[DRAFT this penultimate version differs in some minor ways from the final

published version.]

Sartre, Strawson and Others

Mark Sacks

Abstract

This paper compares the treatment of other minds in Strawson and Sartre.
Both discussions are presented here as transcendental arguments, and some
striking parallels between them are brought out. However the primary
significance of the alignment lies in the difference that emerges between two
forms of transcendental proof, with the phenomenological treatment in
Sartre promising to yield a stronger conclusion than Strawsons argument.
The paper goes some way towards bringing out this difference.

Key words: Sartre, Strawson, other minds, persons, transcendental

argument, transcendental proof, phenomenology.

In what follows I will address two transcendental arguments. Both attempt to

establish a dependence between knowledge of my own existence and knowledge of
the existence of others. One is Strawsons. The other is gleaned from Sartre.1 The
comparison between the two arguments is instructive. The apparent similarity is of
interest, and I will spend some time bringing it out; but I am primarily concerned with
one particular difference. It is a difference between two forms of transcendental
argumentation or proof. And in virtue of that difference the argument drawn from
Sartre promises a corrective to a salient weakness in Strawson's argument.

1. Sartres cogito

1
Being and Nothingness (=BN), in particular Part III. In the discussions of Sartre, all
page references are to this text, unless otherwise indicated.

Page 1
The discussion in question concerns the phenomenological description of being the
object of another subject's look. By the Look Sartre means the relation of "being-
seen-by another" [p. 257]. He holds that the Look, the fundamental experience of
being conscious of being seen by another, is what first gives me the sense of being an
object. If someone looks at me, I am conscious of being an object. But this
consciousness can be produced only in and through the existence of the Other. [271,
my emphasis]

Sartre gives the dramatic eves-dropper example [259-260] to illustrate what he

has in mind. Driven by jealousy, say, I am moved to spy on the goings-on behind a
closed door. I press my ear to the door, I peep through the key-hole. The world
beyond the door is an object domain for me, in which I become immersed, tracking
every detail of it. I am so completely absorbed in the effort that my voyeuristic acts
are not themselves objects for me. I do not register anything this side of the door as
an object. As far as my construal of the situation goes, I am a pure consciousness. I
am, in my awareness, not a player in the object world perceived, I occupy no position
in it. I am a pure subjectivity that perceives everything except what is on the near side
of the keyhole. Then, suddenly, I hear footsteps behind me, and immediately this
invisibility of myself to myself is shattered. All at once I am not just a pure
perspective onto the world, I am individuated as a particular conscious being that
exists here and now, in a particular spatio-temporal locus (see pp. 266-7) in the
world.2 The idea is that in perceiving someone perceiving me, and only by so doing, I
come to know my own existence as an embodied consciousness. Sartre considers this
proof of my own worldly existence to be a form of the cogito proof; he refers to it as
'the cogito a little expanded'.3

Sartres claim seems to be that the Look is not merely sufficient to establish
my individuated existence: it is also supposed to be necessary.4 The exact sense in

2
And indeed as responsible for this or that action.
3
p. 282 (In the same way the cogito a little expanded as we are using it here, reveals
to us as a fact the existence of the Other and my existence for the Other.) See also
pp. 89, 267-8, 281, and passim.
4
This formulation, in terms of a being sufficient/necessary to establish b, is
deliberately ambiguous between an ontological and an epistemological claim. The

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which this claim is being put forward obviously needs to be examined further. It can
be brought out by comparing Sartre's discussion to Strawson's treatment of persons
and other minds. In many ways, as we will see, the two discussions are strikingly
similar; a fact that makes the difference between them all the more instructive.

2. Strawson: A partial rehearsal

Here is a brief reconstruction of Strawsons treatment of Other minds in Individuals:5

1. I can understand talk of my experiences.

2. For this to be possible, I must be able to ascribe experiences to others.

3. I can do this only if I can identify other subjects of experience.

4. This in turn is possible only if subjects are understood to be persons,

where that serves as a primitive category.

5. This means that I have logically adequate criteria for ascribing

consciousness-involving states to others.

In the interests of space I will avoid engaging in detail with steps 1-3 here, and will
take up the discussion with step 4.

Accepting then (step 3) that to self-ascribe experiences one needs to be able to

pick out different individuals of the same type, viz. as the bearers of states of
consciousness, it does seem to follow, as Strawson holds, that the Cartesian
conception of the subject is wrong. If others are conceived of as Cartesian egos, then
it is impossible to see how I could have the capacity to ascribe states of consciousness
to them since I cannot identify them. And if I cannot in principle ascribe conscious
states to others, I could at best ascribe them only to myself; but on the grounds given
to motivate step 2, that would mean that I could not even ascribe them to me. And

emphasis in what follows on the epistemological construal of the Look is a significant

over-simplification of Sartres position. It is an over-simplification that will, I hope,
be tolerated given the specific aims of the present paper.
5
See his interim rehearsal, Strawson 1969: 104f. In this discussion of Strawson all
page references are to this text, unless otherwise indicated.

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that, for the reasons given by Strawson at the outset by way of motivating the starting
premise, is not a coherent contention. It thus follows that the type of thing that is the
bearer of states of consciousness, cannot be a Cartesian ego or soul.
To put it briefly. One can ascribe states of consciousness to oneself only if
one can ascribe them to others. One can ascribe them to others only if one can
identify other subjects of experience. And one cannot identify others if one
can identify them only as subjects of experience, possessors of states of
consciousness. (100)
The role played by the identification of others thus forces the rejection of the
Cartesian conception of the mind. (The argument from analogy, Strawson points out,
can be of no help here: it works only if I am already in a position to identify my
experiences, and the identification of others was a precondition of being in that
position. That argument is thus circular: presupposing for the identification of others
the very ability that that identification of others was needed to facilitate.6)

The only way out of the threatening quandary is to secure criteria of a

logically adequate kind for the direct identification of others (i.e. unmediated by prior
self-identification). And that is possible, Strawson argues, only if we acknowledge
the concept of a person as logically primitive. (101ff.) And the primitiveness of that
entity means that it is not to be thought of as a composite of two kinds of entity each
with its own attributes, experiences attaching to the one, corporeal attributes to the
other, a combination of mind and body and their respective mental and material
properties. (105) That would again entail the circularity of the attempt to identify
other subjects, as on the Cartesian conception (cf. p. 102).

To secure the concept of a person as a basic, primary and non-reducible type,

Strawson needs to say more about the kind of predicates that are applicable to
persons. He distinguishes here between M and P predicates, a rough division, into
two, of the kinds of predicates properly applied to individuals of this type. (104)

M-Predicates are those predicates which apply to persons and equally to

material bodies to which we would not even consider applying predicates ascribing

6
Strawson: 101.

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states of consciousness. (104) These are predicates like weighs 30Kg, is yellow, is in
the kitchen, etc.

