Chapter XIV: The Knowledge of Other Minds
Abdul Hameed Kamali
Limitations of the Problem
Knowledge of other minds may be thought to be closely integrated with the fields of the cultural wissenschaften as determining and changing their formulation and structures. But this line of thought is mistaken, for no theory of the knowledge of other minds is able to articulate the axiomatics, modify the structure, or disturb the scheme of those sciences. Cultural, social, political, legal, economic and other orders of collective life never presuppose the mutual knowledge of minds in their makeup and configuration. As formal in character they are determined solely by their formal properties.
Every formal system is comprised of constant relations between the variables. The meanings, interpretations, constitutions of the variable terms do not participate in the meanings and essence of the formal systems. The logical constants and their rules of combination or operation constitute the meanings of the existence of the formal systems. For instance, such variable terms as ‘points’, ‘straight lines’, etc., are identified within geometric systems. Only the formal relations between them are studied by us. If we know the meanings of the points and straight lines, this in no way affects the constructions of geometric systems, for it does not form part of that system. Likewise, we are aware of the serial system of numbers; we do not know the meanings of one, two, three, etc., its variable terms but their mutual connections and the rules of their relatedness. This is so in mechanical, thermo-dynamic, electro-magnetic and chemical systems. Socio-cultural systems are not exceptions; they too consist in constant relations between variable terms.
The ‘meanings’, ‘inner processes’, and ‘interpretations’ of the variables are irrelevant to the existence of these systems. Only the socio-cultural relations and their rules of operations are constitutive of these orders of existence. Individuals are the variable terms in the socio-cultural systems, but their nature and meaning are excluded from the constitution and existence of these systems. Therefore, the theory of knowledge of other minds has no bearing on the cultural, social and economic systems.
Some may think that the world of socio-cultural reality might be independent of epistemology, but indispensable for the formulations of a general science of psychology. But this is not so. Psychology studies a closed system comprised of two sub-systems: (1) individual and (2) environment; it studies the mutal interaction between them. The object-matter of psychology is, thus, a formal system and the sub-systems are its terms. In studying this, psychology does not define the terms which are involved therein; the definitions and meanings of the terms are redundant for the existence of the system. Therefore, here again, the knowledge of other minds has no meaning even in psychic systems.
Neo-Platonic Form of the Problem
In our above elucidations we did not deny the existence of minds and individuals nor attempt to show that they do not exist. Our point is that there is no problem of the knowledge of other minds in social, cultural and psychic fields. If they exist, they are knowable. Many subjects of knowledge know other minds to some extent, and that there may be some beings who are acquainted with other minds adequately and completely without any remainder.
We are acquainted with trees, stars, and mountains; we are aware of other individuals; we know our friends, parents and teachers. But we are interrupted by the epistemologist, who raises the question: how do we know other minds? To be sure, these problems appear meaningful and significant to him and not to other persons including Moore and Ryle. What is the matter?
The epistemologist, whether a Kant or a Hegel, a Neurath or a Carnap, is the same neo-Platonist who believes (1) that the form of knowledge determines the mode of reality, (2) that what is not known by anybody does not exist, and so (3) knowledge somehow or other institutes the reality. In the meek form, the neo-Platonist is a logical positivist or a phenomenologist demanding the conditions of experiences; in the bold form, he is an idealist, asking about the categories of experience. He postulates any or all of the three above-mentioned propositions.
Indeed, the European idealistic tradition of thought is trying to secure a new lease of life in the guise of logical positivistic, instrumentalistic and psychologistic philosophies. Its basic belief-structure holds a logical priority of epistemology over ontology. Therefore, following this tradition, the epistemological question of the knowledge of the external world and of other minds is logically prior to the ontological problem of the existence of the external and the world of other minds. As it is the common and cardinal principle of phenomenological and idealistic philosophies that an idea consists in the steps of its constructions, the problem of other minds becomes for them the problem of the knowledge of other minds.
The inevitable direction of such formulations of the problem is towards the conclusion that other minds are logical constructions, as is the external world.
Bertrand Russell and Carnap are in alliance with Mannheim and Bradley as neo-Platonists for whom ‘to be’ means ‘to be known’. For Bradley and Croce, other minds are logical constructs of the objective spirit. To Russell and Carnap, they are logical constructs of the observer.
Just as the external world is a consequence of the constructive activity of the observer, other minds are the products of constructive activity. Carnap points out how, from the stuff of the private experience, the inter-subjective world is carved; how the logical construct of one’s own body and other bodies (selves) emerges in the field of experience.
