 Malebranche thinks that knowledge of other minds is even more impoverished (if this seems possible), for here we must rely on conjecture. Other minds are not immediately present to us in the way that our own mind and its modifications are, and so they cannot even be known by consciousness. Instead, we must conjecture, on the basis of our sensory perception of the behavior of bodies similar to our own, that they are united to minds and that these minds are affected with the same sorts of sensations and passions as ours. Such knowledge, however, is ‘very liable to error’ (Search 3.2.7, OC 1:455; LO 239). One might wonder why Malebranche calls this ‘knowledge’ (la connoissance) at all, and not ‘opinion’ or ‘belief,’ in keeping with the philosophical tradition. The simple answer is that he is using the term broadly here to refer to different forms of cognition – i.e., ways of perceiving (manières de voir) God, bodies, the self, and other minds.