All other predicates that apply uniquely to persons are in the category of what
he calls P-predicates:
P-predicates will be very various. They will include things like is
smiling, is going for a walk, as well as things like is in pain, is
thinking hard, believes in God and so on (104)
P-predicates either ascribe states of consciousness, or imply the possession of
consciousness on the part of that to which they are ascribed. (105; see also 111)

Just as the concept of a person is not that of a composite made up out of two
primary kinds of entity, namely an individual consciousness and a human body, so too
this division between these two kinds of attributes, is not to be thought of as
coinciding exactly with the distinction between predicates ascribing states of
consciousness and predicates ascribing corporeal characteristics. Were it to do so, it
would only reproduce rather than solve the problem at hand. Rather, one of the two
sides of the division, P-predicates, takes in more than attributions of states of
consciousness. Understanding the logical character of these predicates stands to bring
out the full significance of taking persons to be basic.

The standard view of attributions of consciousness, or of mental states, regards

these as internal states, for which the only logically adequate criteria of identification
would be internal, first-personal. These states are typically correlated with distinct
behavioural states of the body, for which the only logically adequate criteria of
identification are external or observational, third-personal. That the two kinds of
states are discrete, with distinct criteria of identification, can be seen to be at the root
of the problem of identifying other bearers of conscious states, or attributing mental
states to others, and hence of being able coherently to explain how I can self-ascribe
them.

Where the standard picture talks thus of two correlated but distinct states of
persons, the alternative to which we are driven would see only one state, extending
seamlessly to cover the gap that is ordinarily taken to exist between discrete mental

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and behavioural states; there is one state with two ends, so to speak: one end displays
the internal side of the P-State (this corresponds to what was previously thought of as
a distinct mental state) and the other end displays the behavioural aspect of the same
P-state (this was wrongly thought to be a distinct behavioural state on the picture that
has turned out to be incoherent). The aspect or pole of this single state that faces
inwards, is for first-personal use only; the other faces out and is for public use. And
corresponding to the two poles, are two distinct criteria for attribution of the single
state, each of which is sufficient on its own. The result is one and the same state
which can equally well be picked out from either end. To think that the two ends are
distinct states is to get the order of dependence wrong, with all the resulting
philosophical problems; it is mistakenly to regard aspects that are secondary
abstractions from the one primary primitive state, as primary components which
combine to make up a secondary p-state. Once the nature of the p states is properly
understood, it becomes clear that there is no room to drive a wedge in between what is
self ascribed (not on behavioural grounds), and what is other ascribed (on behavioural
grounds). That is, there is no room for the argument re other minds, and the
appearance that it needs an inference an incoherent argument from analogy to
solve it. (107-110)

The primitiveness of the category of the person, and of p-states, means that for
some p-predicates at least there will be criteria of a kind logically adequate for telling
that other individuals indeed do have them. There is, here, no room to consider there
being need for an inference across a logical gulf between first-person and third-person
access; when we see things aright we recognize that that gulf is not there to begin
with. (p. 108) Once the first-person end of the P-state is given, so too is the far end;
and vice versa.

This might seem like an unlikely conclusion: it might not be clear how third-
person merely observational criteria for the ascription of consciousness-involving
states could ever be on a par, in terms of adequacy, with first-personal non-
observational criteria. But Strawson thinks that the occluding factor here is merely
that we have been nourished on a skewed diet of examples of mental states. He points
to a currently marginal class of P-predicates that can be moved into a central position
in the picture, at the expense of those that currently occupy centre stage. The latter

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are primarily if not exclusively indicative of a precise or very definite sensation of
experiential quality. (111) The alternative paradigm class of P-predicates that he has
in mind are basically action-predicates: those that ascribe to the person certain actions
which involve consciousness, but in which typical behavioural aspects gain
prominence at the expense of any very definite or precise indication of distinctive
sensational or experiential content. (ibid.)

He gives the examples of going for a walk, coiling a rope, writing a letter
(111). These are states that can be self-ascribed not on the basis of observation, but
perfectly other-ascribed on that basis. I do not have to look in order to know that I am
going for a walk, but equally in observing a stranger ambling down the road, I do not
have need for any further evidence that that is what he is doing. The same goes for
the other examples. Yet because of the dominance of behavioural elements and the
relative absence of any defining or distinctive inner experience, there is no pull here to
thinking that the two different modes of attribution culminate in the attribution of
different states, one mental and the other behavioural. The dominance in these cases
of the behavioural element in what is non-observationally self-ascribed frees us from
the idea that only private inner states can be known non-observationally: there is
consequently no reluctance to granting in these cases that what is non-observationally
self-ascribed is the very same attribute that is other-ascribed on the basis of
observation. Hence there is no longer the semblance of a problem with the generality
constraint. We are dealing with one attribute/predicate, which there are different
equally adequate ways of detecting/applying. (ibid.)

This shift in paradigm cases underpins and facilitates comprehension of the

paradigm shift in the conception of the mind that Strawson argues is forced on us.
(110-12) Our fixation on one narrow class of examples, such as the experience of
pain, in which a distinctive experiential content was the most salient aspect, might
explain why the faulty Cartesian conception took hold in the first place. The kind of
P-state that Strawson takes as central is not reducible to a narrowly conceived mental
state, but rather mirrors and underpins the primitiveness of the category of the person:
in all these cases, the bodily aspect is an inherent element of the P-attributes, it is not
merely an outward manifestation of it, not merely a separate satellite state that
serves as a clue to it.

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 Strawson points out (109-10) that not seeing this results in either scepticism or
behaviourism, depending on which end of the polarity is taken in isolation from the
other as the sole legitimate base for attributing experiential states.

3. Strawson and Scepticism

Strawsons sees his argument as going further than merely attempting to refute
scepticism about other minds: it rather reveals that once our descriptive work is done
there is no coherent case to answer; that the solipsistic position is fundamentally
incoherent:
On behalf of this conclusion, however, I am claiming that it follows from a
consideration of the conditions necessary for any ascription of states of
consciousness to anything. The point is not that we must accept this
conclusion in order to avoid scepticism, but that we must accept it in order to
explain the existence of the conceptual scheme in terms of which the sceptical
problem is stated. But once the conclusion is accepted, the sceptical problem
does not arise. So with many sceptical problems: their statement involves the
pretended acceptance of a conceptual scheme and at the same time the silent
repudiation of one of the conditions of its existence. That is why they are, in
the terms in which they are stated, insoluble. (106)

What we have here exhibits the typical structure of a transcendental argument:

a premise that is undeniable (All my experiences are mine), a valid argument, and a
conclusion which is precisely what the sceptic wants to deny. The mere self-
ascription of experiential states is bound up with other ascription in such a way as to
undermine any scope for coherent scepticism about other minds. We have, of
necessity, criteria of a logically adequate kind for the identification of others. There is
supposedly no room, at any stage, for Cartesian solipsism.

But it still remains unclear exactly what it is that has been shown. How
exactly does the possession of criteria of a logically adequate kind for the
identification of other persons undermine scepticism about other minds?