But the essential characteristics of the ‘fact of knowledge’ are missing in constructionism. The pan-physicalistic and idealistic philosophies consider that construction and synthesis are the only functions of intellect. They altogether miss the cognitive or knowledge function of the mind. Therefore, the entire idealistic, pan-physicalistic alliance, although a good guide in combining, creating, and producing activities, is unhelpful in the demonstration of knowledge which is analytical. It seizes upon the components of the object, but never constructs it.
There are three possibilities in the knowledge of an object: (1) either it is completely known, or (2) it is incompletely known, or (3) it is unknown. None of these three facts effects the object, as knowledge is merely an awareness of the world, not its construction in the sense of being an adddition or change.
We are not interested in the modifications of other minds, but only in their knowledge. Our interest in influencing and reforming them does not enter into their being known by us. Neo-Platonic philosophies, in their failure to distinguish between knowledge and construction, always confuse the issue.
The laborious task of constructing the inter-subjective world of experience out of the stuff privately given by a subject of experience does not slightly enlighten us on the problem of knowledge. Similarly, the construction of other minds by the objective spirit does not throw light on the problem of the knowledge of other minds.
To Know vs to Create
The universal presupposition of the neo-Platonism enshrined in polylogism and logical positivism is that ‘To create an object implies to know the object.’ But knowledge and creation are two distinct words and one cannot be reduced to the other. Knowledge is a sui genre fact in the universe; similarly, constructivity is an unanalysable fact. Analysis or reduction of these facts in terms of any other fact is also impossible.
The Universal Ego in its creative act creates the object, and in its knowing act knows the object. He is the Creator and the Knower. To be knower, then, is one of His functions, and to be creator is another. The Hegelian philosophy in either Croce or Mannheim does not distinguish between these two. In describing the knowledge function, they introduce the modifications of reality, so that there is no knowledge without distortion even for the Universal Ego. Therefore, even God does not know other minds without modifying them.
In the pan-physicalistic version, the other mind is a logical construct out of elementary data. This goes beyond presentation and unifies them by fitting them into a ‘concept’ of mind. A constructive activity is either consistent or inconsistent but is never true or false. Yet the physicalists say that this construct is either true or false in the sense of corresponding or not to reality. This ‘novel’ feature of the construct is made plausible by the mind not only apprehending the presentation but moving beyond it in the world not of reality but of language. Logical constructs, like chairs and minds, are formulations in the system of language, propositional functions.
Whether language construct corresponds or not to the objective fact of reality is the problem. Whether there is a chair or a mind still remains a problem which only the future will answer. And the future does not decide it at one stroke, but simply changes the probability of a language construct on the truth-falsehood scale. Hence, although I have constructed something in the realm of language, I do not know whether it exists in the external world. In this way language philosophers do not enlighten us about the problem of knowledge.
The difficulty again lies in the concept that mind is constructive and never cognitive. Whenever the language philosopher is forced to admit the cognitive function of mind, he reduces it to the constructive function and attempts to solve the problem of knowledge in those terms. Professor Qadir is beset with the same difficulty when he says that our knowledge of all other things is inductive and probable. Induction is a name of the constructive function at the symbolic level; it is a movement towards a general construct synthesising the particulars. Induction is a process of creative activity, but knowledge is never a creativity. Creation and construction, induction and synthesis belong to the sphere of practical activity. We never know other things by induction or by logical construction.
Knowledge is a fact distinct from the inductive generalising acts. It means analysis as opposed to induction. Our knowledge of other minds and of the furniture of the universe, therefore, is not a case of induction but of analysis. Our doings, orderings, systematisations and action-patterns follow the principles of construction and induction, while knowledge is the grasp of an object in its constitution, an apprehension of a presentation in its components.
Knowledge is not a doing, indeed all sorts of activity are besides the fact of knowledge. The sentence "I know X" is a distortion of language as it suggests that knowledge is an activity; perhaps all neo-Platonic philosophies have taken their start from this deceptive formulation of language. Therefore, "X knows Y" must be reconstructed as "Y is known to X", so that the colour of doing may be removed. The reformulation of a knowledge situation in the structure of language represents it as a relational system, in which there are two terms in the non-symmetrical relation of "is known to." Let us denote this relation by R. It is a dyadic, non-symmetrical , non-transitive relation.
Like all systems, the knowledge system requires the existence of its constituents only and nothing else: (1) the two terms and (2) the relation R. No further elements and no other systems of reality are involved in the existence of knowledge systems. Consequently, "X is hankering after Y." "Y is in need of X", "X is the neighbour of Y", etc., may be facts, but their factuality does not influence nor does it determine the systems: ‘Rxy’, or ‘Ryx’, or both. Knowledge systems are among the possible systems of the universe. They are not modified by any other system nor do they modify other systems in their compresence with them.
Constituents of Knowledge
The only meaningful question is: what is apprehended of the object? This investigation becomes an inquiry into the constituents of the object. Instead of describing how knowledge is possible, the epistemologist admits the actuality of knowledge and starts the analysis of the object.
