ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on issues relating to our knowledge of other minds – third-person mindreading. We begin with the psychology of mindreading and the debate between perceptual accounts of mindreading, the theory-theory, and the simulation-theory. We also examine the distinction between ‘little scientist’ views of the theory-theory and modular views of it. We then turn to the conceptual problem of other minds, focusing on Wittgenstein–s ‘beetle in the box’ thought experiment. We then turn to the sceptical problem of other minds and the problem of avoiding solipsism. Here, we consider two responses to the sceptical problem of other minds: the analogical response and the inference to the best explanation (IBE) response. We then examine how attributions of mental states (in particular consciousness) to other kinds of creatures might be justified. Here, we consider vegetative state patients, non-human animals such as the octopus, cerebral organoids, and artificially intelligent (AI) systems. The question of plant mentality is considered, as are questions about self-consciousness in non-human animals.
