Someone else’s shoes

Wittgenstein writes in his Philosophical Investigations, § 443: “ ‘The red which you imagine is surely not the same (not the same thing) as the red which you see in front of you; so how can you say that it is what you imagined?’ ” Let’s forget the quotation marks and concentrate on the contents and take the remark as it is. Let’s go one step further. Then we get the question: Is what you see exactly the same as what I see, even if we describe it with the same words? For instance: You see something red and describes it as being red. But is your red also my red? It’s a thing I always have wondered, already as a child. To be exact, then I wondered whether the yellow colour that you see is the same yellow colour as I see it. In short, I wondered whether your yellow is my yellow. Not only then I asked myself this question, but I still do. Even more, when I keep a hand for my right eye and then for my left eye, I always have the impression that the yellow I see with my left eye is a little different from the yellow I see with my right eye: My left eye yellow is slightly darker than my right eye yellow. Leaving aside for a moment the latter problem of seeing the same thing in different ways, depending on the eye I use, I think that we have here a fundamental problem of human relationship and being human: Are we really able to have the same experiences as other persons when seeing the same red object or taking part in the same event, even though – at first sight, at least – we and they are the same in relevant respects? So, can we put ourselves in someone else’s shoes? Many people think we can: That we can experience another person’s feelings, but also another person’s reasoning when taking a decision. And many people think we often do: they often automatically think that another person’s view point is their view point. For instance, someone tells a dirty joke and you think that he knows that he tells a dirty joke; his view on the world is your view on the world.
The problem here is that you may be right in thinking that what you see, feel, experience, etc. is what the other sees, feels, experiences ... However, this doesn’t need to be so. You can make the mistake – and it often happens –that is called the psychologist’s fallacy (a term coined by William James some 150 years ago). The Lexico dictionary describes it this way: “The confusion of the thought of the observer with that which is being observed; the assumption that motives, etc., present in one’s own mind are also present in that of the subject under investigation.”
There are different types of the psychologist’s fallacy, which I’ll not discuss here (see for instance this link, where you can also find more examples). However, it’s a fallacy that is prevalent. For many people it is difficult to imagine that other people are different, think differently and behave differently. Oh, certainly, they say that they can imagine that others are different etc. and in the abstract they know that it happens, but when it comes to the point they feel that not being, thinking and behaving like they do is strange, if not weird. It’s the basis of prejudices. “Why are they not as us”, they say. “It’s normal to do it our way.” Etc. This thinking, being, behaving differently is enough to look down on “them”, and to turn their backs on them. But note that your own left eye may see things in a different way than your right eye does. Aren’t we so already a bit as the other whom we think we don’t understand? Even if you wouldn’t want to be in someone’s shoes, maybe those shoes do fit him or her better.