. The calculation has not been carried out implicitly somehow,
unless that means simply that I no longer calculate at all, but just give
the answer. An internalized calculation, in this sense, is no longer a
matter of calculation at all.
In such a case, there is no longer any room for calculation, and it
is not clear what it would even mean in this kind of case to say that
I calculate, knowing the answer as well as I do. I could, for instance,
take two groups of five objects and, beginning from five, say the next
number in the series of cardinal numbers as I move each object from
one group to the other. I may in this way show someone, a child,
how to calculate the answer. But if I were to try to calculate the
answer for myself in this way the process would be a sham. I already
know what the answer is, and there is no question of my discovering
that my initial answer was wrong: there is, for instance, no hypothesis
for the process to confirm, or doubt for it to resolve.
An internalized inference in this sense would, then, be no
inference at all. But no inference, internal or otherwise, is necessary
37
Edmund Dain CC-BY
even for an infant to hear the anger in an adult’s voice even if they
have not yet learned to call it ‘anger’. (Just as a dog does not need a
course in elementary logic in order to hear the anger in its owner’s
voice.) An inference only seems to be necessary here because we are
suspicious of the idea that we can see or hear or feel these things
directly. So the question is: why should one be suspicious of these
ways of speaking here?
7. “To see the joy in their smile, you must also interpret what you
see.”—I may interpret what I see as joyful, but I also may see it
without interpretation. I may interpret your behaviour as a sign of
discomfort, or grief, or alarm, or whatever. But I may also see that
you are grieving, for instance, without interpreting anything.
I interpret what I see when, for instance, I am unsure of its
significance. If I am unsure of the significance of your smile, of the
reason for it, I may interpret it as joyful, or embarrassed, or whatever.
And if I am unsure of the reason for your joy, I may interpret it as a
sign of relief, for instance. I may see your smile, and wonder if it is
really joyful. And I may see your joyful smile, and wonder what
makes you so happy. Interpretation may be involved in either case,
but so too it might not be involved in either case as well.
8. “But you must interpret it in some sense, otherwise how could you
know that it is joy (or anger or grief…) that you are seeing.”—
Compare this: ‘but you must interpret it in some sense, otherwise
how could you know that it is red that you are seeing?’ So do I also
not see red?
38
Nordic Wittgenstein Review 6 (2) 2017 | pp. 31-45 | DOI 10.15845/nwr.v6i2.3403
Look at a ripe red tomato: you no more interpret what you see as
being red than you interpret their joyful smile as joyful. But redness
is also a concept, and is not simply given to us by perception.
39
Edmund Dain CC-BY
12. “What you see is the changing arrangement of their features, the
shape of their eyes, the curve of their lips, the lines on their forehead,
for instance.”—If you ask me to describe how someone looks on a
specific occasion, this is not typically what I will describe, and if you
ask me nevertheless to describe this, or to describe what I see in
these terms, I may be able to give only the most rudimentary account
of my perceptions. 8 (Likewise, if you ask me to draw the precise
arrangement of the features of their face and the various shades and
colours of them, I may well be at a loss to do so.) Emotion, rather
than geometry, one could say, forms the raw data of perception in
this sense: what we perceive is typically already conceptualized in
these terms.
8
Wittgenstein makes essentially the same point as this in Zettel: “We describe a face
immediately as sad, radiant, bored, even when we are unable to give any other description
of the features” (1970: §225).
40
Nordic Wittgenstein Review 6 (2) 2017 | pp. 31-45 | DOI 10.15845/nwr.v6i2.3403
13. “What is seen must be what is common both to the person who
interprets what they see and so understands or recognizes it for what
it is and to the person who sees without understanding.”—What do
they in fact have in common? Their perceptions may be totally
different.
