How do we know, inductively or deductively, that other minds exist?

[STT]

You can say evil exists, but you cannot say that evil exists as an actual thing.

Of course, evil is an actual thing, it affects you and your life.

Much like blindness in the eye is not the presence of an actual being that is blindness but rather it is the lack of sight, so to is evil a lack of good. You can say that blindness exists but you cannot say that blindness is a being.

You can call the blindness as the lack of sight or the opposite of sight. That is just naming. The point is that you experience evil. If good is existence and evil is lack of good then you could not possibly experience evil.

 

[IWantGod]

You can call the blindness as the lack of sight or the opposite of sight. That is just naming.

No it is not just naming. There is not a being in existence that can be called blindness. Blindness is a negation of sight, not a being.

 

[IWantGod]

If good is existence and evil is lack of good then you could not possibly experience evil.

We experience evil as a lack of good in an action, that’s how we know it’s evil. Good was not there, so we call it evil. Otherwise we could not possibly know the difference. Evil is a hindering or privation of Good. By itself it’s nothing at all.

 

[STT]

I don’t see that.
Is capital punishment right or wrong?
There are two answers.
1.Yes it was right to burn heretics at the stake.
2.No, capital punishment is wrong today because of the advances in rehabilitation psychology.

You can simulate that, something wrong in the past and right now.

Is the parallel postulate true or false.

1. the parallel postulate is taken to be true in euclidean geometry.
2. The parallel postulate is taken to be false in hyperbolic geometry.

Both (1) and (2) are proper answer to the question.

Is the photon a particle or a wave.

1. The photon is a particle as seen by photoelectric effect.
2. the photon is a wave as seen by the double slit experiment.

Both, wave and particle.

 

[STT]

We experience evil as a lack of good in an action, that’s how we know it’s evil. Good was not there, so we call it evil. Otherwise we could not possibly know the difference. Evil is a hindering or privation of Good. By itself it’s nothing at all.

No, you experience evil as something. I can say that feeling good is the lack of stomachache.

 

[AlNg]

Both, wave and particle.

Both (1) and (2) are proper answer to the question.

There are two answers to the question. so 3) is not absurd.

1. Question has two or more answers. (3) is absurd.

 

[STT]

There are two answers to the question.

No. You can look at it this way: The proper answer is that photon behaves such as particle and wave. This is one answer. There is however two behaviors.

 

[AlNg]

No.

You are giving two contradictory answers. Something is a solid particle which does not need an aether and the same thing is not a solid particle but an undulating wave in some sort of a hidden or invisible aether like medium.

 

[STT]

You are giving two contradictory answers. Something is a solid particle which does not need an aether and the same thing is not a solid particle but an undulating wave in some sort of a hidden or invisible aether like medium.

I said that photon behaves in two different ways depending on experiment setup. Two different behavior and one entity. What is contradictory?

 

[AlNg]

What is contradictory?

It is contradictory on its face.

 

[STT]

It is contradictory on its face.

Could we agree that photon is something that behaves differently depending on how we approach it?

 

[AlNg]

Could we agree that photon is something that behaves differently depending on how we approach it?

You are using semantics to say that two answers are really only one answer because we can combine the two answers into one.
Consider this question:
Do parallel lines ever meet. Yes or No?

 

[IWantGod]

No, you experience evil as something

As what exactly? What is the being of evil?

 

[STT]

You are using semantics to say that two answers are really only one answer because we can combine the two answers into one.

I am trying to tell what is the right question and answer.

Consider this question:
Do parallel lines ever meet. Yes or No?

It depends.

Regardless, I think you can write a code to take care of these typical questions too.

 

[STT]

As what exactly? What is the being of evil?

You suffer for example. You can call it evil or lack of good. Naming is really not matter. What is matter is the experience which we share.

 

[aroosi]

How do we know that you are not a fan of the movie ‘Blade Runner’?

 

[AlNg]

It depends.

Yes. There are two correct answers.

 

[Trifleton]

It is common sense. We know there are other minds, and you might say we know this with more certainty than the confidence we place in skeptical arguments.

Another way to explain it is by the principle of phenomenal conservatism, which is a very popular principle nowadays with many philosophers. It says that if things seem to be a certain way to a person, that person has some justification to believe that things are the way they seem. This is surely a very reasonable principle. Even if other people could in principle not have minds, it surely SEEMS very strongly that they do have minds. Why should we ignore what seems to be the truth?

 

[Vladtheinhaler]

It is common sense. We know there are other minds, and you might say we know this with more certainty than the confidence we place in skeptical arguments.

Another way to explain it is by the principle of phenomenal conservatism, which is a very popular principle nowadays with many philosophers. It says that if things seem to be a certain way to a person, that person has some justification to believe that things are the way they seem. This is surely a very reasonable principle. Even if other people could in principle not have minds, it surely SEEMS very strongly that they do have minds. Why should we ignore what seems to be the truth?

But there’s one glaringly obvious problem with this line of reasoning, and that’s that if one examines the behavior of these so-called other minds, then they don’t actually appear to be rational mind’s at all, because they continually behave irrationlly.

So it would SEEM as though they’re not rational minds at all, just poor imitations of rational minds, and thus it would also SEEM as though the only rational mind is mine.

 

[adamhovey1988]

I am confused by the title, because I’m literally using my mind to respond to this. I don’t know, maybe I read it wrong, maybe I should put on my glasses.