How does the concept of "the Other" relate to the problem of "other minds?"

Question

I have not really pursued the history or literature on either one of these topics, though the two concepts are often encountered in readings.

I have always vaguely taken the "Other" to emerge post-Kant, in perhaps Hegel's Phenomenology, evolving onward though Lacan, Levinas, (neither of whom have I read), and many others, becoming a standard term with many variants.

I tend to assume it implies not just an "object" but "another subject" or alter-ego or an alterity with some sort of intentionality. I have never seen it related per se to the problem of "other minds" in the analytic traditions, which itself seems to have lost popularity or perhaps acquired a new terminology while I wasn't looking.

Are my vague understandings wildly incorrect? Do, for example, Descartes, Hume, or Kant deal in some fashion with "other minds?" Is it fair to assume that "other" and "other minds" are at least somewhat related concepts? Are there distinct differences? Are there any suggested readings that might help me sort it out?

Note that there is so much on "the other" that I'd actually prefer some orientation based more traditionally on "other minds," if that makes sense. Or on "mind" as discontinuous. Though I listed specific questions, I don't expect direct answers, just direction.

Answer 1

The answer is "Not at all." The problem of other minds is a metaphysical and epistemological question: "How do I know that there are other minds?" I can directly observe behavior of other humans, but to infer mentality from behavior in the case of others is to make an inference, and therefore the question arises whether the inference is a good one.

The question about The Other, so far as I can tell, is ethical. "What should I do to/for/with the Other?" Of course, the complicating factor is that sometimes authors like Levinas tend to make (seemingly implausible) claims about The Other that look metaphysical, like, "You can't be a self until you encounter an Other." I am not qualified to speak to what the reasons for such claims might be, however.

EDIT

Let me expand upon why I think the metaphysical claims that the encounter with the Other being a transcendental condition of the possibility of your own subjecthood is implausible. Doing so might help explain why analytic philosophers aren't inclined to think "the Other", as Lacan and Levinas describe it, is in fact a useful category at all.

Here's the argument:

(1) If encountering an other is a condition of the possibility of subjecthood, then you can't be a person without encountering the other.

(2) But you can be a person without encountering the other.

(3) Therefore, encountering the other is not a condition of the possibility of subject hood.

(1) is just a definition that expresses the meaning of the phrase "condition of the possibility".

We can support (2) in two different ways. First, by thinking of the case of severely autistic people. Autism is a spectrum disorder that involves impairment to one 'theory of mind' i.e. with one's ability to recognize and perceive that other people are people, as opposed to mere objects. At the far end of that spectrum, it looks like we have individuals who genuinely could not ever "encounter an other". Such individuals tend to suffer a number of really heart-breaking impairments, but it is obviously absurd to say that they aren't subjects at all.

The second way that we could support (2) would be to appeal to conceivability/possibility arguments. Suppose you don't buy the autism case in the case of humans. Ok. If it is conceivable without contradiction that there exist any kind of subject (aliens, God, whatever) that does not encounter an other, then it is possible to be a subject without encountering an other, just as (2) says.

(3) follows from (1) and (2) by modus ponens, so the argument is valid. It looks sound to me as well.

I'll admit that I've never seen anybody explicitly run this argument in print, but I am quite certain it's the first thing that an analytically trained philosopher of mind reading Levinas is going to think.

I would also be surprised if any argument like this had ever been published in the Levinas literature either---continental papers don't tend to criticize the great names in the canon, or object to their theses, or try to defend those theses from the objections of others. I'd be happy for somebody cite me an article to show I'm wrong in this case.

Answer 2

One use of The Other, covering both the phenomenological focus and that of Jung and Lacan, is that it is what one is aware of that confirms the Self is real and not imaginary (and that which one invents the symbolic realm to interpret.) Simple mechanical reality generally does not qualify. A mechanical reality that had no Other might simply be a game of the mind reflecting on itself. But once one feels oneself formed in contrast with something else (often a mother figure) one imagines a greater reality.

In a framing such as the 'Gnostic proof of God' (which is a simplification of Hegel's point of view): https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/17785/9166 it seems impossible not to see the Other as evidence of another mind of some sort. We are intuitively given to believe that what is powerful enough to resist us has a mind, or more than one mind, or has been constructed by another mind, whether or not we can make contact with that mind directly.

In that sense, I would say the two issues are intimately linked, and there is enough continuity not to write off the connection between the older forms and the ones from Critical Theory.

Answer 3

My first thoughts were along the lines of Shane's answer "not much" or "not at all."

And I think that's right for the contemporary "Other".

If we want to stretch and find something more distant, then I would say there's a possible connection (but not one anyone would draw) between the classical origin of the problem of the Other in Hegel (and then inherited by Sartre), which is that I experience the Other as an another subject that is acting on the world and messing with my actions. Or to put it another way, the way I know for Hegel et al. that there is an Other (i.e. a self other than me) is that the world refuses to organize itself according to the conjunction of pure nature and my intentional actions).

But then as to how the two relate:

1. I don't think that the Hegel account of other minds gets much play in the contemporary metaphysics literature.
2. The Lacan Levinas use of Other is then only distantly related to that use anyway.