Seeing the Invisible: How to Perceive, Imagine, and Infer the Minds of Others

Abstract

The psychology and phenomenology of our knowledge of other minds is not well captured either by describing it simply as perception, nor by describing it simply as inference. A better description, I argue, is that our knowledge of other minds involves both through ‘perceptual co-presentation’, in which we experience objects as having aspects that are not revealed. This allows us to say that we perceive other minds, but perceive them as private, i.e. imperceptible, just as we routinely perceive aspects of physical objects as unperceived. I discuss existing versions of this idea, particularly Joel Smith’s, on which it is taken to imply that our knowledge of other minds is, in these cases, perceptual and not inferential. Against this, I argue that perceptual co-presentation in general, and mind-perception in particular, yields knowledge that is simultaneously both perceptual and inferential. It has recently been argued (Smith 2010, 2015; cf. Husserl 1982) that our knowledge of other minds is akin to our knowledge of the concealed parts and surfaces of physical objects. Just as the rear side of something is perceptually present when we look at the front side, but as unseen, so other people’s mental states are perceptually present when we perceive their expressive behaviour, but as private. Call this the ‘Co-Presentation’ view. This is taken to show that we can under the right circumstances perceive other minds, and thus to refute ‘inferentialism’, the idea that we know other minds only by inference. I think the Co-Presentation view is correct, and does show that we perceive other minds. But this is not incompatible with us inferring them—co-presentation need not support a perceptual as opposed to inferential model of knowledge of other minds. In this paper I develop a version of the Co-Presentation view which not only fits with inferentialism, but implies it Show more