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 ways is not similar to its own, such individuals reject and are critical of it. Philosophers have paid enough attention to this phenomenon. Exploring such self-awareness, 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 accepts without a doubt only one reality: his own consciousness. The whole external world, outside one's own consciousness, and other animated 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 view expressing the logic of that subjective and centrist attitude that was accepted in the Western classical philosophy of the New Age (after Descartes).
Duality of 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 - that means I exist." With this statement, using ontological evidence, he spoke of the existence of God. According to Descartes, God is not a deceiver and, therefore, He guarantees the reality of other people and the entire outside world.
So, a solipsist is a person for whom only he himself is a reality. 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:
- Consciousness as a real personal personal experience as the only possible one entails the affirmation of the "I" as the owner of this experience. The theses of Descartes and Berkeley are close to this understanding.
- Even with the existence of the only undoubted personal experience, there is no “I” to which that experience belongs. The “I” is only the totality of the elements of the same experience.
It turns out that a solipsist is a paradoxical person. The twofoldness of solipsism was best expressed by L. Wittgenstein in his Logical and Philosophical Treatise. Modern philosophy is increasingly inclined to such a point of view that the inner world of the "I" and individual consciousness is not possible without the communication of the subject in the real material world with other people.
Tight framework
Modern solipsist philosophers abandon the framework of classical philosophy regarding a subjective centrist attitude. Already in his later works, Wittgenstein wrote about the insolvency of such positions of solipsism and the impossibility of a purely internal experience. In 1920, the opinion began to be established that people basically could not agree with solipsism, proposed on behalf of another person. If a person considers himself separately from others, then regarding self-experience, solipsism will look convincing, but it is the attitude towards another person that is a statement of real experience.
What position did the famous solipsists of the past and the present express?
Berkeley identified physical things with a combination of sensations. He believed that no one perceives the continuity of things, the impossibility of their disappearance is provided by the perception of God. And this happens all the time.
D. Hume believed that from a purely theoretical point of view it is impossible to prove the existence of other people together with the outside world. Man needs to believe in their reality. Without this faith, knowledge and practical life are impossible.
Schopenhauer noted that the extreme solipsist is a person who can be mistaken for the insane as he recognizes the reality of an exceptional “I”. A more moderate solipsist may be more realistic, recognizing a supra-individual “I” in a certain form as a carrier of consciousness.
Kant considers his own experience to be the construction of his “I”: not empirical, but transcendental, in which the distinctions between others and self are obliterated. Regarding the “I” of the empirical one, it can be said that his internal awareness of his own states implies external experience and consciousness of independent material objects and objective events.
Psychology and Solipsism
Modern representatives of cognitive psychology, such as Fodor J., believe that methodological solipsism should become the main research strategy in this field of science. This, of course, is a different position from the classical understanding of philosophers, according to which it is necessary to study psychological processes by conducting an analysis outside the relationship with the outside world and its events together with other people. This position does not deny the existence of the outside 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.
