Other Minds
Anita Avramides · 2023 · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
This source is used as context evidence across 4 linked claims and 4 related evidence hubs. Its citation record is marked verified; that verifies the source trail, not the truth of any linked claim.
Summary
Surveys the classical problem of how we know other beings have minds, including analogy, behavior, language, embodiment, and the limits of certainty about consciousness outside one's own case.
How this source is used on the map
Use this as the philosophical background for solipsism and for disputed minds in non-human or artificial systems. It is context, not direct evidence that any specific entity is conscious.
Citation record
- Authors
- Anita Avramides
- Year
- 2023
- Publication
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Source type
- Philosophy reference
- Map role
- context
- Credibility level
- primary
- Citation status
- Verified
- DOI
- Not recorded
- PubMed
- Not recorded
- Not recorded
Linked claims
Behaviour is not evidence of inner experience. We have no detector for consciousness in any system we did not already believe to be conscious.
Behavioural, neural and pharmacological evidence converges. The 2012 Cambridge Declaration formalized the scientific position.
Plants sense and respond to their environment in sophisticated ways. There is no evidence the lights are on inside.
The view that only my own mind is certain to exist; everything else might be a projection. Cartesian doubt pushed to its limit.
Related evidence hubs
What consciousness is, how it relates to brains, and whether it's basic to reality.
The nature of subjective experience.
Mind–brain relation, qualia, intentionality.
Animal consciousness, plant cognition, animal psi.
Related sources
The standard sceptical argument against AI consciousness; required reading for any serious treatment.
Companion to the consciousness-animal entry; useful for claims about animal navigation, recognition, and inference.
Places solipsism inside the broader skeptical tradition rather than treating it as an empirical worldview.
Functionalism is the implicit metaphysics behind the case that AI could be conscious.
Pulls together the conceptual frameworks behind every empirical claim about consciousness.
The default reference for the case that mammals, birds, and at least some invertebrates are conscious.