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Solipsism (/ ˈ s ɒ l ɪ p s ɪ z əm / ⓘ SOLL-ip-siz-əm; from Latin solus 'alone' and ipse 'self') [1] is the philosophical idea that only one's mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind.
Sep 11, 2020 · Solipsism, technically, is an extreme form of skepticism, at once utterly illogical and irrefutable. It holds that you are the only conscious being in existence. The cosmos sprang into existence ...
- What Is Solipsism?
- What Are Some Counterarguments to Solipsism?
- The Argument from Analogy
- To Be Is to Be Perceived
- We Access The World Directly
- The Private Language Argument
- Can We Be Certain About anything?
- Where Does Solipsism Leave Us?
- In Just 5 Days, You’Ll Know Philosophy’s Best Answers to Life’S Big Questions
Solipsists believe in an extreme form of skepticism about the external world: namely, that anything ‘external’ doesn’t exist. Everythingis an aspect of their own mind. Taken at face value, this might seem a ridiculous position. How could a single mind possibly conjure up such a rich and endlessly unfolding tapestry of circumstances involving sight,...
Beyond Descartes, a huge number of philosophers have attempted to refute solipsism over the years, but a universally-accepted logical refutation has proven rather elusive. Many philosophers revert to simply arguing against solipsism’s likelihood, rather than providing logical refutations. For instance, a common response to the solipsist is to deman...
Historically, the argument from analogy was a very common strategy for avoiding solipsism. A typical occurrence of it can be found in John Stuart Mill’s 1865 work, An Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy. In reply to the question of how we can know other people have minds, Mill writes: In other words, other people act like I do in simil...
The subjective idealist George Berkeley had a view many equate to solipsism, but he actually offered what he thought was a solid refutation of it. As we outline in our discussion of Berkeley’s philosophy, his metaphysical slogan was esse est percipi:to be is to be perceived. Berkeley thought the only things in existence were minds and their potenti...
Some philosophers of epistemology and consciousnesstake issue with a key premise of solipsism: that our sensory perceptions are aspects of our mind, rather than direct representations of the world itself. One route out of solipsism, therefore, is to deny that all we have access to is the contents of our own mind. This area is hardly settled, howeve...
Another argument against solipsism is inspired by Wittgenstein’s private language argument, as set out in his 1953 work, Philosophical Investigations, which states that a language understandable by only a single individual is incoherent. Public languages, Wittgenstein argues, can only result from public social contexts. So, that we are able to expr...
Another point is less a counterargument to solipsism and more a way to defuse its power. Essentially, solipsism, along with any theory that demands certainty, sets unrealistic expectations for knowledge. We may not be able to rule out solipsism with certainty. But we also can’t rule out with certainty that, say, there’s a giant, invisible spaghetti...
Solipsism raises fundamental issues in epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of consciousness, and forces us to face up to the limitations of our reasoning — for while solipsism seems utterly absurd, arguably it has never been (and perhaps never could be) unequivocally refuted. But perhaps the most poignant reaction we might have when consi...
If you’re intrigued to learn more about philosophy, but not sure where to start, check out our 5-day introductory philosophy course, which distills the great philosophers’ best answers to life’s big questions, including how we should live, whether we have free will, if perception is reality, and why anything exists.
May 2, 2023 · "You can say that the universe is there only when there is an observer who can say, Yes, I see the universe there. These small words — it looks like it was here— for practical purposes it may not matter much, but for me as a human being, I do not know any sense in which I could claim that the universe is here in the absence of observers.
Whenever I dig into existential questions about free will, existence, consciousness, why everything is the way it is etc. I always end up seeing comments like "They are all you. It is all you. Only you". Or things like "You are the only thing that exists. Everything else is your imagination." Oftentimes upvoted multiple times.
Nov 18, 2021 · Physicists have long speculated why our universe seems “just right” for life. The most complex answer might be the simplest – that every other universe also exists. Why are we conscious?
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Nov 17, 2021 · WE CAN attempt to answer the question of why we exist in a literal sense: by tracing our human story back through the whorls and rifts of evolution, through the contested origins of life on Earth ...
