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8/13/2019 Solipsism Iep
1/21
Solipsism and the Problem
of Other Minds
http://www.iep.utm.edu/solipsis/
1. Solipsism is sometimes expressed as the view that I am the only mind
which exists, or My mental states are the only mental states.
However, the sole survivor of a nuclear holocaust might truly come to
elieve in either of these propositions without therey eing a solipsist.
!. Solipsism is therefore more properly regarded as the doctrine that, in
principle, existence means for me my existence and that of my mental
states. "xistence is everything that I experience # physical o$ects,
other people, events and processes # anything that would commonly e
regarded as a constituent of the space and time in which I coexist with
others and is necessarily construed y me as part of the content of my
consciousness.
%. &or the solipsist, it is not merely the case that he elieves that his
thoughts, experiences, and emotions are, as a matter of contingent fact,
the only thoughts, experiences, and emotions. 'ather, the solipsist can
attach no meaning to the supposition that there could e thoughts,
experiences, and emotions other than his own. In short, the true
solipsist understands the word pain, for example, to mean my pain.
He cannot accordingly conceive how this word is to e applied in any
sense other than this exclusively egocentric one.
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1. (he Importance of the )rolem
1. *o great philosopher has espoused solipsism. +s a theory, if indeed it
can e termed such, it is clearly very far removed from common sense.
In view of this, it might reasonaly e ased why the prolem of
solipsism should receive any philosophical attention. (here are two
answers to this -uestion. &irst, while no great philosopher has explicitly
espoused solipsism, this can e attriuted to the inconsistency of much
philosophical reasoning. Many philosophers have failed to accept the
logical conse-uences of their own most fundamental commitments and
preconceptions. (he foundations of solipsism lie at the heart of the view
that the individual gets his own psychological concepts thining, willing,
perceiving, and so forth./ from his own cases, that is y astraction
from inner experience.
!. (his view, or some variant of it, has een held y a great many, if not
the ma$ority of philosophers since 0escartes made the egocentric search
for truth to the primary goal of the critical study of the nature and limits
of nowledge.
%. In this sense, solipsism is implicit in many philosophies of nowledge andmind since 0escartes and any theory of nowledge that adopts the
artesian egocentric approach as its asic frame of reference is
inherently solipsistic.
2. Second, solipsism merits close examination ecause it is ased upon
three widely entertained philosophical presuppositions, which are
themselves of fundamental and wide3ranging importance. (hese are4 a/
5hat I now most certainly are the contents of my own mind 6 my
thoughts, experiences, affective states, and so forth.7 / (here is no
conceptual or logically necessary lin etween the mental and the
physical. &or example, there is no necessary lin etween the
occurrence of certain conscious experiences or mental states and the
possession and ehavioral dispositions of a ody of a particular ind7
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and c/ (he experiences of a given person are necessarily private to that
person.
8. (hese presuppositions are of unmistaale artesian origin, and are
widely accepted y philosophers and non3philosophers alie. In tacling
the prolem of solipsism, one immediately grapples with fundamental
issues in the philosophy of mind. However spurious the prolem of
solipsism per se may strie one, these latter issues are un-uestionaly
important. Indeed, one of the merits of the entire enterprise is the
extent that it reveals a direct connection etween apparently
unexceptionale and certainly widely3held common sense eliefs and
the acceptance of solipsistic conclusions. If this connection exists and
we wish to avoid those solipsistic conclusions, we shall have no option
ut to revise, or at least to critically review, the eliefs from which they
derive logical sustenance.
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!. Historical 9rigins of the )rolem
1. In introducing methodic dout into philosophy, 'en: 0escartes
created the acdrop against which solipsism suse-uently developed
and was made to seem, if not plausile, at least irrefutale. &or the ego
that is revealed y the cogito is a solitary consciousness, a res cogitans
that is not spatially extended, is not necessarily located in any ody, and
can e assured of its own existence exclusively as a conscious mind.
0iscourse on Method and the Meditations/.
