Do we know minds through behavior?
Let's take a hard look at the inference by analogy theory.
Inference by analogy
The inference by analogy theory says I infer that your experience is similar to mine from your behavior.
My behavior x —> My experience y.
Your behavior x —>Your experience ???
I can't directly experience what you're experiencing, after all, at least not in the same way you experience it, from your perspective. So whatever I know of your mind must be filtered through my own.
But is this how we actually experience other minds? When I think about my interactions with others, I don’t do any of this inferring or analogizing. If logical inference is the only way to make sense of how I come to know other minds, then this must be going on well under the radar, because I’m not aware of doing it.
Must the inference by analogy theory be true? What would it take for this theory to make sense of how we come to know other minds?
What is behavior?
“We know about other minds by knowing about other behaviour, at least in part. The nature of the inference is a matter of some controversy, but it is not a matter of controversy that it proceeds from behaviour.”
Frank Jackson, Epiphenomenal Qualia
DISTINGUISHING ROCKS FROM MINDED CREATURES
We might theorize a process of discerning ‘behavior’ at the level of sensory perception in order to explain how I can come to know you’re human and not, say, a rock. Interpreting external appearances for the purposes of classification isn’t usually what we think of when we discuss behavior and the problem of other minds, but it does seem important to be able to identify and differentiate living things from non living things and such. It’s not like I have to talk to rocks and sunglasses to see if they talk back. Even so, whatever this process is, if there is an inference by analogy going on at this level, it would only establish whether there might be another mind, but it wouldn’t tell us much about it. I would call this a prerequisite to understanding other minds.
That’s not to say I believe we do make an inference by analogy to identify other minds.
INTERPRETING FACIAL EXPRESSIONS AND BODY LANGUAGE
“You can, of course, learn about your own mind in the same way you learn about others’ minds—by reading psychology texts, by observing facial expressions (in a mirror), by examining readouts of brain activity, by noting patterns of past behavior—but it’s generally thought that you can also learn about your mind introspectively, in a way that no one else can.”
Eric Schwitzgebel, "Introspection", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
But we don’t need to read psychology texts, and we definitely don’t read brain activity, to learn about other minds. The former is evidenced by the fact some have never read a psychology text and still do fine, and the latter by the fact that it’s not even possible to read brain activity in order to find out what’s going on inside someone mind—this has things exactly backwards. We can only begin to correlate brain activity by first learning what’s going on inside someone’s mind.1 This leaves us with observing expressions and noting patterns in behavior—the classic inference by analogy theory. But is it true that I extrapolate observed expressions and note patterns in my behavior to understand your mind?
I see you smile, I think you’re happy. Why? Because that’s what I do when I’m happy. I see you cry, I think you’re upset because that’s what I do when I’m upset. But let’s draw out the analogy a bit more. To know crying means I’m upset involves first correlating my being upset with my external appearance, which involves seeing myself as I appear to others. From the similarity of our external appearances I infer that you must be experiencing a similar “mental state” to my own. Sounds fair enough.
On the other hand, I don’t recall ever looking in the mirror to study what Tina being upset looks like. I’m not sure I’m even capable of authentically witnessing what Tina being upset looks like…since…why would I look in a mirror at that particular moment? What I look like in this horrid “mental state”2 would be the last thing on my mind when I’m in that state. And why should I think what I look like has anything to do with what I and others feel? But this would be the sort of sizing up that inference by analogy presumably requires.
It’s hard to see how the inference by analogy theory could stack up in everyday life. It’s not enough to know what I look like when I’m generically upset, if there even is such a thing. For such a theory to work I would have to clearly recognize my own subtle emotions as they ebb and flow through my psyche, then correlate these innumerable shades of feeling to any external behaviors that can be said to be an expression of them…and that’s before I even begin looking at you. But how on earth can I know what I look like when I’m pissed off and not wishing to show it? Or not acknowledging it to myself? I could stand in front of the mirror and play act, but that’s not the same thing; the mirror makes me self conscious or at least adds an extra layer of meaning, thereby thwarting any attempt to get at the real deal. For inference by analogy to work I need to correlate the authentic experience to the authentic expression of it. Do I need to ask someone else to set up a spy camera for me without telling me where or when? Obviously not. I do witness immensely complex emotions and thought processes in others, even if I don’t always interpret these correctly. Inference by analogy doesn’t explain how I can even think understanding of other minds to be possible since most of the time I have no idea what I look like or even what I feel like. And what about animals? Surely we don’t want to say creatures living in environments without reflective surfaces have no inner lives.
