This book has been a long time in the making. Other issues have taken me away from it from time to extended time. But I kept coming back to the problem of other minds. It has remained a great issue, it is much contested still, and it is, after all, elose to us all. I like believing that the time taken has deepened my understanding of the problem and how it is to be handled. Other people, some by disagreeing vehemently, have helped greatly. I mention in particular, Brian Ellis, Robert Fox, Graeme Marshali, Tim Oakley, Ray Pinkerton and Robert Young. Robert Pargetter argued with me, and kept...

This new study is by far the most comprehensive examination yet of a problem that involves us all: the basis of our knowledge that others have minds. It insists, against the received wisdom, that no theory of mind can avoid the problem or make it easier to solve. Nor is there any way to avoid a crucial reliance on the theorist's own experience. Alec Hyslop defends a (modified) version of the traditional analogical inference to other minds and rejects alternatives, but only after subjecting each of them to a sustained, searching examination. Other Minds is a densely argued, original...