!. (his view of the self is intrinsically solipsistic and 0escartes evades the
solipsistic conse-uences of his method of dout y the desperate
expedient of appealing to the enevolence of ;od. Since ;od is no
deceiver, he argues, and since He has created man with an innate
disposition to assume the existence of an external, pulic world
corresponding to the private world of the ideas that are the only
immediate o$ects of consciousness, it follows that such a pulic world
actually exists. Sixth Meditation/. (hus does ;od ridge the chasm
etween the solitary consciousness revealed y methodic dout and the
intersu$ective world of pulic o$ects and other human eingsritish
empiricist tradition.
2. 0escartes= account of the nature of mind implies that the individual
ac-uires the psychological concepts that he possesses from his own
case, that is that each individual has a uni-ue and privileged access to
his own mind, which is denied to everyone else.
8. +lthough this view utili?es language and employs conceptual categories
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the individual, other minds, and so forth./ that are inimical to
solipsism, it is nonetheless fundamentally conducive historically to the
development of solipsistic patterns of thought. 9n this view, what I
now immediately and with greatest certainty are the events that occur
in my own mind 6 my thoughts, my emotions, my perceptions, my
desires, and so forth. 6 and these are not nown in this way y anyone
else. >y the same toen, it follows that I do not now other minds in the
way that I now my own7 indeed, if I am to e said to now other minds
at all 6 that they exist and have a particular nature 6 it can only e on
the asis of certain inferences that I have made from what is directly
accessile to me, the ehavior of other human eings.
@. (he essentials of the artesian view were accepted y Aohn Boce, the
father of modern >ritish empiricism. 'e$ecting 0escartes= theory that
the mind possesses ideas innately at irth, Boce argued that all ideas
have their origins in experience. 'eflection that is introspection or
inner experience/ is the sole source of psychological concepts.
5ithout exception, such concepts have their genesis in the experience
of the corresponding mental processes. "ssay oncerning Human
Cnderstanding II.i.2ff/. If I ac-uire my psychological concepts yintrospecting upon my own mental operations, then it follows that I do
so independently of my nowledge of my odily states. +ny correlation
that I mae etween the two will e effected suse-uent to my
ac-uisition of my psychological concepts. (hus, the correlation etween
odily and mental stated is not a logically necessary one. I may discover,
for example, that whenever I feel pain my ody is in$ured in some way,
ut I can discover this factual correlation only after I have ac-uired the
concept pain. It cannot therefore e part of what I mean y the word
pain that my ody should ehave in a particular way.
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%. (he +rgument from +nalogy
1. 5hat then of my nowledge of the minds of others< 9n Boce=s view
there can e only one answer4 since what I now directly is the
existence and contents of my own mind, it follows that my nowledge of
the minds of others, if I am to e said to possess such nowledge at all,
has to e indirect and analogical, an inference from my own case.
!. (his is the so3called argument from analogy for other minds, which
empiricist philosophers in particular who accept the artesian account
of consciousness generally assume as a mechanism for avoiding
solipsism. ompare A. S. Mill, 5illiam Aames, >ertrand 'ussell, and +. A.
+yer/.
%. 9serving that the odies of other human eings ehave as my ody
does in similar circumstances, I can infer that the mental life and series
of mental events that accompany my odily ehavior are also present in
the case of others. (hus, for example, when I see a prolem that I am
trying unsuccessfully to solve, I feel myself ecoming frustrated and
oserve myself acting in a particular way. In the case of another, I
oserve only the first and last terms of this three3term se-uence and, onthis asis, I infer that the hidden middle term, the feeling of
frustration, has also occurred.
2. (here are, however, fundamental difficulties with the argument from
analogy. &irst, if one accepts the artesian account of consciousness,
one must, in all consistency, accept its implications. 9ne of these
implications, as we have seen aove, is that there is no logically
necessary connection etween the concepts of mind and ody7 my
mind may e lodged in my ody now, ut this is a matter of sheer
contingency. Mind need not ecome located in ody. Its nature will not
e affected in any way y the death of this ody and there is no reason
in principle why it should not have een located in a ody radically
different from a human one. >y exactly the same toen, any correlation
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that exists etween odily ehavior and mental states must also e
entirely contingent7 there can e no conceptual connections etween
the contents of a mind at a given time and the nature andDor ehavior
of the ody in which it is located at that time.