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 There are two distinct weaknesses to the argument worth raising here. First,
there is what might be called the problem of transcendental necessity. It would seem
that the argument cannot establish that the very possibility of me having experience
requires that there be, or that our experience be construed as being of, other subjects.
I must be able to make sense of predicating experiential states of others, and that
lets allow for now means that I must have criteria suited to identification of others.
But this tells me about the necessity of my cognitive apparatus: not about the
necessary structure of the world to which it is applied. That is, it may be apriori true
that we must be equipped with criteria of a logically adequate sort for the
identification of others, but the argument does not show that it is apriori true that the
world will contain others; it does not even show that the world must seem to us to
contain other persons, that empirical reality must be so structured. Cartesian
methodological solipsism seems not to have been excluded. And the possibility
seems to remain that when all the evidence is in, I will find that I alone exist in the
world. At most what has been shown is simply that if there were others, I would be
able to identify them.7

Additionally, there is the problem of the inference to reality. It might appear

that the argument would at least suffice to undermine scepticism about the actual
existence of other minds in the world in which I exist. Either there are or there are not
other minds, but either way I would surely now be in a position to know. After all,
Strawson has argued that we have criteria of a logically adequate kind for the
attribution of experiential states to others. What he means in talking of criteria of a
logically adequate kind is that we have criteria for the attribution of consciousness-
involving states to others that are of the right sort, they are logically appropriate. The
idea is not that they are logically immune to error on every application; only that they
are of a logical type that renders them in principle up to the task of other-attribution.
Strawson thus does not need to downplay the possibility of mistaken attributions: he
emphasizes, for example, that the observable manifestation of depression (or

7
Interestingly, Strawson seems to come close to articulating this line of objection
himself (see p. 99, note 1), but does not seem to take on board its significance: he
concentrates on whether one must merely be able to other-ascribe the predicates in
question, or must actually do so, without seeming to see that if the latter is not needed,
there is no need to insist that those other individuals exist.

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tiredness, or pain) might be faked or disguised (p. 109). We might best construe such
cases by saying that there are two competing P-predicates here, depression, and fake-
depression. The behavioural pole may in certain circumstances appear qualitatively
identical between the two, and since that is all we have to go on in the case of other-
attribution, we might, in those circumstances, not be in a position to tell which P-state
we have actually got hold of, depression, or fake-depression. But this does not
broaden out to a general sceptical worry about the actual existence of others: saying
that the criteria we have are of the right logical sort, just is to say that while there is
room for local errors, there are no longer any grounds to suspect wholesale error when
all the evidence is that our criteria have been satisfied. To this extent it would seem
that we should allow that once it is shown that the criteria we have for the attribution
of consciousness-involving states to others are of a logically adequate sort, we must
also conclude that where the evidence satisfies those criteria, there is no room for
scepticism about the actual existence of other minds.

The argument nevertheless remains problematic. Perhaps the best way to

bring this out is to distinguish between such criteria being of a kind that is logically
adequate for the purpose of self-ascription, and being of a kind that is logically
adequate for the identification of others. It can then be suggested that criteria for the
ascription of experiential states to others can be logically adequate for the first task,
without being logically adequate for the second. We might be in a position to self-
ascribe, by virtue of having criteria for other-ascription of experiential states, while
allowing that possibly, in applying those criteria, we are not as successfully
identifying others as we seem to be doing. (The requirements of self-ascription could
be met even if, say, the putative others in relation to whom self-ascription is made
possible, were all in fact only deceptive mock-ups.) This problem is essentially only a
reworking of the point made by Stroud in his early discussion of Strawson.8 It is a
version of the problematic inference to reality that haunts many central transcendental
arguments: even if it seems to me, by my best lights, that there are other minds, this
cannot establish that there actually are other minds.9

8
Stroud 1968: 248
9
On this general line of criticism of transcendental arguments, see again Stroud 1968.
The gap here could of course be closed by means of a form of verificationism. But

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 To sum up, Strawsons argument faces two problems: First, that the argument
shows only that we must be able to ascribe experiences to others, which is compatible
with there not being any such subjects, and it not seeming to me that there are.
Second: that even if it seems to me that there are such subjects, this does not licence
an inference to the conclusion that that is how things are, independently of how things
seem to me. Of the two problems, the second may be of further reaching impact. But
the first is of more immediate significance here, since in relation to this problem
Sartres argument fares better than Strawsons.

4. Strawson and Sartre: Common ground and the point of divergence

Anyone reading Sartre with Strawson in mind is bound to notice similarities between
the two texts on the problem of other minds. Sartres text specifically upholds the
following six claims, each of which resonates clearly with Strawson:

i. I cannot fully grasp what I am a determinate consciousness without the

encounter with others.

ii. I cannot know others only by analogy with myself: I must know them directly.10

iii. Persons, human beings (human reality), rather than Cartesian minds, are basic,
and it is as such that I know and perceive others.

The difference between the Other-as-subject i.e., between the Other such
has he is for-himself and the Other-as-object is not a difference between the
whole and the part or between the hidden and the revealed. The Other-as-
object is on principle a whole co-extensive with subjective totality (293)

given the verificationist principle, as Stroud points out, the sceptic is refuted at the
outset, without any need for long and contorted arguments.
10
For a clear statement of this see BN, p. 274 (quoted on p. 22 below); see also pp.
224, 234, 244-5, 272, 347.

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 The body is nothing other than the for-itself it is not true that the body is
the product of an arbitrary decision on the part of a demiurge nor that the
union of soul and body is the contingent bringing together of two substances
radically distinct. On the contrary, the very nature of the for-itself demands
that it be body; And Plato was not wrong either in taking the body as that
which individualizes the soul. Yet it would be in vain to suppose that the soul
can detach itself from this individualization by separating itself from the body
at death or by pure thought, for the soul is the body inasmuch as the for-itself
is its own individualization. (309-310)11

iv. I can ascribe mental states directly to others: in the attribution of mental states we
do not go on external signs, but directly grasp the state itself.

Of course there is a psychic cryptography; certain phenomena are "hidden".

But this certainly does not mean that the meanings refer to something "beyond
the body". These frowns, this redness, this stammering, this slight
trembling of the hands, these downcast looks which seem at once timid and
threatening these do not express anger; they are the anger. But this point
must be clearly understood. In itself a clenched fist is nothing and means
nothing. But also we never perceive a clenched fist. We perceive a man who
in a certain situation clenches his fist. We can not get away from the fact
that the "psychic object" is entirely released to perception and is inconceivable
outside corporeal structures. (347)12

v. Ascription of mental states to others on a behavioural base does not mean that
Behaviourism is right.