Some philosophers assert that there is a limit set on the knowledge of everything. In the case of other mind, they say, it is the body of the mind which is apprehended and not the mind; they think that we know the body in which a mind is incarnated and never know the mind. Obviously, this argument is a proposal as to the use of the words: the known is called a body, and the unknown is called a mind. It is just possible that someone is self-conscious and is also conscious of all others. Then the entire universe including oneself is a body (or bodies). It is also possible that some entity is neither self-conscious nor conscious of others; then the entire universe is a mind (or many minds). To the extent to which I know myself I am a body; and to extent to which I do not know myself I am a mind. I am mind in the body or rather mind and body.
But, these philosophers point out that they are not forwarding a proposal of reform of linguistic conventions, but are hitting at a fact in reality, namely, that what is unknowable is the fact that there are also other subjects of experience. We know organic movements, factual expressions, and muscular coordinations, but do not know that other persons have knowledge; we cannot know that they are conscious beings.
This argument, so far as it goes, presupposes a ‘ghost-in-the-machine’ model of the living beings that is confounded by its failure to see the ‘ghost’, the driver of the machine. But if one notices the ‘ghost’ in the machine, and no one apprehends the ‘mind’ in the body, then no one can assert or think that the Ghost is in the machine and the mind is in the body.
The fact is that the ghost is the machine and the body is the mind; mind and body are two names of the same entity. If the ‘same entity’ is the object of knowledge, it is a body; and if it is subject of knowledge, it is mind. Again, the distinction between body and mind is merely verbal and symbolic. These words are merely indications of the position a term holds in the knowledge system.
Yet, there is a problem: is it possible to know that some entity (other than the writer or the speaker) knows other objects? Philosophers, like Ayer, say that it is impossible; knowledge is private to subject and inaccessible to others. Professor Qadir would, at once, agree with Professor Ayer. I gaze at Mr. X, but do not know the depth and expanse of his knowledge; therefore, I cannot know that Mr. X is a knower, or has consciousness, etc.
This entire approach, in my opinion, is a cynical misdirection of energies; for the problem is not to know X, but to know what X knows. Surely, by ‘Rix’ I cannot know ‘Rxa’, ‘Rxb’, Rxm’ [(I, = the speaker); (a, b, m = objects of knowledge)]. I must direct my attention to all the knowledge-systems in which X is the subject term instead of dissipating myself in looking at X in isolation.
‘X’ and ‘Rxa’ do not mean the same thing. The neo-Platonists conceive that ‘Rxa’ is a part of ‘X’, which is an ontological mistake in which the part of a system contains the whole as its part. This mistake continues in all their traditions, even in the contemporary empiricism, and compels them to apprehend ‘X’ on the occasions when they have to grasp ‘Rxa’. My problem to know X’s knowledge really means I must (1) not only know X, but (2) all the objects which are known to X, and then I must behold (3) the relational systems the objects make with X.
Since human beings are fond of symbolisations, they name the entities, and remember them by their names or symbols. Our inquiry would then amount to be an inquiry into the existence of knowledge systems composed of X and various symbols.
No one can look into the individuals so as to discover the treasuries of knowledge inside them. Knowledge is not contained in mind. It is mind which is contained as a term in the system of knowledge. Along this line we can dispose of many problems as to the knowledge of other minds.
Bifurcation vs Process
Common people and the Neo-Platonists are so much saturated in the dualistic terminology of mind and matter, ghost and machine, internal and external, that in describing plain facts of life they create puzzles. For instance, the ordinary fact that I am happy means to them that happiness is inside me, and my face and body are simply an agency of its expression. They employ the ‘cause-agency’ and ‘end-means’ formulae in understanding themselves, other beings, and perhaps the entire universe.
Although the Muslim tradition of thought used the classification of the ‘seen’ and the ‘unseen’ before the impact of neo-Platonism, yet it never employed the categories of ‘mind and matter’, ‘soul and agency’, etc. For most of the sufis and thinkers of the time the dualism of materiality and spirituality never existed, and so the ordinary facts of sadness, happiness, frustration, etc., could not be conceived as internal states.
But, in the historical development since then, language cast in neo-Platonic frameworks has so transformed the habits of thought and so much penetrated the traditions of our society that every man, as if by nature, is guided to accept them as inner facts, accessible to the possessor and inaccessible to the outsider. We must try to deliver ourselves from these models of language construction which induce us to adopt those norms of understanding at the cost of all others.
