Seeing the Other’s Mind: McDowell and Husserl on Bodily Expressivity and the Problem of Other Minds

Abstract

McDowell motivates a disjunctive conception of experience in the context of other-minds skepticism, but his conception of other minds has been less frequently discussed. In this paper, I focus on McDowell’s perceptual account of others that emphasizes the primitivity of others’ bodily expressivity and his defense of a common-sense understanding of others. And I suggest that Husserl’s subtle analysis of bodily expressivity not only bears fundamental similarities with McDowell’s but also helps to demonstrate the sense in which McDowell’s emphasis on bodily expressivity can remove some of the grounds for other minds skepticism. I argue that the other’s behavioral manifestation is first and foremost perceived in a salient Gestalt and social perception is inherently infused with a constitutive propensity with which we normally take the other as human person in the first place. In this light, I show that Husserl’s account can better elucidate human expressivity and its intrinsic features, thereby helping to remove some of the props of other-minds skepticism. As a result, I believe it proves fruitful to juxtapose McDowell’s and Husserl’s account of bodily expressivity, so as to alternate the Cartesian picture of other-minds that engenders skeptic anxiety and to secure a common-sense understanding of other people.