8. (his raises the -uestion as to how my supposed analogical inferences to
other minds are to tae place at all. How can I apply psychological
concepts to others, if I now only that they apply to me< (o tae a
concrete example again, if I learn what pain means y reference to
my own case, then I will understand pain to mean my pain and the
supposition that pain can e ascried to anything other than myself will
e unintelligile to me.
@. If the relationship etween having a human ody and a certain ind of
mental life is as contingent as the artesian account of mind implies, it
should e e-ually easy 6 or e-ually difficult 6 for me to conceive of a
tale as eing in pain as it is for me to conceive of another person as
eing in pain. (he point, of course, is that this is not so. (he supposition
that a tale might experience pain is a totally meaningless one, whereas
the ascription of pain to other human eings and animals that, in their
physical characteristics andDor ehavioral capailities, resemle humaneings is something which even very young children find unprolematic.
Budwig 5ittgenstein, )hilosophical Investigations, I. E !F2/.
G. How is this to e accounted for< It will not do, in this context, to simply
respond that a tale does not have the same complex set of physical
characteristics as a human ody or that it is not capale of the same
patterns of ehavior as a human ody. >ecause the artesian position
implies that there is no logical connection etween the mental and the
physical, etween the possession of a ody of a particular ind and the
capaility for consciousness. )hysical differentiation can and must e
acnowledged, ut it can play no role in any explanation of what it is to
have a mental life.
F. I am surrounded y other odies, some of which are similar to mine, and
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some of which are different. 9n artesian principles such similarities
and such differences are irrelevant. (he -uestion as to whether it is
legitimate for me to ascrie psychological predicates to entities other
than myself, which the argument from analogy is designed to address,
cannot hinge on the ind of ody that I am confronted at a given time.
Malcolm, *. a//.
. +ssuming the validity of the artesian position, we have to infer that it
maes as much or a little sense, on these premises, to attriute any
psychological predicate to another human eing as it does to attriute it
to a tale or a roc.
1.9n these premises, it maes no sense to attriute consciousness to
another human eing at all. (hus on strict artesian principles, the
argument from analogy will not do the wor that is re-uired of it to
ridge the gulf etween my conscious states and putative conscious
states that are not mine. Cltimately, it must e confessed that on these
principles I now only my own mental states and the supposition that
there are mental states other than my own ceases to e intelligile to
me. It is thus that solipsism comes to seem inescapale.
11.If the aove argument is valid, it demonstrates that the acceptance ofthe artesian account of consciousness and the view that my
understanding of psychological concepts derives, as do the concepts
themselves, from my own case leads inexoraly to solipsism. However, it
may fairly e said that the argument accomplishes more than $ust this. It
can, and should, e understood as a reductio ad asurdum refutation of
these artesian principles. Jiewed from this perspective, the argument
may e paraphrased as follows4
1!.If there is no logical connection etween the physical and the mental, if
the physical forms no part of the criteria that govern my ascription of
psychological predicates, then I would e ale to conceive of an
inanimate o$ect such as a tale as having a soul and eing conscious.
>ut I cannot attach any intelligiility to the notion of an inanimate
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o$ect eing conscious. It follows therefore that there is a logical
connection etween the physical and the mental4 the physical does form
part of the criteria that govern my ascription of psychological words.
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2. (he )hysical and the Mental
1. 5hat then is this logical connection etween the physical and the
mental< (his -uestion can est e answered y reflecting, for example,
on how a cartoonist might show that a particular tale was angry or in
pain. +s indicated aove, it is impossile to attach literal meaning to the
assertion that a given inanimate o$ect is angry or in pain, ut clearly a
certain imaginative latitude may e allowed for specific purposes and a
cartoonist might conceivaly want to picture a tale as eing angry for
humorous reasons.
!. 5hat is significant in this connection, however, is that to achieve this
effect, the cartoonist must picture the tale as having human features 6
the pictured tale will appear angry to us only to the extent to that it
possesses the natural human expression of anger. (he concept of anger
can find purchase in relation to the tale only if it is represented as
possessing something lie a human form. (his example demonstrates a
point of -uite fundamental importance4 so far from eing ac-uired y
astraction from my own case, from my own inner mental life, my
psychological concepts are ac-uired in a specifically intersu$ective,social, linguistic context and part of their meaning is their primary
application to living human eings. (o put this slightly differently, a
person is a living human eing and the human person in this sense
functions as our paradigm of that which has a mental life7 it is precisely
in relation to their application to persons that we learn such concepts as
consciousness, pain, anger, and so forth. +s such, it is a necessary
and antecedent condition for the ascription of psychological predicates
such as these to an o$ect that it should possess a ody of a particular
ind.
