Other Minds is a San Francisco based private 501 (c) (3) not-for-profit organization, founded in 1992 by Charles Amirkhanian (who serves as Executive and Artistic Director) and Jim Newman (President Emeritus). According to their mission statement: Other Minds, Inc., is dedicated to the encouragement and propagation of contemporary music in all its forms through concerts, workshops and conferences that bring together artists and audiences of diverse traditions, generations and cultural backgrounds. By fostering cross-cultural exchange and creative dialogue and by encouraging exploration of areas in new music seldom touched upon by mainstream music institutions, Other Minds is committed to expanding and reshaping the definition of what constitutes "serious music.".
The name "Other Minds" has been attributed by Jim Newman to an anonymous obituary that ran in the New Yorker in 1992 which stated that John Cage "...composed music in other people's minds."
Other Minds has achieved wide recognition and acclaim including the ASCAP award in 2009 for adventurous programming and the American Music Center's 2005 letter of distinction for service to American composers.

The problem of other minds has traditionally been regarded as an epistemological challenge raised by the skeptic. The challenge may be expressed as follows: given that I can only observe the behavior of others, how can I know that others have minds? The thought behind the question is that no matter how sophisticated someone's behavior is, behavior on its own is not sufficient to guarantee the presence of mentality. It remains possible, for example, that other people are actually nothing more than automata made out of flesh (or "philosophical zombies" as the term for this example stands). Perhaps the main argument offered against this possibility in the history of philosophy is the argument from analogy (other things have minds if they are sufficiently similar to us); it can be found in the works of John Stuart Mill, A. J. Ayer, and Bertrand Russell. The argument from analogy has faced scrutiny from the likes of Norman Malcolm who have issues with the "one case" nature of the argument.