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Essay / Understanding Bertrand Russell's Argument About Analogy to Other Minds have clearly shown that every human being has their own brain, but theories differ when it comes to the existence of the mind – the intangible element that allows a person to subjectively experience the world. In “Analogy of Other Minds,” Bertrand Russell sets out to prove that minds other than his own exist through introspection and analogy; he believes that by looking inward and recognizing and understanding your own mind, you can observe the behaviors of others and safely conclude that they have the same thoughts and feelings as you, thus confirming the idea that every individual has a mind. He asserts that a thought, denoted A, will provoke in him a behavior, denoted B. He postulates that since the thought of A provokes that of B, if this behavior can be observed in other people, they too have a mind. However, in this essay I will discuss that Russell's analogy argument to convince that there are different minds is lacking, because having only truly examined one's own point of view is not enough to generalize about the the minds of others and knowing if they are really there. . Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayUnsuccessful arguments about similar human behaviorsAll Russell relies on is comparing similar behaviors, which can easily be faked or influenced by different thought processes; with this approach, one does not have a conscious understanding of the behaviors of other individuals and therefore lacks solid evidence to draw conclusions about minds other than one's own. Russell explains that through arithmetic problems, you can infer that another person also has a mind when they get the same answer as you; However, it is a known fact that there are many different ways to arrive at the same answer, especially in mathematics. Russell argues that if you give someone a difficult arithmetic problem, you might infer that they will solve the problem the same way you do. He explicitly explains that because "the causal laws governing one's behavior have to do with 'thoughts,' it is natural to infer that the same is true of the analogous behavior of one's friends" (Russell, 90). Yet there are many different ways to arrive at a conclusion; two plus eight gives you the same answer as adding five to five. You can see that your friend's conclusion is the same as yours, but that doesn't mean your friend's thought process is also the same. This concept only becomes clearer when looking at more difficult problems. For example, even when it comes to coding inputs in different coding languages, there are multiple ways to form fragments and combinations of code while still arriving at the same result. Therefore, the analogy argument when it comes to solving problems and deriving identical answers is not sufficient evidence to support a conclusion regarding the existence of other minds. Later, Russell explains that some behaviors are explicitly caused by the same thoughts and that seeing the behaviors of others allows you to infer that the other person had the same thought that you would have before behaving in the same way; However, this statement also ignores the fact that people can behave similarlyway than you for completely different reasons. He believes: “based on self-observation, only A can cause B; he therefore deduces that there was an A which caused B, thinking that it was not an A that he could observe. He infers that the bodies of others are associated with a mind that resembles his own to the extent that their bodily behavior resembles his own. Behavior isn't always a true sign of what someone is thinking. Since we can only experience both our own thoughts and behaviors, we have a very limited perspective, which does not allow us to draw conclusions about the minds of others. He claims that B is only caused by A, but this is often not the case for other people. If you drink water because you are thirsty, someone else may drink water because they need to take a urine test soon or eliminate toxins from their body. His argument relies solely on looking inward and comparing your behaviors with those around you, assuming they think the same way you do. Obviously, people may act the same way as you for different reasons, so relying on analogous actions is not enough to make claims about the minds of others. Comparing your behavior to anyone else's isn't even necessarily entirely accurate, because behaviors aren't always indicative of what someone is thinking. Russell explains that “an ingenious person could build an automaton that would laugh at his jokes, no matter how often he heard them; but a human being, after laughing several times, will yawn and finally say 'How I laughed the first time I heard that joke'. Here, Russell differentiates between human minds and robots because humans respond differently to specific stimuli, which he refers to as "observable behavioral differences." However, in this case he assumes that humans only laugh because they find something funny, which is not always true. Someone might laugh at another person's joke and fake it all the time for their own reasons, such as trying to curry favor with the person or because they felt uncomfortable in the situation. Humans constantly fake behavior, which is clearly visible in plays when actors enact certain behaviors, not because they actually feel the same emotions as their characters, but because the script requires them to. Therefore, not laughing at a joke you've heard multiple times is not the same as an actor who has heard the same joke hundreds of times during practice but still has to laugh when the time comes . Therefore, Russell's theory of analogous minds does not apply here either, since behavior is certainly not always an actual sign of what someone is thinking, making its use invalid to infer mind from someone else. Russell concludes by saying that his theories may not be entirely valid, but they are good enough to describe the idea that different minds exist; However, since his claims are based on probabilities, they lack solid evidence and are not very strong. He says: "We cannot be sure that, in our subjective experience, A is the only cause of B. And even if A is the only cause of B in our experience, how can we know that this is valid outside from our experience? However, he believes that this does not matter because it is enough to conclude that different minds exist. A problem arises here because his whole argument is that by noting the,.
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