Customer Reviews

Other Minds

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John Wisdom is one of a loose group of philosophers who are gaining recognition for their unique approach to problems in philosophy of mind, language, and religion. Owing much to the dizzying reorientation produced by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Wisdom attempts to better understand the epistemological puzzle that presents itself when we give a quick sketch of human beings existing and relating to each other in the world. We might assume that to be human is to exist as a body and a mind; the body is public, extended, finite, and divisible; the mind is abstract, intangible, and private; one's body belongs to the physical world, but one's mind belongs chiefly and conspicuously to oneself.
If we assume a picture something like what's suggested above, then we face a quandary. How can we ever know the contents of another's mind?
Wisdom presents the reader with an array of examples meant to elucidate the concepts and expose the assumptions that give this classic philosophical problem its hypnotic power. His methods are contentious. And whether or not you are inclined to agree with them, the fate of philosophy of mind - and psychology and cognitive science by extension - hangs in the balance.

Highly intellectual, cerebral, and academic. Of little value (+ 1 star) to the general layperson except to those who love analysing. Written by a psychologist for psychologists. It analyses how one may perceive what other people may be thinking.

Surprisingly, this book was referred to by another author, John G Bennett, who wrote a highly recommended and readable book on our current epoch of human spirituality, "The Crisis in Human Affairs" (1948) - 239 pages, ASIN: B0006D9DNG, which is, and will be, far from anachronistic.

I would rather recommend another book about thinking (if thinking is what the prospective reader would like to think about), which is by Rudolph Steiner, called "Intuitive Thinking As a Spiritual Path" (Oct 1995) - 288 pages, ISBN: 088010385X. (Rudolph Steiner advocated a form of ethical individualism, to which he later brought a more explicitly spiritual component. He based his epistemology on Johann Wolfgang Goethe's world view, in which "Thinking ... is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas." A consistent thread that runs from Steiner's earliest philosophical phase through his later spiritual orientation is the goal of demonstrating that there are no essential limits to human knowledge.)

All the aforesaid books relate to spiritual matters (if one views "Other Minds" as an enquiry into the spiritual nature of other people's minds)
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