The class character of the traditional models of thought is the bifurcation of a continuous process into two halves; one of them becomes the reality, and the other appearance (expression). Professor Dev’s ungraded poles of truth and falsehood, of reality and maya, are the climax of this tendency. The consequence of this bifurcation is a list of causes and motives in the field of mind which are said to be independent of the vehicles and means in which they are expressed. This ideology is beneath the subjectivistic, hedonistic and emotivistic ethics of our times; it is the esoteric structure of polylogism and historism; again, it is the bedrock of the ideal of the privacy of the content of experience which is basic to logical positivism.
The result is that happiness, frustrations, ambitions, pains, headaches, loves, hates, conflicts, cooperations, etc., are supposed to inhere within individuals. As internal states, they are unknown to others. The epistemologists ask: how do we know the motives of other persons, since ex hypothesi they are unknowable? After raising this question in despair, he replies that the reality is unknown, only the gateway to appearance is open to us. Therefore, nothing but induction, speculation and guessing is our business. Only in the hereafter will we know whether our guesses were true.
If this is right, then there is no solid support for mutual confidence, no sure guarantee behind the system of credit and no process of justice, for it is not secure in its principles of evidence. No one is prepared to accept the dangerous conclusions of this line of thought. People must reject it not because it is dangerous, but because it rests on the slippery grounds of the bifurcation of the reality into cause-effect, motive-expression, appearance-reality groups.
Of the life of mind some particular process is happiness, another specific process is depression, still another is wonder, and there are many more. But a process is an ordered series ¾ a set of events -- such that it is uni-directional; it has a first element and its duration is determined by its (number of) recurrence. If it halts at any of its points, it is no more. The observer of the self (of which it is a process) breaks it down into (1) the motive segment, (2) action segment and (3) goal. This attempt to cut down and label the various pieces of a process represents the horrible power of a certain habit of mind inherited by us from the past. It is a convention in the same sense in which there are other customs and traditions of a group of people, transmitted from generation to generation. Its sole justification is that it is there.
By grafting this convention of classifications onto the facts of life, we make the problem of the knowledge of other minds unanswerable.
This convention, embedded with certain definitions, declares the mind unknowable. The definitions are: (1) the motive segment is isolable from and is independent of the action and goal segments, (2) the motive segment is one which is interior and the rest of the process is exterior, (3) the motive segment is that part which is unknowable, (4) it is the essence of Mind. All of these definitions given with the convention of classification would mean that if there is an E-group of the life of mind which is known, then it is an exterior fact; consequently, it is not a motive, and so does not form part of the essence of mind. Thus mind is made unknowable by the very definitions. The unknowable is the motive which is the essence of mind. If we adopt this scheme of the taxonomic concepts, we would be doomed not to talk about the knowledge of other minds, which existence would always appear as a guess.
The processes of life, in spite of their conventional segmentations, are public facts. They are open to inspection; there is no exterior and no interior. They can be apprehended in their totality and as such are called states, every one of which has a volume or dimension in which many tiny events or elements are densely populated. Our vision of a cluster, garden or gathering does not depend upon counting every single item, although in principle that is just possible, rather we take a view of it and know what exists. Similarly, a spectator takes a snapshot of the state of affairs without noting each of its items, and knows that it is there. People, living in a community, are aware of the various constellations of the facts of life.
They are public facts open to inspection by any mind. Sometimes, the constellation of happiness enters in my life. Sometimes, it occurs to X, and sometimes to Y, and so on. We human beings have a direct awareness of the different constellations of the facts of human life: they happen to anyone who belongs to our society, and we at once recognise them when they occur, as we recognise the colours, the chairs, and other entities if they are present. This means that the fact of cognition is the same; the apprehension is not different, only its objects differ. We often seize upon the objects completely in a field of cognition; we comprehend them in their unity without waiting for individual verification or the future that may betake it.
The Role of the Total Configuration
The apprehension of the total configuration of a state enables a man to mark off some of its portions as a motive. This is a mere selection and there is no real problem. But, not satisfied with this, he declares it to be more real and substantial and relegates all other parts to the status of subordinate and shadowy existents. The motive sector is elevated to the status of ‘really’ real and is labelled as the ‘original meaning’; the rest of the configuration of the state is reduced to its vehicle of expression. The argument is that meanings may be expressed in various languages, styles, and words and are independent of their expressions. The reality is independent of its manifestation; it may change its expressive form and invent new modes of its expression. The motive segment is the real meaning of the totality of a state. The state itself is symbol. This idea has its genesis in the symbol-making and name-giving function of the intellectual life. In the context of symbolisation, it is true that what is symbolised is independent of the symbolism. The facts may be reproduced in multifarious symbolic transformations. But these truths are generalised by us to cover the fields for which they are not meant. As a result we try to grasp the world history as an expression of some immanent meaning. We may be easily deceived to conceive that the legs of a chair are the symbolic expressions of the chair, whereas they are only parts of the chair. We generalise that some parts of an event are the reality of the event and other parts are the symbols of that reality, that the motive segment is the real and all other segments are its expressions. So the same motive may redirect itself in various possible action patterns and conditions of life, which are nothing but its symbolic expressions.
