andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> Philosophers who start from Cartesian premises have
> been discussing something called "the problem of other
> minds" for some centuries:
>
> http://www.iep.utm.edu/s/solipsis.htm#H2
>
> though the concern here is something less rather than
> what other people are thinking than whether other
> bodies are inhabited by minds to start with.
The concern here is not whether other minds exist; it is whether people (and some animals) act on the basis of a recognition of what's going on in other creatures. Deception depends on this. And deception within deception depends even on a fairly complex "theory of the mind" of the person/animal being deceived. It's not to begin with anyhow a philosophical question at all.
Carrol