The Argument from Analogy

Note: In class, I discussed the argument from analogy in connection with dualism. However, nothing about the argument (or the problem of other minds, for that matter) depends on dualism. The problem of other minds is a completely general epistemological problem, and the argument from analogy is a general attempt to solve it.

Very briefly, the argument from analogy is an inductive argument. It argues from observations about about how my own behavior is related to my own mental activity, to an analogous relation between someone else's behavior and their mental activity.

For example, I know how I act when I'm in pain, so I reason by analogy that when someone else acts that way then they are in pain.

Putting it somewhatmore formally: I know, in my own case, how I behave when I’m in a certain mental state.
When I’m in mental state M, I perform actions A₁,A₂,…A_n .
So, when I see you perform actions A₁,A₂,…A_n, I can reason by "analogy" that you are in mental state M.

However, we saw that there are some problems with the argument from analogy. Blackburn (on pp. 54-55) discusses the main problem with the argument, namely:

The Argument from Analogy is a generalization from only one case.