Inference by analogy requires we attribute behavior to each internal mental state in a reliable way, if not on a one-to-one basis, but we can and do accommodate differences in the way others look and behave, and we do this on the fly like it’s nothing.
Simulation Theory
Maybe we know other minds by imaginatively walking in the other’s shoes. To do this, we simulate in our own minds what it’s like to be them in their situation. This theory helps us explain other minds in a more flexible way. For example, if I want to account for why dogs sniff each other’s asses, the inference by analogy theory doesn’t work too well. To explain behavior we can’t quite get on board with, we need the ability to understand minds that may be quite different from our own. But there’s a limit to this difference. To simulate another mind in my own, I must rely on something like the principle of generosity, which is an extending of our own fundamental beliefs or meta beliefs to others—a minimal anthropomorphism.3 For example, it’s interpretive generosity that allows us to assume dogs act according to their own intentions and desires, rather than acting without purpose. If someone said, “Dogs find sniffing buttholes just as repugnant as we do and yet do it with gusto”, that wouldn’t even count as an explanation. Instead we think: “If I were a dog, I wouldn’t find sniffing buttholes disgusting.”
Simulation seems to be a more sophisticated version of inference by analogy. And again, I’m only aware of taking it out of the toolbox in unusual situations. Contrasted to phenomenological empathy, simulation points to a psychic distance between minds. In other words, simulation is needed only when minds stand in a problematic relationship to the other. Here we use rational processes to understand the other, but with this there’s a sense we may not get it right and may never know the answer.
In a future post I’d like to explore how we come to know our own boundaries of selfhood to see whether this clarifies our understanding of other minds.
What do YOU think?
Do we access other minds through behavior?
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—Tina
Each brain is unique and changes with life experiences and over time, so equipment calibrations and training must be established in each individual case (they can’t be used on someone else), before any so-called reading of brains can be done, and these can’t be expected to predict much even in the same individual later on.
I don’t know why I keep putting scare quotes around “mental states”. I guess it’s because it’s just such a goofy phrase I feel like I have to distance myself from it.
By generosity I don’t mean anything moral or ethical necessarily.
I agree, the inference by analogy theory feels convoluted and doesn't track with my own experience of empathy.
For one thing, I feel for things as different in behaviour from myself as a tree or a rock or the ocean. I can't help it. To me, a stormy sea feels angry and tumultuous, and a sick tree feels sad. I can't be alone in this either, because our language and especially poetry are littered with references to such things with feelings. We all intuitively grasp their meanings.
Although perhaps this is a product of simulation, or something like it. Not quite the explicit imagining myself in their shoes, but in having any idea of them in my mind, my mind might be said to become them, following Aristotle's idea that "the soul is in a way all things", and that we know things by their forms being imprinted upon our minds. And if we combine this with Aristotle's notion that the soul is the form of a living thing, then knowing a living thing (qua that kind of living thing) might be said to involve its soul truly existing within your own. Which also adds a nice angle to his comment that friendship is "a single soul dwelling in two bodies".
Coming from a different angle, it doesn't make much sense for us to evolve to have to infer the existence of other minds. It would be much simpler to evolve to intuitively/instinctively grasp the minds and intentions of others, perhaps even before we evolved to introspect and understand our own feelings.
We might also consider that certain behaviours transmit feelings without any need for analogy or inference to understand them. A baby crying is an unpleasant noise by design, so their pain is transmitted to those around it almost directly, while laughter is a pleasant noise by design. Empathy may begin with directly transmitting one's own feelings in such a way.
I think we do logically infer the mental states of others, but most of it isn't conscious. We've been a social species for a long time. We've likely built up a lot of instinctive reactions about the behavior of others. Which is amended and adjusted as we gain experience in the world. It seems like we lean heavily on that unconscious toolset.
The drawback is that sometimes it can mislead us, particularly if someone is from another culture or ethnicity. The way a lot of people in the west can misinterpret eyes with heavy epicanthic folds as boredom or cynicism comes to mind.
Of course, it's also subject to being fooled by deliberate acting on someone's part, assuming they're skilled enough to be convincing. I'm sure acting in a misleading way is as old as social interactions.