Does this mean we must grant that the Behaviourists are right? Certainly not.
For although the Behaviourists interpret man in terms of his situation, they
have lost sight of his characteristic principle, which is transcendence-
transcended. If therefore I return from the world to the Other in order to
define him, this is not because the world would make me understand the Other

11
See also pp. 223-4, 282, 305, 323, 339, 347.
12
See also pp. 294, 295, 306 (first para).

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 but because the Other-as-object is nothing but a center of autonomous and
intra-mundane reference in my world. (294-5)13

vi. Solipsism (and scepticism about other minds) is a non-starter.14

As with Strawson, so with Sartre it is necessary to be careful in attributing an anti-

sceptical agenda to him. And again, the reason for this is that he is primarily and
explicitly concerned to give a phenomenological description, just as Strawson's
concern is primarily with description or exploration of the internal connections within
our conceptual scheme. (Strawson's descriptive metaphysics is a counter-part to
Sartre's phenomenological description.) However there is no doubt that whether it is
his primary target or not, what he has to say is, and is taken by him to be, of bearing
on scepticism about other minds. And like Strawson, Sartre's view is that solipsism is
not wrong because it is false, as if it were a thesis that might have been true but has
now been proven not to be. Rather, it is wrong in the sense that it could not
coherently be entertained in the first place. What is posed as a problem turns out to
rest on a certain blindness to the workings of the experiential or phenomenological
framework in which we are embedded. The gist of the claimed insight is again that
without other minds (in a sense yet to be established) a certain kind of self-
knowledge, which cannot be denied, is not possible. By the time I am able to confront
my existence as a determinate consciousness in the world, I am already committed to
the existence of the other. There is never a point at which I can have a grasp of the
former and still doubt the latter; that is, there is never a point at which the solipsistic
hypothesis can be formulated without contradiction.

The above points (i vi) identify some of the apparent similarities between
Strawson and Sartre.15 There is however one striking point at which the parallel

13
See also p. 347 (continuation of previous passage quoted). Compare Strawson pp.
109f.
14
See p. 271 (quoted on p. 23 below); see also pp. 229ff., 232ff., 244, 245.
15
The points identified by no means exhaust Sartres position, but for present
purposes they alone need concern us. At the same time, the intention is that the thread
singled out for attention here should be regarded as integral to an adequate
understanding of Sartres over-all position.

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breaks down. The kind of dependence the two establish between consciousness of
ones own existence and the Other is very different. The difference stems precisely
from the fact that Sartre's description is phenomenological, whereas Strawson's takes
leave of the phenomenological by way of a theoretical ascent. The result is that the
yield of Strawson's argument over-all stands to be weaker than Sartre's. Strawson
concludes that we must have criteria of a kind logically adequate for identifying
others, but as we have seen there would seem to be nothing to establish the further
step, that the possibility of making such judgements must be actualized. In Sartre, the
fact that the argument does not take the detour through the theoretical constraints on
property ascription and predication, means that it does not involve the same two steps,
the second of which might not be made good. Because of this Sartres
phenomenological line of discussion promises to deliver an escape from the first of
the two problems we were left with on Strawson's analytical argument.

4.1 Sartres proof and the point of divergence

The details of Sartres case, and the point of divergence between him and Strawson,
need to be brought out. I return to the cogito slightly expanded that Sartre thinks is
identified in the Look. We may start by asking what exactly this expanded cogito
establishes, in establishing our being-for-others. It seems clear that it establishes at
least this: in virtue of noticing myself looked-at, I become aware of myself as an
object - in some sense that remains to be clarified. And in clarifying this, it might
help to note that Sartre seems committed to the view that the Look is both a sufficient
and a necessary condition of this awareness.16 Understanding how it is that only the
Look or, more generically, that only encountering another encountering me can be
sufficient here, might help to bring out the sense in which I am thought to become
aware of myself as an object.

To anticipate, pursuing this line of inquiry will establish that becoming aware
of myself as an object does not mean primarily that the Look stands to reduce the

16
Thus the statement already quoted: If someone looks at me, I am conscious of
being an object. But this consciousness can be produced only in and through the
existence of the Other. [271] For more of this passage, see p. ## below.

Page 14
subject to a mere object, the bearer only of M-properties. There is the possibility that
the Look will threaten in that way to reduce the recipient to the status of a mere object
just as the originator of the Look can seem to attain by means of the Look the status
of a pure subject and Sartre is appropriately attentive to these possibilities and the
associated pathologies. It would however be wrong to regard this as the sole or even
the primary import of the Look. Rather, as we will see, in the primary case, in
becoming aware of myself as an object, I become aware that I am essentially a human
being, an entity that is fundamentally as much a spatio-temporal object as it is a
conscious being (that is what it is to be a for-itself-for-others).17

We may start by noting that if becoming aware of myself as an object were to

mean no more than being aware of having a body, then it seems clear that I could
readily come to this without the Look. Certainly one might, as in Sartre's scenario,
become so engrossed in the goings on elsewhere as to transport oneself into that
arena, and momentarily lose oneself in it, so to speak. But it would seem not to
require being looked at by another to bring me back to an awareness of my body.
Imagine, for example, that I am totally absorbed in observing the behaviour of two
poisonous spiders in a glass tank, to the point of losing track of my own bodily
presence outside the tank. Out of the corner of my eye I then notice that while I have
been observing the one spider dealing with a fly struggling in its web, the other spider
has climbed the wall of the tank and is beginning to explore the side of my hand.
Immediately I come back to my senses, so to speak: there is, as we might put it, an
"irruption of the self" [p. 260] at the level of unreflective consciousness. But there is
no sense in which the recognition that the spider is approaching me counts as coming
to perceive myself because somebody perceives me. It is simply the sudden
recognition of proximal danger, and would work just as effectively if instead of
spiders we were observing some dangerous but entirely mechanical devices.

We have clearly not yet reached the sense of being conscious of myself as an
object for which the Look alone will suffice. But then, all that is involved here is
being reminded that I have a body, that there is one particular body that is especially
close to me, such that if a spider nips it I alone feel pain, in the way that I do not if it

17
On this, see also Theunissen, pp. 224-7, 230, 236-7; and note 27 below.

Page 15
bites any other body. (Anyone inclined to muttering at spiders might withdraw his
hand with the words, "Watch it, that's my body" just as well as with the words "Hey,
that's me!")

With a view to getting closer to the unique contribution of the Look that Sartre
may be getting at, we might consider another case that seems, without the Look, to
sustain my awareness of myself as an object. Here we might withdraw from the
dramatic scenario where I am so engrossed in the situation under scrutiny that I
become largely oblivious to my body and my physical position; rather than dramatic
disorientation, we might consider normal orientation in a situation. Can I, in this
normal mode, not become aware of myself as an object without the Other, without the
Look?

It seems clear, again, that in some senses I can. Among the objects that I
perceive around me, I can be aware of one as special: I am intimately bound up with
it. What makes me aware of this might be that there is one body in relation to which I
am uniquely positioned, in the sense that nobody else is so situated in relation to that
body, and I am not situated in that way in relation to any other body. There is just one
body that goes wherever I go: I never see it from a distance, approaching it and then
wandering off again leaving it behind. Whenever I look in the mirror, there it is. And
moreover this body is not just dead weight, an idle appendage: I can move it directly,
by way of basic actions, rather than through any intermediary actions, tools or other
devices. And on the basis of such plain observations, I might come to an awareness
that what I move indirectly are other bodies (chairs, rocks, etc.), but that in moving
my limbs I am simply moving myself. And this gives a sense in which I might come
to be aware of myself as an object on the basis of the possibility of my basic actions,
etc.