%. 5ittgenstein articulated this point in one of the centrally important
methodological tenets of the Investigations4 9nly of a living human eing
and what resemles ehaves lie/ a living human eing can one say4 it
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has sensations7 it sees7 is lind7 hears7 is deaf7 is conscious or
unconscious. I. E !F1/.
2. onse-uently, the elief that there is something prolematic aout the
application of psychological words to other human eings and that such
applications are necessarily the products of highly fallile inferences to
the inner mental lives of others, which re-uire something lie the
argument from analogy for their $ustification, turns out to e
fundamentally confused. (he intersu$ective world that we live with
other human eings and the pulic language3system that we must master
if we are to thin at all are the primary data, the proto3phenomena,
in 5ittgenstein=s phrase. I. E @82/ 9ur psychological and non3
psychological concepts alie are derived from a single linguistic
fountainhead. It is precisely ecause the living human eing functions as
our paradigm of that which is conscious and has a mental life that we
find the solipsistic notion that other human eings could e
automatons, machines devoid of any conscious thought or experience,
i?arre and ewildering. (he idea that other persons might all in reality
e automatons is not one which we can seriously entertain.
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8. Knowing 9ther Minds
1. 5e are now in a position to see the essential redundancy of the
argument from analogy. &irst, it is a misconception to thin that we
need any inferential argument to assure us of the existence of other
minds. Such an assurance seems necessary only so long as it is assumed
that each of us has to wor outwards from the interiority of hisDher
own consciousness, to astract from our own cases to the internal
world of others.
!. +s indicated aove, this assumption is fundamentally wrong 6 our
nowledge that other human eings are conscious and our nowledge of
their mental states at a given time is not inferential in nature at all, ut
is rather determined y the pulic criteria that govern the application of
psychological concepts. I now that a person who ehaves in a particular
way 6 who, for example, gets red in the face, shouts, gesticulates,
speas vehemently, and so forth 6 is angry precisely ecause I have
learned the concept anger y reference to such ehavioral criteria.
(here is no inference involved here. I do not reason he ehaves in this
way, therefore he is angry 6 rather ehaving in this way is part ofwhat it is to e angry and it does not occur to any sane person to
-uestion whether the individual who acts in this way is conscious or has
a mental life. Investigations, I. E %%7 II. iv., p. 1GF/.
%. Second, ecause the argument from analogy treats the existence of the
mental lives of other living human eings as prolematic, it sees to
estalish that it is legitimate to infer that other living human eings do
indeed have mental lives, that each one of us may e said to e $ustified
in his confidence that he is surrounded y other persons rather than
automatons. (he difficulty here, however, is that the argument
presupposes that I can draw an analogy etween two things, myself as a
person and other living human eings, that are sufficiently similar to
permit the analogous comparison and sufficiently different to re-uire it.
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(he -uestion must e faced, however, is how or in what respects am I
different from or similar to other human eings< (he answer is that I am
neither. I am a living human eing, as are these others. I see aout me
living human eings and the argument from analogy is supposed to allow
me to infer that these are persons lie myself. However, the truth is
that I have no criterion for discriminating living human eings from
persons, for the very good reason that persons are living human eings 6
there is no conceptual difference etween the two. Since the argument
acnowledges that I now living human eings directly, it therey
implicitly acnowledges that I now other persons directly, thus maing
itself functionally redundant. Malcolm, *. op. cit./.