Imagine this: you come round from a period of unconsciousness,
blurs of various colours swim indistinctly before your eyes. Suddenly,
everything takes shape: you are on the floor looking up, with white
coats, and faces of various shades above you. The sounds in your
ears transform into intelligible speech: people are talking to you,
asking you questions (what your name is, whether you can hear them,
for instance). Here, almost nothing is the same from one moment to
the next. (Similarly, what I hear when I hear the words of a language
I do not understand is not what I hear when I hear the same words
later, with understanding, knowing what they mean. My experience
is totally different. In one case, for instance, I may be able to parse
the sounds into distinct units, or to repeat what I heard, and in the
other not at all.)
“But what you see in this case must in some sense be the same
before and after.”—Nothing in the conscious experience is the same,
and so seeing in this sense becomes something prior to our
conscious experience.
14. “But what you see must be the same in these two cases even if
you do not notice the same things in each case. How you perceive it
is different, but what you perceive must nevertheless at some level
be the same.”—At some level, perhaps: although in the one case, the
eyes passively take in what is in front of them, and in the other, they
focus on different aspects of what can be seen, thereby changing the
data even at this basic level. But what is seen in this sense is a very
limited part of all that we say can be seen.
41
Edmund Dain CC-BY
aware of what we are doing, and what we see in this sense, the data
available to such seeing, is all that can really be seen, all that is open
to sight alone as it were. Everything else requires the operation of
the mind in interpretation of or inference upon what is seen.”—We
need special reasons for saying that someone did see, or must have
seen, what they were nevertheless not aware of having seen at all,
such as, in the case of driving on auto-pilot,9 their having kept the
car on the road for several miles in spite of their not being aware of
having seen anything at the time. But if we only say that they must
have seen x because, in spite of being unaware of doing so, they
nevertheless responded appropriately in the situation, because (e.g.)
they kept the car on the road, then we will have to say that even this
kind of seeing must involve interpretation, and so that this form of
seeing is also not really basic, or simple, in the way that we wanted,
since without interpretation why should we have responded one way
to the stimuli rather than any other, or rather than not responding at
all? This kind of case will not exclude the kind of cases we might
want to exclude in appealing to it, since insofar as those other cases,
seeing the anger in a face for instance, must involve interpretation,
so must this kind of case too. So even here we do not find the kind
of pure perception in comparison with which our seeing or hearing
or feeling what another is thinking or feeling could be shown to be
not really a form of seeing or hearing or feeling at all.
16. “What can be seen is merely the expression of the anger; it is not
the anger itself. You must assume, or infer, the presence of the
feeling behind the behaviour that you observe.”—But anger is not a
single thing, as this implies: it is a complex, including not only various
sensations that may be characteristic of feeling angry or of being
angry, but also various states or dispositions, as well as actual
behaviour too. (In some cases, for instance, how someone behaves
may function as a criterion for their being angry: they insist that they
are not angry, and it is their behaviour that contradicts them.) To
insist that you cannot see the anger, that you must infer the presence
of the feeling behind what can be seen as the cause of the visible
9
This example comes from Armstrong (1980: 59). Dretske discusses it briefly in Dretske
(2000b: 123–124).
42
Nordic Wittgenstein Review 6 (2) 2017 | pp. 31-45 | DOI 10.15845/nwr.v6i2.3403
18. That you can in some cases hide your feelings or conceal what
you are thinking presupposes the possibility of your not hiding them
but letting them show, or of your trying to hide them and failing, for
instance. Even in ordinary cases, it is not always so easy to conceal
one’s feelings, and then there are cases where we do not try to
conceal them, and cases where there is no such thing as concealing
them at all: cases of overwhelming rage or inconsolable grief, for
instance. (“The anger itself must remain hidden.” Just try hiding it,
then, on some specific occasion.)
19. “But you cannot see the pain in someone’s face, for instance,
unless you can distinguish between their being in pain and their
merely pretending to be in pain, say, by means of what you see alone.
