Argument from Analogy for Other Minds (AA)

The Argument from Analogy for Other Minds (AA) stems from the problem of other minds. The problem is the question of how one can know that there are other minds other than their own. A person can experience their own minds directly, that is, from within, they can apprehend their emotions and sensations in a way that gets “felt.” They can know what they want or even believe through introspection. But their knowledge of other people’s minds is, seemingly, different. One person cannot experience other people’s mental states.  The only thing that can get experienced or observed is their behaviors, which are expressed through their bodies(Morick, 1967).

The Argument from Analogy for Other Minds (AA) has raised a fundamental challenge for substance dualism. If both minds and bodies are completely independent, then how can one infer from seeing a body with a mind “attached” to it? There is a possibility that people or bodies could be “machines”that have no minds.In this case, it can be concluded that “my own mind is the only one that exists.” The challenge to this dualism is, how we can be sure that other minds exists or if solipsism is false.

One traditional justification for the belief that other minds exist is the argument filtered from the analogy and, which was initially itemized by John Stuart Mill. He argued that, since one’s body and their outward behavior are observably comparable to the behaviors and bodies of others, the analogy justifies the belief that other people have feelings like everyone else, assuming that the bodies and the behavior are automatons(Avramides, 2001).

Due to its philosophical nature, the Argument from Analogy for Other Minds (AA) has been classified as an inductive argument because of two reasons. The first one is simply because it proceeds from one case while the other is because it has an uncheckable conclusion.

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