2. + final, fre-uently3encountered o$ection to the argument from analogy
derives from the wor of Strawson and Malcolm4 the argument attempts
to move inferentially from my supposed direct nowledge of my own
mental life and inner states to my indirect nowledge of the mental
states of others. It thus presupposes that I now what it means to assign
mental states to myself without necessarily nowing what it means to
ascrie them to others. (his is incoherent. (o spea of certain mental
states as eing mine in the first place is to discriminate them frommental states that are not mine and these, y definition, are the mental
states of others. It follows, therefore, that in a fundamental sense the
argument from analogy cannot get off the ground4 one cannot now how
to ascrie mental states to oneself unless one also nows what it means
to ascrie mental states to others.
8. )lausile as this o$ection seems at first sight, it is ironically, on
5ittgensteinian criteria/ -uite mistaen. &or it is not the case that when
I am in pain I first identify the pain and suse-uently come to recogni?e
that it is one that I, as distinct from someone else, have. (he personal
pronoun I in the locution I am in pain is not the I of personal
individuation 6 it does not refer to me or discriminate me as a pulicly
situated person as distinct from others. (he >lue >oo and >rown
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>oos, pp. @G3@7 also Investigations, I. E 2@/. (he exponent of the
argument from analogy is not guilty of the charge of presupposing the
very thing that he is endeavoring to demonstrate, as oth Strawson and
Malcolm suggest. 5ittgenstein in fact considered that there is a genuine
asymmetry here, in relation to the ascription of psychological predicates
to oneself and to others, which is dimly perceived ut misrepresented y
those who feel the need of the argument from analogy. 5hereas one
ascries psychological states to others y reference to odily and
ehavioral criteria, one has and re-uires no criteria at all to self3ascrie
or self3avow them. Investigations, I. E !F3!/.
@. (hus the exponent of the argument from analogy sees, -uite correctly,
that present3tense, first3person psychological assertions such as I am in
pain differ radically from third3person psychological predicate
ascriptions, ut thins of the former as descriptions of inner mental
states to which he alone has a privileged access. (his is crucially wrong.
Such uses of the word I as occur in present3tense, first3person
psychological assertions do not identify a possessor7 they do not
discriminate one person from amongst a group. +s 5ittgenstein puts it,
to say I have pain is no more a statement aout a particular personthan moaning is. (he >lue >oo and >rown >oos, p. @G7 also
Investigations, I. E 22./.
G. (o ascrie pain to a third party, on the other hand, is to identify a
concrete individual as the possessor of the pain. 9n this point alone
5ittgenstein concurs with the exponent of the argument from analogy.
However, 5ittgenstein here calls attention to the fact that the
asymmetry is not one that exists etween the supposedly direct and
certain nowledge that I have of my own mental states as distinct from
the wholly inferential nowledge which, allegedly, I have of the mental
states of others. 'ather, the asymmetry is that the ascriptions of
psychological predicates to others re-uire criterial $ustificatory grounds,
whereas the self3avowals or self3ascriptions of such predicates are
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@. (he )rivacy of "xperience
1. 5hat then of solipsism< (o what extent does the foregoing undermine it
as a coherent philosophical hypothesis, aleit one in which no3one really
elieves< Solipsism rests upon certain presuppositions aout the mind
and our nowledge of mental events and processes. (wo of these, the
thesis that I have a privileged form of access to and nowledge of my
own mind and the thesis that there is no conceptual or logically
necessary lin etween the mental and the physical, have een dealt
with aove. If the foregoing is correct, oth theses are false. (his leaves
us with the final presupposition underlying solipsism, that all
experiences are necessarily that is logically/ private to the individual
whose experiences they are. (his thesis 6 which, it is fair to say, is very
widely accepted 6 also derives from the artesian account of mind and
generates solipsistic conclusions y suggesting that experience is
something that, ecause of its occult or ephemeral nature, can never
literally e shared. *o two people can ever e said to have the same
experience. (his again introduces the prolem of how one person can
now the experiences of another or, more radically, how one can nowthat another person has experiences at all.
!. 5ittgenstein offers a comprehensive criti-ue of this view. He attacs the
notion that experience is necessarily private. His arguments against this
are complex, if highly compressed and rather oracular. &or more
detailed accounts, see Kenny, +., Malcolm, *. /, Johra, +./.
%. 5ittgenstein distinguishes two senses of the word private as it is
normally used4 privacy of nowledge and privacy of possession.