The reduction of some component set of a configuration to the level of symbolism, and the elevation of some other part to the level of the ‘reality’ and the ‘essence’, by the very nature of its model of schematisation, rule out the knowledge of other minds. What is known is symbolic. We are led to believe that ‘self-contentment’ can express itself in the symbols of richness and palatial buildings, and again can express itself in the symbols of wretchedness and slum housing. Our belief in the symbolic nature of the presented events and the known facts heavily presses us to guess whether the man sitting before us is self-content or not.
There is no escape from the unknowability of other minds in face of the unrestricted application of the ‘reality-symbolism’ or the ‘meaning-expression’ models of approach. This model of organisation of the facts of mental life permeates all the sceptic and inductive formulations of the problem of the knowledge of other minds.
We must get rid of this convention of systematising models, and then see other minds. Let us see, for example, a man of a slum area in stringent financial condition, yet with a smiling face. What we observe is a form of life which is instituted in (1) the slum residence, (2) stringent finance and (3) the smiling face. All these three factors are component of an integral form of life. We may call it self-contentment, if we like. Now we observe another man living in a spacious building abounding in riches; his face also shines with a smile. This is also a composite form of life instituted in (1) the spacious building, (2) generous income and (3) a beaming face. There is nothing invisible which is expressed in this form. Let us not hasten to call it self-contentment, because, if this word stands for the former experience, it cannot also stand for this latter form of life. Both the forms have only one component in common and it is the shining smile; all other factors are different. We have to invent words and terms to denote distinct and mutually irreducible integrated styles of existence.
All the factors peculiar to a form contribute to the existence of the form. If some of the components are dissociated from it, and combined with some other elements, then a new form emerges. A dissociation of some components disintegrates the form of which they are parts. The study of a mind is a study of the emerging, developing, continuing, and disintegrating forms of its existence. The knowledge of other minds consists in the awareness of the elements found in its field, their associations and combinations, their dissociations and reorganisations. To every possible combination of the elements, we must give a specific name. The model of chemistry is to be used in the knowledge of other minds. We must use and develop a symbolism, over and above ordinary language, which must represent the facts of life with consistency and without confusion as has been done in physics and chemistry on the pattern of algebra.
Some of the elements of a specific form attract attention; they are ‘preferred’ by the self or the observer. But this fact of being linked by the mind does not place them in a privileged position; their selection does not assign them a different ontological status. They are designated as motives, but their being predicated with cathexis does not give rise to other elements which they combine. They do not determine the formations of life; they are not motives. It is just possible that I may prefer the oxygen component of a compound, but this does not mean that other components of the compound are caused and generated by the oxygen element. It also does not mean that the principle of compounding is governed by the oxygen parameter of the compound-form. The compound, its principle of formation, and the elements of its being, exist independently of my preference. Similarly, the being of a form of life, its essentialisation, and its structural law are independent of my preference of some of its parts, whether it happens in my life or in some other life. Therefore, those elements, charged with cathexis, are not the movers of the formations of life; they do not constitute the essence of formal existence, they are not the principles of dynamism in the flow of life.
To be cathected is a fact, but this does not import an ontological character to the cathected elements. The ontology of the formations of life is not rendered meaningful by discovering them. Therefore, in the knowledge of other minds, we must observe the forms, their constitutions, and their elements. Cathections, values, etc., are facts but do not make the group of meaning at the level of formal existence of mind. The form itself is meaning and its elements are the elements of meanings.
Knowledge by Assimilation
The elements of the mental field are combined vertically and horizontally. The relations of simultaneity and succession, peculiar to the mental order, prevail between them. If we observe an element in our apprehension of the other mind, we look into its relation with other simultaneous elements, and also look into its relations with other preceding elements. This is knowledge of the spatio-temporality of the mental existence.
In the knowledge of other minds we are in cognitive contact with a spatio-temporal reality, which constitutes the life of mind. We know minds as they are in their spatio-temporal organisations. This spatio-temporal context, like every other context, contains its filling ‘contents’ which are peculiar to it. They have the same common level and type of existence; the elements in a context share the same type and level of existence which cannot belong to other contexts. For instance, chemistry possesses the elements which cannot be extrapolated to other fields of being; the elements like oxygen, hydrogen, iron, etc., share the same type and level of existence which is enjoyed by any other element to be discovered in the chemical context.
So in a specific context of mental life, its elementary data are at par with one another; their typology is the same. The muscular sets, changes of the faces, the poses of the organs, the housing conditions and so on are the data (elements) at the same plane of existence with the same typology of being.
