Does science have any separate arguments for the existence of other minds?

Question

For example, there is an argument of the best explanation in favor of the existence of other minds.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/other-minds/#BestExpl

Is this argument used in science or is this argument only used in philosophy?

Answer 1

All toddlers who develop to childhood have inferred the reality of our world, and of other minds. This is a process of informal empiricism, and like science, it does not operate off "proofs" but off pragmatic likelihoods. Science uses the same basic pragmatic methods as informal empiricism, just with more formal processes.

The DENIAL of our world, or of other minds, only appears later in life, and is based on philosophic NOT scientific thinking. The demand of "proof" of what one accepts as true is a epistemelogic criteria, and epistemology is explicitly philosophy. That proofs are only possible in math and logic, and logic cannot tell us anything about the contingent world, has also been demonstrated in philosophy (Kant's The Critique of Pure Reason was a key brick in this demonstration by philosophers), but is a lesson that often needs to be relearned by each generation of newly interested explores of philosophic thought.

Answer 2

I would add the following simple answer, since the OP asks whether an argument is scientific or philosophical.

Science simply accepts the world is real and that others, besides me, have minds as well.

Science also accepts evolution and wave-particle duality.

But philosophically one can doubt any of that and demand evidence or proof of a different kind and/or range.

So philosophically one can doubt evolution, others' minds and the reality of this world. Going far enough one can doubt one's own existence as well.

So arguments, in favor of other minds, are part of philosophy because philosophy is the only area where such doubts are raised. The best of those arguments corroborated by facts of this world.

Examples:

1. The argument from survival. Science accepts evolution and survival. Survival itself pushes beings to develop a theory of mind for other beings in the world in order to outsmart and survive or collaborate and survive. This coupled with the fact that survival is successful provides a practical proof or inference of other minds. In a sense it is a self-evident fact of life.
2. The power of indirect proof. An indirect proof is equivalent to a direct proof when all the remainders point uniquely to the same assertion as that of a direct approach. Science uses indirect reasoning every time it infers unobserved entities from the behavior of other observed entities. One can argue that this is the definitive final argument for other minds, since a direct approach to experience another mind would literally make it "my mind", so the only alternative is the indirect inference.