Something is private to me in the first sense if only I can now it7 it is
private to me in the second sense if only I can have it. (hus the thesis
that experience is necessarily private can mean one of two things, which
are not always discriminated from each other with sufficient care4 a/
only I can now my experiences or / only I can have my experiences.
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5ittgenstein argues that the first of these is false and the second is true
in a sense that does not mae experience necessarily private, as follows4
2. Cnder a/, if we tae pain as an experiential exemplar, we find that the
assertion 9nly I can now my pains is a con$unction of two separate
theses4 i/ I can/ now that I am in pain when I am in pain and ii/ other
people cannot now that I am in pain when I am in pain. (hesis i/ is,
literally, nonsense4 it cannot e meaningfully asserted of me that I now
that I am in pain. 5ittgenstein=s point here is not that I do not now
that I am in pain when I am in pain, ut rather that the word now
cannot e significantly employed in this way. Investigations, I. E !2@7 II.
xi. p. !!!/. (his is ecause the veral locution I am in pain is usually
though not invarialy/ an expression of pain 6 as part of ac-uired pain3
ehavior it is a linguistic sustitute for such natural expressions of pain
as groaning. I. E !22/. &or this reason it cannot e governed y an
epistemic operator. (he prepositional function I now that x does not
yield a meaningful proposition if the variale is replaced y an
expression of pain, linguistic or otherwise. (hus to say that others learn
of my pains only from my ehavior is misleading, ecause it suggests
that I learn of them otherwise, whereas I don=t learn of them at all 6 Ihave them. I. E !2@/.
8. (hesis ii/ 6 other people cannot now that I am in pain when I am in
pain 6 is false. If we tae the word now is as it is normally used, then
it is true to say that other people can and very fre-uently do now when
I am in pain. Indeed, in cases where the pain is extreme, it is often
impossile to prevent others from nowing this even when one wishes to
do so. (hus, in certain circumstances, it would not e unusual to hear it
remared of someone, for example, that a moan of pain escaped him 6
indicating that despite his efforts, he could not ut manifest his pain to
others. It thus transpires that neither thesis i/ nor ii/ is true.
@. If we turn to /, we find that 9nly I can have my pains expresses a
truth, ut it is a truth that is grammatical rather than ontological. It
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draws our attention to the grammatical connection etween the
personal pronoun I and the possessive my. However, it tells us
nothing specifically aout pains or other experiences, for it remains true
if we replace the word pains with many other plural nouns e.g. 9nly
I can have my lushes/. +nother person can have the same pain as me.
If our pains have the same phenomenal characteristics and
corresponding locations, we will -uite correctly e said to have the
same pain. (his is what the expression the same pain means. +nother
person, however, cannot have my pains. My pains are the ones that, if
they are expressed at all, are expressed y me. >ut y exactly the same
grammatical/ toen, another person cannot have my lushes, snee?es,
frowns, fears, and so forth., and none of this can e taen as adding to
our stocpile of metaphysical truths. It is true that I may delierately
and successfully eep an experience to myself, in which case that
particular experience might e said to e private to me. >ut I might do
this y articulating it in a language that those with whom I was
conversing do not understand. (here is clearly nothing occult or
mysterious aout this ind of privacy. Investigations, II. xi, p. !!!/.
G. Similarly, experience that I do not or cannot eep to myself is notprivate. In short, some experiences are private and some are not. "ven
though some experiences are private in this sense, it does not follow
that all experiences could e private. +s 5ittgenstein points out, 5hat
sometimes happens could always happen is a fallacy. It does not follow
from the fact that some orders are not oeyed that all orders might
never e oeyed. &or in that case the concept order would ecome
incapale of instantiation and would lose its significance. I. E %28/.
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G. (he Incoherence of Solipsism
1. 5ith the elief in the essential privacy of experience eliminated as
false, the last presupposition underlying solipsism is removed and
solipsism is shown as foundationless, in theory and in fact.