This ability to move my body directly may indeed play a subsidiary part in
generating a conception of myself as an object in the relevant sense.18 But and this

18
It would be appropriate to expand on this in the context of explaining the
compensatory behaviour we might expect, and indeed do observe, where someone is
not able to recognize others, and so afortiori others' recognition of himself. I hope to
return to this, elsewhere.

Page 16
is the important point for now in itself it cannot sustain the recognition that I am an
object that also has M-properties. The immediacy of agency, like the constant
companionship between me and my body, might lead to the awareness of one
particular object being intimately bound up with me. But the gap remains between
being aware of standing in a special relation to a particular body, and being aware that
I am essentially an entity that also has corporeal characteristics.

This gap might help to explain why it is that Sartre is not confusing necessary
and sufficient conditions. There can, as we have just seen, be various ways of coming
to be aware of my special relation to my body, whereas Sartres contention would be
that it is only by way of the Look that my consciousness that I am that human entity
can be established. I will offer two ways in which we might come to understand
better how it is that the Look may uniquely cover this distance.

First, the phenomenology of the Look. Lets return to the example of what
happens when, bent over the keyhole, I suddenly hear a footstep behind me; when I
realize that I have been observed in turn.19 The sudden realization that there is
someone behind me does not merely bring me back to my senses. Having, so to
speak, transported myself through the keyhole, I am suddenly dragged back out and
reminded of my situation: there is undeniably that shattering of an illusion. And as
part of that I am reminded that I am not just a free-floating perspectival point, a pure
disembodied consciousness, but that I have a very intimate relation to a particular
body, viz. that it is my body, and moreover that it is that body that has just been
perceived. But importantly there is more than that (awareness of my body) involved
in the fact of the Look. If that was all that was involved, the job could indeed have
been done in other ways: spiders, say, or direct control over this body, bringing me to
an awareness that I am not merely a disembodied consciousness. But what the Look
yields that is unique to it (or seems to be), can be gauged from my response to it. As
soon as I hear that footstep, or the clearing of a throat behind me, I do not become
aware only of a certain ungainly posture as I bend to peep through the keyhole, or of
the feel of the metal door handle against my forehead, from which I had previously
abstracted. I am also, and much more immediately, overwhelmed with a pervasive

19
For Sartres vivid description, see p. 277.

Page 17
feeling of shame: "I shudder as a wave of shame sweeps over me."20 Now, what is it
that explains the shame? Why is it so immediately overwhelming? It is not that I
realize what I have been doing; I knew that all along.21 It is that I have been caught,
in the act: I know that someone else realizes what I was doing, and crucially they
are not merely surmising, or guessing, or inferring. There is no margin of error here.
But how can there be no margin of error here? The only way is if what they have
caught at it is not my body, but me, myself; if I am that very entity that has been seen.
That is, if I am, for all that I might inwardly have transcended my worldly coil, an
object with a specific spatio-temporal locus that the other directly observes. Only
given that numerical identity of experiencing subject and perceived object, would
there be no room to drive a wedge in, between what I am for myself, and what I come
to know has been taken in by the Other's Look.22 It is that identity that is established,
with all the immediacy of a blush, and for the same reason, when I register that I am
the recipient of the Look.

Only insofar as that is the structure of what I experience here, can we

understand the inalienable sense of shame (be it moral or metaphysical). If the

20
Ibid. There is a distinction to be made between two forms of shame for Sartre:
Pure shame (which can also be thought of as metaphysical shame; cf. Danto p. 102,
for example) arises when we are forced to admit that we are corporeal, that we are not
just unfettered, disembodied consciousness, pure spontaneity, that we are reduced by
the other, and ineliminably so, to corporeality: it is the shame of being brought down
to earth, of having bodily existence. In acute form, it could be the shame of being
regarded as a mere object. The other form of shame is the more mundane empirical
phenomenon of moral shame: the feeling that typically arises upon been caught doing
something that is regarded as wrong by the social norms one shares.
Sartres example here of the voyeur strongly suggests the latter sense of
shame, but it is the former metaphysical sense that is more obviously central to
Sartres philosophy. Accordingly it may be suggested that the example here should
be divested of its moral overtones if we are to get to what Sartre really means by
shame (see e.g. Danto, ibid). To the extent that this is accepted, it might be thought
that there is an element of sophistry about the passage in question: using the obvious
way in which shame in the ordinary sense arises in the scenario, to motivate
acceptance of there being shame in the other, metaphysical sense.
However for present purposes we need not take a stand on this question. In
either sense, the explanation of the shame-experience would have to run along the
lines set out in the main text.
21
Nor is it simply that I come to view what I have been doing in a new light. That
may be true, but what is relevant is how that change was mediated.
22
Although, obviously, the other does not directly observe me as I am for myself,
first-personally.

Page 18
structure of experience here was simply such as to present me with an awareness that
something of mine, even something particularly intimate, had been seen, then my
reaction could conceivably have been different: there would have been a logical gap,
through which I might have wriggled free, so to speak. Something in me might have
stayed calm, just to the extent that I managed to exploit the thought that the person
coming up from behind saw my body, but not me.23 The only way to make sense of
the seeming impossibility of that reaction, is by allowing that I have been forced to
recognize the latter, that I am the very object that has been seen. That is the extra
distance that the mere ability to move this particular body immediately, or the fear and
care that I have over the avoidance of proximal danger, could not cover. The
phenomenology of experiencing the Look of the other does, arguably uniquely, seem
to do just that.24

Second, there are theoretical reasons that underpin the suggestion that there is
no way other than through the Look that that gap could be closed. Sartre says, albeit
with a degree of obscurity, that
I cannot be an object for myself, for I am what I am; thrown back on its own
resources, the reflective effort toward a dissociation results in failure; I am
always reapprehended by myself. And when I naively assume that it is possible
for me to be an objective being without being responsible for it, I thereby
implicitly suppose the Other's existence; for how could I be an object if not for a

23
Cf. BN p. 222.
24
Since the identity of the entity in question is not purely physical, it is not as if a
reductionist theory of the mind, as in the Central State Identity Theory or
Behaviourism, could be used as alternative ways of casting doubt on whether the
Look is indeed the only way of establishing this identity. (For references to Sartre on
behaviourism, see point (v) on p. ### above.) Whether the Look is even sufficient to
force the identity, is another matter. There are objections that might be made here,
specifically along the lines that the phenomenology of a person's reaction to the Look
of another will not be neutral, and will be influenced by that person's basic ontological
beliefs. However, I leave discussion of this aside for now, partly for reasons of space,
and partly because although the objection, when followed through, does serve to
remind us of the general difficulty in establishing universal claims by means of
phenomenological description, the end point of the discussion only tends to confirm
the extent to which the Look does seem to force the recognition in question (by
showing just how alien or pathological an alternative reaction to the Look would
seem).

