Does our common sense believe that other people have minds because it is useful (just agnosticism and pragmatism), or because our common sense really has good reasons to believe that other people have minds?
3
-
1Colloquially there're abundant reasons from a priori mind projection self-analogy to maximum a posteriori best explanation in a Bayesian manner to believe in the existence of other minds, despite its known difficulty as a perennial problem which is not even clear whether it's an empirical problem or not. Even one believes there're abundant such other minds yet one cannot have a direct spooky access to and form a complete and adequate mind about any of such minds. As Shurangam sutra hinted long ago: If you insist that the nature...– Double KnotAug 28 at 22:05
-
which knows and observes and is aware of distinctions is the mind, then apart from all forms, smells, tastes, and touches...that mind should have its own complete nature. And yet now, as you listen to my Dharma, it is because of sound that you are able to make distinctions. Even if you could extinguish all seeing, hearing, awareness, and knowing, and maintain an inner composure, the shadows of your discrimination of dharmas would remain. Thus can you hear sounds when there're no sounds around, and in the same way that you know other minds exist when there're no other minds to answer you...– Double KnotAug 28 at 22:41
-
The real trick is to hear silence when there are sounds around, and to realize that "There are no 'other people'," when there are people around.– Scott RoweAug 28 at 23:49
Add a comment
|