!. 9ne might even say, solipsism is necessarily foundationless, for to mae
an appeal to logical rules or empirical evidence the solipsist would
implicitly have to affirm the very thing that he purportedly refuses to
elieve4 the reality of intersu$ectively valid criteria and a pulic, extra3
mental world. (here is a temptation to say that solipsism is a false
philosophical theory, ut this is not -uite strong or accurate enough. +s
a theory, it is incoherent. 5hat maes it incoherent, aove all else, is
that the solipsist re-uires a language that is a sign3system/ to thin or
to affirm his solipsistic thoughts at all. ;iven this, it is scarcely
surprising that those philosophers who accept the artesian premises
that mae solipsism apparently plausile, if not inescapale, have also
invarialy assumed that language3usage is itself essentially private. (he
cluster of arguments 6 generally referred to as the private language
argument 6 that we find in the Investigations against this assumptioneffectively administers the coup de grLce to oth artesian dualism and
solipsism. I. E !!7 !2!3%18/. Banguage is an irreducily pulic form of
life that is encountered in specifically social contexts. "ach natural
language3system contains an indefinitely large numer of language3
games, governed y rules that, though conventional, are not aritrary
personal fiats. (he meaning of a word is its pulicly accessile/ use in a
language. (o -uestion, argue, or dout is to utili?e language in a
particular way. It is to play a particular ind of pulic language3game.
(he proposition I am the only mind that exists maes sense only to the
extent that it is expressed in a pulic language, and the existence of
such language itself implies the existence of a social context. Such a
context exists for the hypothetical last survivor of a nuclear holocaust,
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ut not for the solipsist. + non3linguistic solipsism is unthinale and a
thinale solipsism is necessarily linguistic. Solipsism therefore
presupposes the very thing that it sees to deny. (hat solipsistic
thoughts are thinale in the first instance implies the existence of the
pulic, shared, intersu$ective world that they purport to call into
-uestion.
F. 'eferences and &urther 'eading
+yer, +. A. (he )rolem of Knowledge. )enguin, 18@.
>ec, K. 0e re >elief and Methodological Solipsism, in (hought and
9$ect 6 "ssays in Intentionality ed. +. 5oodfield/. larendon )ress, 1F!.
0ancy, A. Introduction to ontemporary "pistemology. >lacwell, 1F8.
0escartes, '. 0iscourse on Method and the Meditations trans. &. ".
Sutcliffe/. )enguin, 1@F.
0evitt, M. 'ealism and (ruth. >lacwell, 1F2.
Hacer, ).M.S. Insight and Illusion. 9.C.)., 1G!.
Aames, 5. 'adical "mpiricism and a )luralistic Cniverse. ".). 0utton, 1G1.
Kenny, +. 5ittgenstein. )enguin, 1G%.
Boce, A. "ssay oncerning Human Cnderstanding ed. +.. &raser/, 0over,18.
Malcolm, *. a/ )rolems of Mind4 0escartes to 5ittgenstein, +llen N
Cnwin, 1G1.
Malcolm, *. / (hought and Knowledge. ornell Cniversity )ress, 1GG.
Mill, A.S. +n "xamination of Sir 5illiam Hamilton=s )hilosophy. Bongmans
;reen @th ed./, 1FF.
9liver, 5.0. + Soer Boo at Solipsism, Studies in the (heory of
Knowledge ed. *. 'escher/. >lacwell, 1G.
)inchin, . Issues in )hilosophy. Macmillan, 1.
Ouine, 5.J. a/ (he Scope of Banguage in Science, (he 5ays of )aradox
and 9ther "ssays. 'andom House, 1@@.
Ouine, 5.J. / "pistemology *aturali?ed, 9ntological 'elativity and
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9ther "ssays. olumia Cniversity )ress, 1@.
'ussell, >. Human Knowledge4 Its Scope and Bimits. +llen N Cnwin, 12F.
Strawson, ).&. Individuals, an "ssay in 0escriptive Metaphysics. Methuen,
18.
Johra, +. 5ittgenstein=s )hilosophy of Mind. room Helm, 1F@.
5ittgenstein, B. a/ (he >lue >oo and >rown >oos, >lacwell, 1G!.
5ittgenstein, B. / )hilosophical Investigations. >lacwell, 1G2.
+uthor Information
Stephen ). (hornton
"mail4 stephen.thorntonPmic.ul.ie
Cniversity of Bimeric, Ireland
Bast updated on 9ctoer !2, !2 Q ategories4 Mind N ognitive Science