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the existence of others
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a few points:
1. as far as I can see there is no way of 'proving' either that others exist, or that they possess rational self awareness, but there are, nevertheless some considerations which give us good grounds for believing in the existence, and rational self awareness, of others.
[a[I know myself that I possess reason and self awareness, and the potential for individuality. [b]There are other bodies that externally look and behave like me. They also appear to behave and act in ways which exhibit rationality, e.g discussing values etc. Therefore it is fair for me to infer the likely existence of others who possess similar powers of reason, and self awareness, form their similar 'external' attributes and actions.
All that is fairly obvious, but I think the existence of art also provides another good argument concerning the existence and nature of others. In appreciating a work of art, part of what we are aware of is the individuality captured in it, the existence of some kind of unique voice that is speaking. Indeed this is one thing which distinguishes all genuine art from mass culture which is essentially formulaic [e.g one trash hollywood action film is fundamentally no different to any other] and could have been produced by a sophisticated machine. Since I know that I did not produce any of this art, yet it exudes self-awareness and individuality, and the art exists, it is most likely that it was produced by some set of consciously self aware individuals other than myself.
-How else do we explain the existence of art? It is, arguably, possible that all art is the product of chance which happened to throw words, sounds, etc. together in a certain order to create it, but this is massively less likely than the hypothesis that others exist who created all the art we know.
-On a final note Sartre provides an interesting account of the existence of others in Part3 of 'Being and Nothingness'. We become aware of the other by the transformative effect of their prescence on our existence e.g the man looking through the key hole who is suddenly caught and becomes transformed by the 'gaze' of the other. Although I don't think Sartre's point here is to provide an 'argument' for the existence of others in the traditional sense.
Sorry, I seem to have come a long way from talking about vegetarianism!
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