All these elements or data are combined with one another in spatio-temporal configurations. In the observation of other minds we grasp the spatio-temporal coordinates composed of these elements of the same sort and level. We catch hold of these elements in their successive and simultaneous arrangements and describe that ‘X is anxious’, ‘Y is furious’, ‘Z is disappointed’. There is no connotation of these forms -- anxiety and fury and disappointment, etc. (crude symbolism as they are) -- which require elements of some other level and kind of Being. We do not go ‘inside’ the elements. We merely observe their relations, horizontal and vertical, with other elements. We remain at the level of presentations and comprehend their spatio-temporal coordinations and arrangements whenever we observe other persons.
After the observation, we twist our objects and, instead of representing what we have seen, we introduce our own constructs and describe the facts of observation. The consequence is that the descriptions do not have one-to-one relations with the field of observation. The descriptions are projections of the observer into the field under inspection. This sort of activity is preached by historicism. It is said that in the knowledge of other minds the observer ‘internalises’ the presentations, which process issues in identification in which the observer lives through the internalised data of other minds. The observer makes them data of his own self, and reads his internal processes, thereby knowing what these data mean. He projects these readings on the face of the other person and understands what he is likely to be.
This is called the principle of ‘Understanding’, according to which the assimilation of the known in the knower is the principle of knowledge of other minds. It constitutes the philosophy of historicism. Collingwood, Sorokin, MacIver, and Znaniecke in their explications of the epistemology of mind propound that no one knows the other person without the process of identification, and in identification we thrust ourselves into the contents of the life of other persons. Thus, the knowledge of other minds is nothing but an image of our own self. We observe the contents and fill them with the meanings supplied to us from our own inner resources. Therefore the historical works do not reproduce the ancient civilisations; they mirror the historian’s, they portray their own subjective spirits. In knowing other men, I know myself.
This theory of knowledge supported by many great social scientists, anthropologists and philosophers of culture of today is challenged by Fakhruddin Razi, Hazamudin Behrawi and Sadruddin Sherazi. The unity of the knower and the known in the fact of knowledge is also rejected by Shah Waliullah for it means that a noble man cannot know the ignoble and that God cannot know the criminal without assimilating him into His being. This subjectivistic theory really rules out knowledge of other minds; it means that I know rather my states of consciousness.
The knowledge-by-identification theory provides the so-called ‘meaningful components’ of the facts of life. Accordingly, if there is an element X after which appears Z, the transition from X to Z is made possible by some Y which is its meaningful causal component. The variables X and Z require an intervening variable of ‘causal-meaningful’ lines. This schemata is behind the physicalistic philosophy also when applied to the knowledge of other minds. The physicalists admit that their reductionism does not define their states of mind but provides simply the physical signs (components) of the mental situations with which they are related to a certain degree of probability. This reductionism must again return to the method of imaginative reconstruction in order to pour meaning into the physical signs of the mental life. Therefore, this pan-physicalistic movement is the same idealism of knowledge-by-identification sort.
Knowledge and Content
The theory of the knowledge of other minds advocated here is plain. It does not seek any intervening variables and does not demand identification. It asserts rather that we know other minds without internalisation of the data apprehended. We observe them and note their spatio-temporality, their relationships with other data or par with them in their typology and level of being.
We observe ourselves and others in the same objective manner. This is real knowledge and the knowledge of mind does not need any special sort of categorisation as distinct from the knowledge of such other things as stones and trees. We stop to know other persons and ourselves as soon as we start to pour in some mentally constructed variables from the situations of our lives or of other lives, with the result that there remains no correspondence between what there is and what we imagine.
However, the formations we observe are reducible without remainder to the elements found in the spatio-temporal continua of the life of mind. Some formations of life include such elements as (1) limbs, (2) office, (3) factory organisation; others include (1) the sky and stars, (2) landscape, and (3) and the cultivated land; still others are comprised of (1) church organisations, (2) rituals and (3) township. Thus, the context of mind in some of its formations is congruent with the entire universe; in others is installed in its rural or urban setting; in some others is narrowed down to a breathing centre. There is no particular and rigid limit to its context. We simply see the face and want to know what there is in all formations. In this misapplication of our energies we observe only a tiny element of the big formations of the mind and report to others that mind is invisible.
Consciousness of some objects terminates at the grasp of the simple unanalysable elements given in its nature. They are presented as ultimate given data which do not admit of further analysis; in their nature they are mutually irreducible because mutually distinct. Therefore they are unanalysable in terms of the order of their existence. They are not simply distinct from each other, but are predicated with possibility and as such are identical with each other; they share the existence or "is-ness" peculiar to all of them. In other words, there is an existence of which the simple distinctions are possible differentiations, which collected together form a complex. Thus every complex (formation or event) belongs to the context of a specific existence wherein it occupies the fourth order of existence. To be precise, every Is-ness in its contextualisation formulates the following categories or orders of itself:
The universal category of existence.
