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Wittgenstein’s “Inner and Outer”: Overcoming Epistemic Asymmetry

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In this article, I identify three ways in which Wittgenstein opposed an idea of epistemic asymmetry between the first person and the secondor-third person. Examining the questions of 1) absence of doubt about my own experience and uncertainty about the experiences of others, 2) ineffability of subjective experience and 3) immediacy of my knowledge of my own experience contrasted with my merely inferential knowledge about the experiences of others, I see Wittgenstein’s remarks about “inner and outer” as a many-faceted denial of the claim that people’s minds are in some deep way unknowable to others. These considerations also serve to clarify Wittgenstein’s relation to behaviorism. 1. Wittgenstein on other minds Wittgenstein is undoubtedly an important philosopher to consider when tracing the history of the so-called problem of other minds. There was a boom of writings on the topic from philosophers of the analytic tradition after the middle of the 20 th century, probably largely inspired by Wittgenstein’s remarks on solipsism and related matters. However, when Wittgenstein’s contribution to the problem of other minds is explicitly assessed, the central attention is usually given to rather narrowly limited points in his writings. He is applauded for seeing a conceptual problem in the place of the