What is a solipsist and solipsism?

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:47

Today, many people consider their opinion to be the only correct one and not subject to any doubt. The existence of another reality, which in some way is not similar to their own, such individuals reject and treat it critically. Philosophers have paid enough attention to this phenomenon. Exploring such self-consciousness, they came to certain conclusions. This article is devoted to solipsism as a manifestation of individual consciousness with a subjective centric attitude.

General concepts

The philosophical term "solipsism" comes from the Latin solus-ipse ("single, self"). In other words, a solipsist is a person who has a point of view that perceives without doubt only one reality: his own consciousness. The entire outside world, outside of one's own consciousness, and other sentient beings are subject to doubt.

The philosophical position of such a person undoubtedly asserts only his own subjective experience, information processed by individual consciousness. Everything that exists independently of it, including the body, is only a part of subjective experience. It can be argued that a solipsist is a person with a point of viewexpressing the logic of that subjective and centrist attitude, which was accepted in the Western classical philosophy of the New Age (after Descartes).

Double theory

Nevertheless, many philosophers found it difficult to express their point of view in the spirit of solipsism. This is due to the contradiction that arises in connection with the postulates and facts of scientific consciousness.

Descartes said: "I think, therefore I exist." With this statement, with the help of ontological proof, he spoke about the existence of God. According to Descartes, God is not a deceiver and therefore He guarantees the reality of other people and the entire external world.

So, a solipsist is a person for whom the reality is only himself. And, as mentioned above, a person is real, first of all, not as a material body, but exclusively in the form of a set of acts of consciousness.

The meaning of solipsism can be understood in two ways:

1. Consciousness as a real own personal experience as the only possible one entails the assertion of "I" as the owner of this experience. The theses of Descartes and Berkeley are close to this understanding.
2. Even if there is only one undeniable personal experience, there is no "I" to which that experience belongs. "I" is just a collection of elements of the same experience.

It turns out that the solipsist is a paradoxical person. The duality of solipsism was best expressed by Wittgenstein L. in his "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus". Modern philosophy is more and more inclined towards such a point of view that the inner world of the "I" andindividual consciousness is not possible without communication of the subject in the real material world with other people.

Tight frames

Modern solipsist philosophers refuse the framework of classical philosophy regarding the subjective centrist attitude. Already in his later works, Wittgenstein wrote about the untenability of such positions of solipsism and the impossibility of a purely internal experience. Since 1920, the opinion began to take hold that people cannot, in principle, agree with solipsism proposed on behalf of another person. If a person considers himself separately from others, then solipsism will look convincing regarding self-experiences, but it is the attitude towards another person that is a statement of real experience.

What position did famous solipsists of the past and present express?

Berkeley identified physical things with the totality of sensations. He believed that no one perceives the continuity of the existence of things, the impossibility of their disappearance is ensured by the perception of God. And this happens all the time.

D. Hume believed that, from a purely theoretical point of view, it was impossible to prove the existence of other people along with the external world. A person needs to believe in their reality. Without this faith, knowledge and practical life are impossible.

Schopenhauer noted that an extreme solipsist is a person who can be taken for a lunatic, since he recognizes the reality of the exclusive "I". Might be more realisticbe a moderate solipsist, recognizing a supra-individual "I" in a certain form as a carrier of consciousness.

Kant considers his own experience as the construction of his "I": not empirical, but transcendental, in which the differences between others and one's own personality are erased. With regard to the empirical "I" we can say that its internal awareness of its own states involves external experience and consciousness of independent material objects and objective events.

Psychology and solipsism

Such modern representatives of cognitive psychology, as Fodor J., believe that methodological solipsism should become the main strategy for research in this field of science. This is, of course, a position that is different from the classical understanding of philosophers, according to which it is necessary to study psychological processes by conducting analysis outside of relation to the outside world and its events together with other people. Such a position does not deny the existence of the external world, and the facts of consciousness and mental processes are associated with the activity of the brain as a material formation in space and time. However, many psychologists and philosophers consider this position to be a dead end.

Radical views

I wonder what extreme conclusion the solipsist logically comes to, who can be considered radical?

Such a position, though sometimes more logical, but at the same time is implausible. If we start only from compliancelogical correctness, which solipsism strives for, then a person should limit himself only to mental states that he is now directly aware of. For example, the Buddha was content to be able to meditate while the tigers roared around him. If he was a solipsist and thought logically, he thinks the tigers would stop growling when he stopped noticing them.

An extreme form of solipsism says that the universe consists only of what can be perceived at a given moment. The radical solipsist must argue that if for some time his gaze vacantly rested on something or someone, then nothing happened in him as a result of this.