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Continental Thoughts
The Concept of the Other from Kant to Lacan
Peter Benson looks at how continental minds see how we see other minds.
Among the numerous divergences between the Analytic and Continental traditions of philosophy, one of the most striking is their different ways of discussing one’s relation to other people. In Analytic philosophy this is typically approached, in the first instance, as a question about the possibility of knowledge, under the heading ‘The Problem of Other Minds’. The ‘problem’ in question is how we can know of the existence of other minds, since any mind as such is not directly evident to sensory perception – we can’t see or touch minds.
A classic response to this question, echoed by many later writers, was given by John Stuart Mill:
“I conclude that other human beings have feelings like me, because, first, they have bodies like me, which I know in my own case to be the antecedent condition of feelings; and because, secondly, they exhibit the acts, and other outward signs, which in my own case I know by experience to be caused by feelings.”
An Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy, 1865
A sceptical challenge to Mill’s conclusion has been pursued in recent years by the thought experiment of the ‘philosophical zombie’, popularized by David Chalmers.
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