(November 12, 2013 at 10:27 pm)Vincenzo "Vinny" G. Wrote:(November 7, 2013 at 8:45 am)free_thinker_at_last Wrote: What would your response to the original question be then, Vinny? Also, elaborate more on why you don't think there is an abundant amount of evidence for other minds.
Because all the evidence cited for the existence of other minds makes inferences that are unwarranted to any rational skeptic. Try it yourself- come up with evidence that your girlfriend has a mind. Then ask yourself whether that evidence could not exist if she was a p-zombie. You'll inevitably find that any evidence you cite can still exist with a p-zombie, and thus the existence of other minds is in principle unfalsifiable.
So you are forced to either be a solipsist, or to concede that it's acceptable to believe at minimum one type of unfalsifiable claims. One possible way to refute the argument is to reject the need to rely on basic beliefs, and thus you have to argue for evidentialism. But I don't know how evidentialism would cope with the problem of other minds.
Are you yourself an evidentialist? Apart from the argument of God and other minds, how do you deal with the problem of other minds on evidentialism?
Hi Vinny,
I'm not a big philosopher so by evidentialist, you mean a person who will only accept proof of something if that proof can be totally confirmed by our five senses and totally supported by hard evidence, right?
If so, I don't think that I am. For example, I think a multiverse of some sort exists but in all reality, our universe is the only one for sure that we know exists. The multiverse may exist and can be showcased in physics and cosmological modals and in theory be detectable; however, we don't have any "hands-on"evidence of it.
As to your second question, I don't know how I would deal with it on evidentialism, if I was an evidentialist. I guess that's why I'm here getting some help from fellow atheists on these topics...ha.
I thought that a lot of research in neuroscience has provided sufficient evidence between brain/mind and a great amount of evidence has pointed towards the corner that w/o a physical brain, we can't possibly have a mind. Because humans have brains, surely, we must have minds. It would be strange to think that only I have a mind and everyone else is just a robot. Likewise, anyone else w/ some sense of reason would feel the same.
How would one deal with the this other minds issue?
Don't keep your mind so opened that your brains fall out.