The category of possibility.
The category of the simple distinctions.
The combinations of the simple distinctions, which in this order, are called elements.
Cognitive comprehension always remains within a context and penetrates up to its third order only. It notices the distinctions and knows their mutual differentiations, yet they do not move further analytically. It cognises the order of existence without analysis; and apprehends it as unanalysed given datum universally pervading all the orders formed in its context. It is the final definitive essence of everything, but itself does not admit of definition. We are simply acquainted with it. Our acquaintance with the simple elements of a context presupposes a direct acquaintance with its universal existence and with the possibilities that constitute the essence of these elements. Thus, awareness with the homogeneous mass, defining and articulating the entire field delineated in its context, is an a priori condition of its recognitions in its heterogeneous distinctions. The knowledge of distinctions presupposes the knowledge of the reality of which they are distinctions.
Consequently, the knowledge of a formation involves the earlier cognition of its possibility and existence that constitutes its essential givenness. For example, we must know the bare existence of chemical interaction in order to know the chemical formations like carbon dioxide and calcium chloride, etc. Similarly, we must be aware of the category of ‘mechanical displacement’ in order to apprehend the motions of the motor-cars, the flights of rockets, etc. Without the direct knowledge of the existence of ‘exchange’, we cannot grasp such complex phenomena as price fluctuations, interest rates, employment levels, etc.
By the earlier direct acquaintance with the existence of a context, we do not mean temporal precedence, but simply logical priority. From this discussion it follows that the knowledge of the formations, states, and articulations of mind involves the earlier knowledge of the existence of mind. We are able to cognise the facts of mind because we directly know it as a given datum, an unanalysable existence. ‘Chemical interaction’, ‘mechanical displacement’ and ‘electromagnetism’ are unanalysable facts in their respective fields in which we study their formations, intricate developments and transformations. Since we directly know ‘sociation’, we know the realities that develop in its fields like cooperation, competitions, institutions, cultural patterns, etc., and finally the social system. There is no such question, ‘How do we know’? but only ‘What do we know’?
Knowledge and Context
Every entity is a member of some context defined in terms of the specific existence that constitutes it. Stripped of the context, the entity is meaningless and connotes nothing; its name is simply a meaningless utterance.
Pan-physicalistic movement is an adventure into this sort of meaninglessness. It tries to reduce all entities, happenings and formations, stripped of their contexts, to terms of the language of physics (Hempel). Its programme is to reduce any context so that it must be presentable in sentences which contain only physicalistic terms. As this programme is not promising to many physicalists they are satisfied to discover the essential (and unique) physicalistic parts of the situation that may serve its sign -- test conditions. Since the sense impressions are stuff in some particular contexts, they cannot be carried over to become the sign situations of other contexts without themselves becoming meaningless. Therefore complete or partial reduction, in its essential nature, is meaningless.
If a physicalist is asked to signify the monetary phenomena, his reductive technique would compel him to reduce it to the ‘metal with the marks’ and the ‘paper and the printed impressions’ which name the units of the money. The printed paper and the marked metal in the pecuniary world are simply symbols of the money and not its signs, in the same way in which our proper names are symbols of our beings and not parts of ourselves. In this manner, the physicalist is doomed to utter failure. The context of ‘credit’ defines the money as a medium of exchange. We know credit, therefore we know money; but credit has no physical signs as part of its existence. If we reduce it to printed paper, the entire mass of regular monetary transactions would be reduced to a heap of disconnected pieces of paper mysteriously moving from hand to hand in geophysical space.
Similarly, the ‘exchange of goods’ does not admit of the physicalistic reduction, neither is the existence of sociation reducible to protocols containing physical terms. Physicalists are not able to grasp these realities, fortunately they are human beings first and never fail in the community of minds. Those physicalists who have contributed to the advancement of the cultural sciences, like Dodd and Lundberg, had first recognised the irreducible character of the contexts of their study and then proceeded forward.
Exchange, credit, sociation, etc., are simple distinctions within the context of mind, which in turn formulate their own respective contexts. If the physicalist is not able to reduce these distinctions defined in the context of mind to the propositions of physics, he has no chance to reduce the ultimate mental existence to physicalistic protocols. Such simple relations as ‘and’, ‘if then’, ‘smaller than’, ‘greater than’, etc., do not have physical signs as part of their nature, but they are known to us.
