From my understanding, the "one world interpretation", even if representative of kants personal views, is misleading if treated as a viable conclusion of his epistemology, for you cannot even claim ignorance about a fact you cannot reach in relation to a concept you cannot define. Perhaps what I'm seeking to clarify is what could be called a "zero world interpretation"

my crude understanding of kants position regarding the self, is that the personal pronoun is used a transcendental designator without a reference or conscious representation, that consciousness itself is more or less synonymous with cognitive acts of synthesis and the unity of apperception , and that knowledge of the self is restricted to representations i.e appearances only. Regardless of kants theological or ethical motives, noumena never make a positive appearance in his theory of the self or of consciousness or of valid cognitive judgements, well at least not on the SEP page discussing his complicated theses regarding the self.

So as i currently understand, one can never arrive at noumena when working strictly within Kant's constructive account of cognition. "Noumena" is more like a grammatical demonstration of an illegal move within his construction. It is as if Kant had said in defining chess that "only the bishop can move diagonally" and with everyone mistaking this for a physical theory or an empirical law, and then proceeding to evaluate whether in theory an in practice this was necessarily the case.

Metaphysics doesn't appear to be conceivable as a priori and independent of empirical observation ever since the collapse of the analytic-synthetic distinction. An insight I would personally tribute to Wittgenstein rather than to Quine, given how the abolishment of logical necessity is a simple corollary of the abolishment of the notion of privately obeying a rule. For there is no example of logical necessity to be found in the outside world.

Information theory, specifically the minimum description length principle seems at first glance to be the closest thing to a theory of naturalised epistemology, given its natural identification of ontology as an empirically updated data compression code that is not critically dependent on the a priori/a posteriori distinction in the way that classical metaphysics assumes ontology to be. Perhaps deleuze reached a similar conclusion through introspection.

Yet the identification of information theory as a transcendental principle of a naturalised metaphysics that lies as a foundation of certainty beneath all other knowledge and understanding looks to be a mistake for the same reason as earlier, namely that it is just another example of a rule of logic with no meaning outside of praxis, and that to conceive of it as being metaphysical is to appeal once again to an absolute and private notion of rule following or of logical necessity.

So I can only conclude that in all important respects, neither the presence nor absence of other minds is metaphysically conceivable. — sime


It is certainly conceivable - you've done that. But whether it is completely knowable - in a way that your logicism wants to demand - is another question. — apokrisis

mmm... but I must protest again, do the habits of my social cognition really amount to metaphysical conceivability of other minds in themselves, given the fact i can neither imagine the presence nor absence of sensation in the third person?

What about children relating in earnest to dolls, robots, cartoon characters and teapots? does this mean that they have metaphysically conceived of objective idealism or pan-psychism? and isn't equating psychological attitude with metaphysical absolutes fraught, misleading and even potentially dangerous?

So that goes to the issue of what counts as knowledge. As a Pragmatist, my view is that it is what you cannot doubt in your heart. It is what you would actually be willing to act upon in confidence. — apokrisis

well it appears I have at least a choice between perceptual stances. I am free to perceive someone as a person as i naturally do and to feel empathy towards them in a pragmatic fashion, but I am also free to perceive them as a zombie in a critical fashion and to deconstruct their speech acts into acoustic blasts, and analyse away their appearance into moving edges and changing colour blobs. It appears that i have a freedom of stances, but without any means of epistemological justification for choosing one over the other. And in no event, can the stance I take tell me anything metaphysically, since what i interpret is strictly relative to the perspective of my a priori chosen stance.

The analogical approach to 'other minds' is a common approach, but is beset by a problem which is equally often pointed out: what motivates the application of the analogy to begin with, if you did not already recognise the 'other mind' in the first place? In other words, aren't you simply assuming your conclusion? — StreetlightX

Perhaps the stance I take towards other people is the starting point of the sense of my language and a necessary condition to be established prior to its meaning and use. In which case, the so called ontological question about other minds does not really concern the existence of other minds, surely an inconceivable interpretation of the question, that as you've additionally mentioned often leads to a circular answer. Rather it is a question concerning the psycho-linguistical grammar or stance that one should use in every day social interaction. Choose whichever stance you wish, either way, you're right!