Question

In the past I saw that the Rabbi wrote on the site that the main argument against solipsism is the analogy to oneself, but in his book Introduction to the Theory of Logic, Bergmann raises several considerations against this argument and holds that one cannot derive from it that another person also has consciousness like mine. I would be happy to hear the Rabbi’s response to his claims:

1. True, one can derive from equality of causes to equality of consequences, but the reverse is not possible, and therefore the analogy between me and another person does not justify the assumption that it is the same cause.
2. The analogy is only an estimate, and as such it does not constitute a conclusive argument but only a relative one.
3. The whole use of analogy in this case is flawed—analogy is used only when we know that the same case recurs, and when we know in advance that the same thing exists or can exist in multiple instances. If, for example, you see a cat and learn all its movements, and then see an animal similar in its movements, you can infer by analogy what it is. But the whole question in this case is: how do we know that a second “I” can exist at all? The analogy does not create the second “I”; rather, it is built on the prior assumption that there is a second “I” in the world, and the question remains how that second “I,” which is really the “you,” comes into being.
4. We do not perceive ourselves in two ways, an inner life on the one hand and an outer-bodily life on the other, but as one unity. Only after we encounter another person and see that he has an inner life do we divide our own life as well into an inner and an outer part. If so, it turns out that the analogical inference is actually reversed—from the other to the self, and not from the self to the other.