An entity is a relation if it is dyadic or polyadic in its character. Love, hate, cooperation, competition, rivalry, etc., are relations. They are not like colours or like sounds; yet they are known. They are relations which obtain between events, facts and any stuff which is appropriate to them. Their presence in a field organises the field in its respective configurations. Therefore, we are able to recognise the love configuration in such diverse things as poetry, religious experience, mother-child relations, etc. Similarly, we recognise the competitive situation because we are aware of the relation of competition which organises the whole content of the situation in its relational manifold. Likewise, we cognise the power of politics, because we know the relation of power.
The reduction of these configurations to physicalistic terms is quite impossible. Perhaps, it may be said that a particular set of the face is the sign of benevolence which therefore is reducible to this sign. But for this to be recognised as a ‘sign’ of benevolence presupposes our knowledge of ‘benevolence’. Moreover, the ‘sign’ is also an arrangement of the elements in which the peculiar relations appropriate to benevolence must prevail.
Love, competition, pride, hatred, etc., are visible not because the ‘physical’ elements are part of their reality, but because they are directly known and recognised by us in every configuration. Moreover, bright smiles, facial expressions, shapes of the human body, etc., are not things of the physical field, but of the mental field independent of their discovery in the physical context. Physics or the language of physics does not recognise patches of colours; it only knows the refraction of the rays. The chairs and tables which decorate our dwellings are not matter for chemestry or physics with its electromagnetic whirlpools, but are artefaces of human culture and as such they exist only in the human context. We have Ellura, Ajanta and Taj Mahal; chemistry has cilicates, corbonates and calcium compounds; we have fevers; physics has thermal change.
Thus, the audio-visual fields open to a knower are besides the contexts of physics and chemistry and belong to their own contexts. But the language symbolising the entities of their context is carried over to the physical and chemical fields in violation of the rules of language construction. Physicalists worship these law-breaking customs. These contexts -- the audio-visual fields -- are continuous with the mental contexts. They possess their own ‘simple’ distinctive beings (for instance the various coloursin the visual field) independent of the elements of chemistry and the "simples" of physics. These "simples" are arranged in various ways in the context of the life of mind. One particular manifold of their systematisation is competition and another is cooperation. It is by virtue of their relational manifold that we know what they signify. In themselves they signify nothing; only as a part of a relational order are they significant.
Signs, Cultures and Knowledge of Other Minds
Sign is a role played by some parts of a whole when an observer is present. Their sign function is essentially communicative. Every arrangement of a spiritual formation contains its own temporality so that the data which appear earlier are signs of that which follows. If, a priori, we know the entire formation then we are able to know what is signified. A competitive form of existence undergoes various turns of its formation; and at a single moment the observer notes only the parts which then appear. They signify what is gone, and also what is to come. A soft mind, who knows nothing about the form of competition, cannot read the significance; for him the data are meaningless and the mind is not known. Therefore, we develop the formal sciences of human fields and the human scientists who know human formations are called upon to tell us what a particular event means.
A mind at a particular instant of its being is an order of signs which constitutes its entire life at that particular instant. Consequently, although we know other minds, we know them in their different moments of life, and never in their entire formations. The difficulty is not only in knowing others, but also in knowing ourselves; we do not know what we will do tomorrow.
To remove this difficulty and to be able to predict future behaviour, we develop and follow the ethos and norms of formations. We evolve various sorts of mores and standards of the patterns of activities; we give ourselves various conventions and rules of formation. We know them in advance and comply with them, and therefore we know what each of us is doing. We know the formative conventions of a performance, and if in the context of some other mind it is taking place, our knowledge enables us to predict what will happen next. We make routines and schedules, time-tables and programmes, introduce them among ourselves, and know what is going to be tomorrow.
The totality of the conventions, norms, rules, customs and schedulings guaranteed by the coercive forces of various sorts, is called the culture. It provides a comprehensive mapping of the behaviour field of the entire society, fixing the roles of the individuals and their respective movements. We move in its field via the routes and trajectories fixed for us. All of us know the culture at least up to the primary and some of the secondary relations; consequently, if we know the place and position of some other person, we are able to know his roles, determinations and formations.
In the principle of culture we are lifted above the knowledge. Mind or self is the maker, inventor and contriver, and as such operates above the cognitive principle. From that position, he gives to himself laws of operations, rules of formations, styles, manners and the programmes of his life; then he knows what he would do. In mutual communion minds do the same, and communicate with each other through the medium of the rules, constitutions and modes of their own making.
There remains the ultimate question: what is communicated to us in the knowledge of other minds independent of all its constructions and inventions, formulations and determinations? A bare existence, unanalysable and indivisible, is known to us in the knowledge of other minds. To know a mind in its complete purity without any of its distinctions and articulations is as much good as to know any other mind. It is direct acquaintance with this existence, indistinct and unspecified, that is presupposed in every context of its recognition. Its knowledge, as Professor M. Aslam remarks, may be a miracle as is every other knowledge.
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Author: Naeem Ahmad