Page 19
 subject. Thus for me the Other is first the being for whom I am an object; that
is, the being through whom I gain my objectness. (p. 270)
What Sartre might have in mind here is something like this: As long as my awareness
is rooted solely in first-personal thought I cannot, by reflection, dissociate myself
from my subjective stance and identify myself as an object. Every object that I come
to perceive as an object, is presented as essentially distinct from me, the perceiver;
and just insofar as it is presented to me as a distinct object, it is presented as in
principle alienable from me. The only item that is not presented as separable from me
in that way, the only thing that is given to me with an immediacy that precludes the
coherence of me thinking it away, is my own point of view. But that is always given
as a point of pure subjectivity: it is behind the lens, so to speak, whereas anything
captured as an object is always located in front of it. The only release from this
susceptibility to conjuring up Descartes Real Distinction, the only thing that could
give rise to an awareness that I was inalienably an object, would be not my perception
from my subjective vantage point of the relevant object, but my coming to
perceive that I this very subjective consciousness that I am for myself have been
captured as an object. But that immediately takes us from a simple subject-object
dichotomy to the intersubjective recognition involved in the Look.

It will be instructive to say more about what is involved in this Look, such that
in apprehending it I come immediately to recognize that it is me that is being looked
at, which in turn gives rise to the appreciation of my being an object in the public
world.

The certainty that I have been caught, with no margin of error, can be
understood only if the Other, whose Look I apprehend, is understood as being directly
cogniscent of some of my psychological states. It is not that he must be aware that I
am embarrassed, or ashamed. These are higher order or reflective psychological
states which he might or might not be registering. But what he must be registering,
and in a way that leaves no room for cognitive doubt about it, is that I am craning my
neck, eves-dropping, peeping, etc. For otherwise, the gap between someone observing
my body and observing me would not be closed.

Page 20
 Now this is perhaps best unpacked, at least in the present context, by saying
that the Look is construed as the look of a person who is ascribing P-predicates to me.
Recall, that P-predicates are such that there are two different methods of applying
them, one suited to the subject of whom the predicate holds, the other to those
observing the subject from side-ways on. And what we have seen is that my
immediate response to being looked at by a suitable cognitively endowed being,25 is
indicative of my recognition that the Other has logically adequate criteria for
ascribing to me third-personally the very same P-predicates which I ascribe to myself
first-personally. Just as, in Strawson's examples of writing a letter, going for a walk,
coiling a rope, the subject knew what they were doing in one way, from the inside, so
to speak, but had criteria of a logically adequate kind for ascribing those very same P-
states to others on behavioural grounds, so it is in the case of peeping, eavesdropping,
etc. In all these cases, in being observed I realize that for the Other I am now the
object or far end of a relation, and that the logically adequate methods for other-
ascription of these predicates are the ones appropriately being employed by the Other
whose Look is directed at me.26

Thus, on the present reading, when Sartre says that the Look uniquely reveals to
me that I am an object in the world, he precisely means that what the Look affords,
and nothing else could, is an incontestable and immediate appreciation of the fact that
I am not a Cartesian subject, but rather am fundamentally situated in the world as a
person, a man, a human being.27 The Look forces the recognition that, in Strawsons

25
Being looked at by a sparrow, say, will not do it, but by a human being will.
26
And, again as in Strawson, this works because the predicates in question are not
purely psychological or mental predicates. If they were, the only logically adequate
criteria would indeed be first-personal, leaving others unable to close the gap between
outward behavioural signs and the psychological inner truth. But P-predicates are
rather person-predicates: where persons are just the sort of things that can be
identified by means of those predicates as objects in the world, albeit objects which
have a unique way of self-ascribing those same predicates.
27
This is obviously at odds with a view of Sartre that holds to a simple dualist
opposition between the for-itself and the in-itself, and then explains the shame
metaphysical shame produced by the Look solely in terms of the admitted
propensity that the Look has, to recast me as a mere object and so to deny me my
freedom and dignity as a pure for-itself. (Such a view, it seems to me, cannot do
justice to the text, and cannot adequately bring out the force of Sartres
existentialism.) On the present view, the metaphysical shame arises rather because
the Look forces me to realize upon reflection what I really am: not the pure

Page 21
terms, the category of the person is basic. It could not affect me as Sartre thinks it
does, were that not the case. And thus we find Sartre saying:
We can not think of deriving being-for-others from a being-for-itself, nor
conversely can we think of deriving being-for-itself from being-for-others. It
would perhaps not be impossible to conceive of a For-itself which would be
wholly free from all For-others and which would exist without even suspecting
the possibility of being an object. But this For-itself simply would not be
"man." What the cogito reveals to us here is just factual necessity: it is found --
and this is indisputable -- that our being along with its being-for-itself is also
for-others; the being which is revealed to the reflective consciousness is for-
itself-for-others. The Cartesian cogito only makes an affirmation of the
absolute truth of a fact -- that of my existence. In the same way the cogito a
little expanded as we are using it here, reveals to us as a fact the existence of the
Other and my existence for the Other. That is all we can say. [282]

This expanded cogito reveals that full awareness of self and of other arise as
one. And the fact that awareness of what I am presupposes being aware of the other
(as the being that is aware of me), means again, as in Strawson, that there is no scope
for an Argument from Analogy for there being other minds. To be in a position to be
aware of what I am in the first place, I must already have a conception of the other:
Thus I cannot confer on myself any quality without mediation or an
objectifying power which is not my own power and which I can neither
pretend nor forge. Of course this has been said before; it was said a long time
ago that the Other teaches me who I am. But the same people who uphold this
thesis affirm on the other hand that I derive the concept of the other from
myself by reflecting on my own powers and by projection or analogy.

unencumbered for-itself I initially seem to myself, but rather a for-itself-for-others,

where that means that I am essentially a being that is at once both the bearer of
consciousness and a physical object. I am forced to the awareness of being an object,
although not a mere object an in-itself that is also a for-itself. Thus Theunissen (p.
225): Being-for-Others is the specific way in which the for-itself participates in the
in-itself. To this extent, it is being-in-itself and yet not a pure being-in-itself. Rather,
according to Sartre, it is the desired bond of the for-itself and the in-itself.
(Generally, see Theunissens discussion on pp. 223 ff.)

Page 22
 Therefore they remain at the center of a vicious circle from which they can not
get out.28

More significantly, as in Strawson, there is no longer any need for such an

argument. Solipsism is simply not an option:
That subjects presence without intermediary is the necessary condition of all
thought which I would attempt to form concerning myself. We know
enough at present to attempt to explain that unshakable resistance which
common sense has always opposed to the solipsistic argument. This resistance
indeed is based on the fact that the Other is given to me as a concrete evident
presence which I can in no way derive from myself and which can in no way
be placed in doubt nor made the object of a phenomenological reduction or of
any other .29

But as indicated, in the face of the significant convergence between Sartre and
Strawson, the primary point of divergence between them is all the more interesting.
Because of it Sartre can be seen to steer clear of the problematic step that Strawson
did not make good.