But those two cases might appear exactly the same as far as what you
can see goes. They may, in qualitative terms, be identical.”—This idea
would rule out much of what we ordinarily say that we see along with
feelings. But we do in fact often in the course of our normal
interactions with other people simply see whether or not someone is
merely pretending to be in pain, whether it is real or feigned, and in
many cases too the possibility that they might be pretending does
not even arise such that it would need to be ruled out, even though
we cannot always rule it out, even though we are sometimes
uncertain or mistaken about what we see. If there were not forms of
behaviour or expressions characteristic of certain feelings, we could
not even pretend to have them when we do not.
10
See Austin (1946: 177–180) where he distinguishes between a sign (or symptom) of anger
and its manifestation (or expression).
43
Edmund Dain CC-BY
20. “But this simply ignores the possibility that we might be mistaken
about everything, that all of our perceptions may have a source quite
different from that which we assume.”—If this is in fact a possibility,
then it is not only what someone else is thinking or feeling that we
cannot really see. If it is a possibility at all, then it is not simply one
more contingent possibility along the lines of the possibility that they
may be pretending, for instance. It puts the entire framework into
doubt. Within that framework, however, we can very often tell what
it is we see.11
References
Armstrong, D., 1980. The Nature of Mind and Other Essays. Ithaca, New York:
Cornell University Press.
Austin, J. L., 1946. “Other Minds”. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society
Supplementary Volume 20, pp. 148–187.
Cassam, Q., 2007. The Possibility of Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Dain, E., forthcoming. “An Attitude towards a Soul: Wittgenstein, Other
Minds and the Mind”. In: T. Wallgren et al., eds. A Science of the Soul?
Dretske, F., 1973. “Perception and Other Minds”. Nous 7 (1), pp. 34–44.
Dretske, F., 2000a. “Simple Seeing”. In: F. Dretske, Perception, Knowledge and
Belief. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 97–112.
Dretske, F., 2000b. “Conscious Experience”. In: F. Dretske, Perception,
Knowledge and Belief. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 113–
137.
Goldman, A., 2012. “Theory of Mind”. In: E. Margolis, R. Samuels, and S.
Stich, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Cognitive Science. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, pp. 402–424.
McDowell, J., 2001. “On ‘The Reality of the Past’”. In: J. McDowell, Mind,
Knowledge and Reality. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University
Press, pp. 295–313.
Overgaard, S., 2017. “The unobservability thesis”. Synthese 194 (3), pp. 743–
60.
11
I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for the Nordic Wittgenstein Review for
constructive feedback on an earlier version of this paper.
44
Nordic Wittgenstein Review 6 (2) 2017 | pp. 31-45 | DOI 10.15845/nwr.v6i2.3403
Russell, B., 1948. Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits. New York: Simon and
Schuster.
Varga, S., 2017. “The case for mind perception”. Synthese 194 (3), pp. 787–
807.
Wittgenstein, L., 1958. Philosophical Investigations. 3rd ed., G. E. M. Anscombe
and R. Rhees, eds., tr. G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell.
Wittgenstein, L., 1969. On Certainty. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von
Wright, eds., tr. D. Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell.
Wittgenstein, L., 1970. Zettel. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright,
eds., tr. G. E. M. Anscombe. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press.
Wittgenstein, L., 1988. Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Volume I. G.E.M.
Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, eds., tr. G. E. M. Anscombe.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wittgenstein, L., 1990. Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology, Volume I.
G.H. von Wright and H. Nyman, eds., tr. C. G. Luckhardt and M. A.
E. Aue. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wittgenstein, L., 1993. Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology, Volume II.
G.H. von Wright and H. Nyman, eds., tr. C. G. Luckhardt and M. A.
E. Aue. Oxford: Blackwell.
Biographical Note
Edmund Dain is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Providence
College. He has also taught at the University of Chicago and at Cardiff
University, and held a Leiv Eiriksson visiting research fellowship at the
University of Bergen. His research focuses on interpreting and applying
the insights of Wittgenstein’s philosophy in connection with
contemporary problems in ethics, philosophy of language and
philosophy of mind.
45