Strawson faced the problem: why should the fact that we must have criteria of
a logically adequate kind for identifying other minds, other persons, mean that there
must actually be or appear to be individuals to whom to apply those criteria?
Might the world not have been such that there just happen to be no other persons in
the world? In that case, I might have had all that is needed to apply P-predicates to
others, and just never have had the opportunity to do so. Cartesian solipsism would
not have been ruled out as impossible. Sartre, by running the proof at the level of
phenomenological description, avoids that weakness, which arises when the proof is
run, as it is by Strawson, at the level of the theoretical constraints on property-
ascription. What we learn from Sartre's argument is that it is not enough that I have

28
p. 274.
29
p. 271. This passage then continues with the sentence quoted earlier: If someone
looks at me, I am conscious of being an object. But this consciousness can be
produced only in and through the existence of the Other.

Page 23
those logically adequate criteria I must also employ them in relation to others: I
must have the experience of other persons looking at me.30

5. Sartre, empirical realism, and the sceptical residue

There is an obvious objection to Sartre that arises at this point: in concluding that I
must actually experience others looking at me, surely it is not necessary that my
experience is of others (i.e. that "experience of others" be construed extensionally),
but only that my experience is as of others (i.e. an intensional reading of the phrase);
it is necessary not that I identify others, but that I genuinely take myself to have
identified them. Again, as in the case of Strawson, the worry is that the prerequisites
of coming to know what I am, can be met without actually going so far as to imply
that there are others. But it is important that this objection picks up on the second of
the two objections raised against Strawsons argument, namely, the problem of the
inference to reality; it does not undermine the progress made over Strawson on the
other problem, the problem of transcendental necessity. I will try to bring this out
more fully.

Sartre in fact considers just this objection:

A number of difficulties remain ... Now as we have seen, it is only probable that
the Other is looking at me. That farm at the top of the hill seems to be looking
at the commandos, and it is certain that the house is occupied by the enemy.
But it is not certain that the enemy soldiers are at present watching through the
windows. It is not certain that the man whose footstep I hear behind me is
looking at me; his face could be turned away, his look fixed on the ground or on
a book. Finally in general it is not sure that those eyes which are fixed on me
are eyes; they could be only "artificial ones" resembling real eyes. In short must

30
It is important to note here that whereas Strawsons argument can establish that
persons must be basic, and so that I am a person, it cannot explain how this theoretical
insight is established in ordinary experience: how it is that each of us, and not only
those who have read Strawson, comes to recognize, to experience, our identity with a
part of the natural world. This is significant because without some such difference in
the outcome of the two arguments, Strawsons argument would presumably stand to
undercut Sartres, since the Look would no longer be necessary: Strawsons
theoretical case could force the conclusion just as well.

Page 24
 we not say that in turn the look becomes probable because of the fact that I can
constantly believe that I am looked-at without actually being so? As a result
does not our certainty of the Other's existence take on a purely hypothetical
character? [275]
What impinges on me as "being looked at", with "its own structures which refer me to
the Other's real existence" (p. 276) might not be veridical.31

Sartre himself is dismissive of the objection: "This difficulty should not deter
us for long, and we should not even have mentioned it except that actually it can help
us in our investigation by indicating more purely the nature of our being-for-others."
(276)

In justifying his dismissal of the objection, Sartre seems in fact to offer two
different responses to it, without adequately separating them. He distinguishes first
(276) between the other-as-object and the other-as-subject. There is, he says, always
room for doubt in purported knowledge of objects, and so too in our knowledge of the
other-as-object. But that knowledge is not what is required for my being-as-object.
The condition of that is that I experience the other-as-subject. That is supposedly
what I experience when I come to appreciate that I am looked at, and the fact that
there can be doubt as to my knowledge of the other-as-object does not invalidate the
certainty of my encounter, through the Look, with the other-as-subject. There are
fairly obvious grounds for thinking that this line of response is not well-conceived,
but there is no need to make the case in detail here since in any event it would result
in the same problem that faces Sartres second line of response. Sartres second
construal of his response to the objection in question works with a different
distinction, although he does tend to run the two together.32 On this construal the

31
And Sartre speculates that if I am mistaken in this way, I might not be having the
psychological states think I am having: "My shame was in fact shame before
somebody. But nobody is there. Does it not thereby become shame before nobody?
Since it has posited somebody where there was nobody, does it not become a false
shame?" (ibid.) It is interesting to note that Sartre seems here to be countenancing an
externalism about psychological states, whereby there is more to the determination of
my mental state than what is going on in me, with the consequence that I would then
not be authoritative about my mental states.
32
See p. 277.

Page 25
operative distinction is not between the Other-as-object and the Other-as-subject, but
between a person who is actually present, here and now, and a person who is absent.

What Sartre has in mind may be brought out by considering that when I hear
the rustle of branches behind me, or the footstep in the corridor, I might have the
experience of having been seen, and then turn round and see that there is nobody
there, it was a false alarm. But nevertheless it was enough to make me conscious of
being an object for an Other, and that survives the realization that there was nobody
there. In fact, if I continue with my shameful activity at all, it will be with a
heightened sense of being a spatio-temporal entity, likely to be seen at any moment.
The comfort of losing myself in the action is gone. I shall detect the slightest
noise, the slightest creaking of the stairs. Far from disappearing with my first alarm,
the Other is present everywhere, below me, above me, in the neighbouring rooms, and
I continue to feel profoundly my being-for-others. [277] What I am experiencing,
despite there being no actual person in the room behind me, is that the world contains
some such persons. They happen, as it turned out, to be absent for the moment from
the immediate vicinity, but to experience their absence is just to be committed to them
existing elsewhere. That is just what it is for something to be absent rather than non-
existent, as Sartre points out (277-8).33 The dark shadows, the gap behind the stairs,
are now all potential hiding places where those Others might be lurking. Thus what
is doubtful is not the Other himself. It is the Others being-there; i.e., that concrete,
historical event which we can express by the words, There is someone in this room.
(ibid.)

The phenomenological description here is characteristically astute. It seems to

capture something about what is involved and presupposed in the experience of being-
looked-at. The absence of a concrete individual behind me would not preclude being
presented to myself as the object of anothers look, indeed that experience of being
the object of a look may be felt all the more acutely for there not being an actual
identifiable concrete individual. Having had the false alarm, I am led to imagine
Others hiding all over the place, to construe slender perceptual cues as the presence of

33
See also p. 342: "To be absent is to-be-elsewhere-in-my-world; it is to be already
given for me."

Page 26
another spying on me; and that prospect is undoubtedly enough for me to be presented
to myself as an object.

It is through my being-for-others, my being looked at, that I become an

object whether those others are near or far is unimportant. What is required is not
that they actually be present, but that whatever their location, the Other, as the bearer
of the look, must be given as part of the structure of the world in which I find myself:
Wherever I go, whatever I do, I only succeed in changing the distances
between me and the Other-as-object, only avail myself of paths towards the
other. To withdraw, to approach, to discover this particular Other-as-object is
only to effect empirical variations on the fundamental theme of my being-for-
others. The Other is present to me everywhere as the one through whom I
become an object. Hence I can indeed be mistaken concerning the empirical
presence of an Other-as-object whom I happen to encounter on my path. I can
indeed believe that it is Annie who is coming toward me on the road and
discover that it is an unknown person; the fundamental presence of Annie to
me is not thereby changed. I can indeed believe that it is a man who is
watching me in the half light and discover that it is a trunk of a tree which I
took for a human being; my fundamental presence to all men, the presence of
all men to myself is not thereby altered. For the appearance of a man as an
object in the field of my experience is not what informs me that there are men.
My certainty of the Others existence is independent of these experiences and
is, on the contrary, that which makes them possible. (280)

The operative distinction here, between the other as given but absent, and as
given and actually here, (what might be thought of as absent presence vs. present
presence), need not be run together with the distinction between the other-as-subject
and the other-as-object. Whether absent or concrete presences, what we are talking
about are other persons, other people. This is clear from the passage just quoted: he is
talking about the presence or absence of human beings, it is the fundamental presence
of all men that is unshaken by the fact that I might be wrong about the concrete
presence of one man or another. And that the two distinctions are drawn apart in this
way comes out still more clearly when he goes on to say: The other-as-object is
certain as an appearance correlative with the recovery of my subjectivity, but it is

Page 27
never certain that the Other is that object. (ibid.) Here the contrast is between two
possible claims to certainty, both of which concern the other-as-object, with no
mention of the distinction between other-as-subject and other-as-object.

But the response does not suffice to answer the original objection, to the effect
that it may be enough that my experience is as of there being others, and does not
require that there really be others. Sartre typically uses examples of the actual
encounter with others to bring out the structure of the Look and what is involved in
the irruption of my being as an object. Such encounters are, we may grant, easily
sufficient to establish my being an object in the sense identified. But in investigating
the phenomenology of such cases, for example the case of suddenly becoming aware
that I am being watched, he has been forced to concede that such encounters between
actual, concrete persons, while typical and paradigmatic, are not necessary. He has
allowed that realizing my existence as an object does not require that I be in fact the
object of anothers look, that I actually observe some other individual person. I can
be mistaken about the actual presence of an other, and still the extended cogito will
run. What I cannot be mistaken about, what is necessary, is a construal of the world
as fundamentally involving the presence of the other, somewhere or other:
What appears to me then about which I can be mistaken is not the Other nor
the real, concrete bond between the Other and Me; it is a this which can
represent a man-as-object as well as not represent one. What is only probable
is the distance and the real proximity of the Other; that is, his character as an
object and his belonging to the world which I cause to be revealed are not
doubtful inasmuch as I make an Other appear by my very upsurge. However
this objectivity dissolves in the world as the result of the Others being an
Other somewhere in the world.34
But as this suggests, the presence of the other in question can have the status of a
presupposed structural element of the world that is necessitated by my very upsurge,
as a condition of it. And that structure could be at work, as in the case of the
paranoid peeping-Tom, without there actually being anyone around. The world
must be construed as involving the presence of others, sufficient to sustain a concrete

34
ibid. See also the continuation of this passage, 280ff.

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delusion, but there is no necessity that there actually be concrete others anywhere.
Again, the necessity in question does not license an inference to reality.

The significant dialectical point, however, is that with this we have not simply
fallen back in line with Strawson: we have here in one respect an important advance
beyond the yield of his argument. Strawson concludes that we have criteria of a
logically adequate kind for the identification of other persons; and we noted that
having that capacity for the identification of others is compatible with not needing to
exercise it. This is where the fact that the argument in Sartre proceeds at the
phenomenological level makes a difference. While it too falls short of establishing
simply that there are, or must be, other persons the problematic inference to reality
it does establish that over and above having the capacity to make such judgements, we
must in our experience actually judge there to be others (somewhere). In this it
promises a transcendental necessity that Strawsons argument could not.

And the difference between what capacities must be in use rather than
merely resident makes a difference between two construals of the empirical world.
The distance between Sartre and Strawson is well brought out by attending to that
difference. There was not enough in Strawsons argument to exclude the possibility
of the world not containing, and not even appearing to contain, any exemplars of other
minds of the sort we would have been able to identify had they been around. There is
nothing to preclude the world in my experience, other than myself, turning out to be a
purely inert objectual domain: a causally closed stretch of spatio-temporal objects that
at no point disrupt a purely physical account of it. The position is thus basically
compatible with a Kantian construal of empirical reality as merely an unbroken
objectual domain juxtaposed to, and as the condition of, my subjectivity.

This static construal of the transcendentally necessitated empirical reality

comes under pressure from Sartre in a way that it does not in Strawson. On Sartres
view a condition of my being a person, is that the presupposed object-world cannot be
so monolithically construed. It must be construed as containing others, and that
necessitates a disruption of the object-world with which I am confronted. As Sartre is
at pains to point out, the nature of the Look means that the object-world cannot be

Page 29
construed, cannot be presented to me, as simply a seamless spatio-temporal stretch of
causally governed physical matter.
Rather it appears that the world has a kind of drain hole in the middle of its
being and that it is perpetually flowing off through this hole. There, for
example, is a man who is reading while he walks. In the midst of the world
I can say man-reading as I could say cold stone, fine rain. I apprehend a
closed Gestalt in which the reading forms the essential quality; for the rest,
it remains blind and mute, lets itself be known and perceived as a pure and
simple temporal-spatial thing, and seems to be related to the rest of the world
by a purely indifferent externality. The quality man reading as the relation
of the man to the book is simply a little particular crack in my universe. At the
heart of this solid, visible form he makes himself a particular emptying. The
form is massive only in appearance; its particular meaning is to be in the
midst of my universe, at ten paces from me, at the heart of that massivity a
closely consolidated and localized flight. [255-6]
This example of man reading is precisely what Strawson would regard as the
attribution of a p-predicate. And where such predication is made, we have in
Strawson just as in Sartre the introduction of a state that disrupts the objective order
by introducing a subjective point of view and a new set of perspectival relations
which essentially escapes my own. The fact that the p-predicate man reading can be
both other-ascribed and self-ascribed is sufficient to establish this. The difference is
only that this disruption of the static order of the objective world is, in fact, left
optional in Strawson, but rendered necessary in Sartre.

We have then, in Sartre, the grounds of a transcendental proof concerning

other minds that forces a departure from the Kantian construal of empirical reality,
with which Strawsons position is still consonant, in the direction of a Hegelian
construal: there is now a transcendental necessity that my empirical world be so
structured as to include the presence of other minds. And it is the fact that Sartres
description is phenomenological that underpins the greater effectiveness of this proof
over arguments like Strawsons which operate in terms of conceptual analysis and
presupposition. What exactly it is for a description to be phenomenological in this
sense, remains to be brought out. So too does the value of a position that sets out to

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identify transcendental necessities in the way we construe the empirical world, while
acknowledging that we cannot make good the inference to reality.35

35
My thanks to Lucy OBrien, Sebastian Gardner, Robert Pippin, Peter Bieri and an
anonymous referee for this journal, for comments on an earlier version of this paper.

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