What does the concept of solipsism imply?

Answer 1

The word solipsism (Latin: solus, alone + ipse, self) is used for two related yet distinct concepts:

An epistemological position that one's own perceptions are the only things that can be known with certainty. The nature of the external world — that is, the source of one's perceptions — therefore cannot be conclusively known; it may not even exist. This is also called external world skepticism.
A metaphysical belief that nothing beyond oneself and one's internal experiences does in fact exist, and that all objects, people, etc, that one experiences are merely parts of one's own mind.

Origin of solipsism
Solipsism is first recorded with the Greek presocratic sophist Gorgias (c. 483–375 BC) who is quoted by the Roman sceptic Sextus Empiricus as having stated:

Nothing exists
Even if something exists, nothing can be known about it, and
Even if something could be known about it, knowledge about it can't be communicated to others
Epistemological solipsism is generally identified with statements 2 and 3 from Gorgias; metaphysical solipsism believes all three. [citation needed]

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Varieties of solipsism
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Metaphysical solipsism
Main article: Metaphysical solipsism
Metaphysical solipsism is the variety of idealism which maintains that the individual self of the solipsistic philosopher is the whole of reality and that the external world and other persons are representations of that self having no independent existence (Wood, 295).

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Methodological solipsism
Main article: Methodological solipsism
Methodological solipsism is the epistemological thesis that the individual self and its states are the sole possible or proper starting point for philosophical construction (Wood, 295). A skeptical turn along these lines is cartesian skepticism.

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Questions about solipsism
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Is solipsism one or many?
Philosophical disputes about the character and the consequences of solipsism hinge on the questions of (1) whether there is anything approaching a rigorous definition of solipsism, (2) whether a unique definition can be singled out as the one and only proper definition, or (3) there are as many definitions of solipsism as there are solipsists.

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Is solipsism falsifiable?
According to one argument, no experiment (by a given solipsist A) can be designed to disprove solipsism (to the satisfaction of that solipsist A). Solipsism is therefore said to be unfalsifiable in the sense in which Karl Popper used the word. A solipsistic viewpoint held by a particular individual is unfalsifiable only to that individual, however. Any other person B might by introspection (cogito, ergo sum) conclude that he or she (B) does in fact exist and therefore that A is proven wrong (though B might symmetrically doubt whether A exists, and therefore would not have disproven solipsism per se, only solipsism by A). Even though B has proven A wrong, there is no way for B to validly convince A to abandon solipsism, since A doubts B's very existence, let alone B's experiences or experimental results.

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Thought experiments
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Brain in a vat
A thought-experiment related to solipsism, although in principle distinct (for one thing, it posits a real mad scientist, brain, and vat, which a metaphysical solipsist would dispute), is the brain in a vat. The person performing the thought-experiment considers the possibility that they are trapped within some utterly unknowable reality, much like that illustrated in the movie The Matrix. A mad scientist could be sending the same impulses to one's brain in a vat that one's brain (understood to be that of a person in the "real world") might receive, thereby creating "the world" as one knows it from the mad scientist's program. Yet, for one's brain in the vat, that "world" would obviously not be "real." This raises the possibility that everything one thinks or knows is illusion. Or, at the least, that one cannot know with any certainty whether one's brain is in the "real world" or in a vat receiving impulses that would create an equivalent consciousness— or even if there is a real world, mad scientist, brain, or vat (all experience could be simply a never-ending dream).

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Sole surviving soul
Is the last person alive, in one scenario, after a nuclear holocaust, a solipsist? Not necessarily, because for the solipsist, it is not merely the case that he believes that his thoughts, experiences, and emotions are, as a matter of contingent fact, the only thoughts, experiences, and emotions that can be. Rather, the solipsist can attach no meaning to the supposition that there could be thoughts, experiences, and emotions other than his own — that events may occur or objects or people exist independently of the solipsist's own imagination. In short, the metaphysical solipsist understands the word "pain", for example, to mean "one's own [i.e., someone's] pain" — but this word cannot accordingly be construed to apply in any sense other than this exclusively egocentric, non-empathetic one.

Assuming the validity of solipsism, one must infer that it makes as much or as little sense, on these premises, to attribute any psychological predicate to another human being as it does to attribute it to a table or a rock. Thus on these premises, it makes no sense to attribute consciousness to another human being at all, whether or not they're the last man on Earth or not. A non-solipsistic 'last man alive' would not believe that tenet if he suddenly stumbled across another human being (or simply recalled one from memory). (Thornton 2006).

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Solipsism in epistemology
The foundations of solipsism lie at the heart of the view that the individual understands all psychological concepts (thinking, willing, perceiving, etc.) by analogy with his own mental states, i.e. by abstraction from inner experience. And this view, or some variant of it, has been held by a great many, if not indeed the majority of, philosophers, since Descartes elevated the egocentric search for incontrovertible certainty to the status of the primary goal of critical epistemology. In this sense, then, it is at least contestable that epistemological solipsism is implicit in many philosophies of knowledge and mind since Descartes, and that any philosophy which adopts the Cartesian egocentric approach as its basic frame of reference is inherently solipsistic.

The problem of solipsism also merits close examination because it is based upon three widely held philosophical presuppositions, which are themselves fundamental and wide-ranging in importance. These are: (1) That my most certain knowledge is the contents of my own mind — my thoughts, experiences, affects, etc.; (2) That there is no conceptual or logically necessary link between the mental and the physical — between, say, the occurrence of certain conscious experiences or mental states and the 'possession' and behavioral dispositions of a 'body' of a particular kind (see the above thought experiment); and (3) That the experiences of a given person are necessarily private to that person. These presuppositions are unmistakably Cartesian in origin, and are very widely accepted by philosophers and non-philosophers alike.[

Answer 2

Solipsism is the extreme version of subjectivism and it implies am overemphasis on interpreting the metaphysics and epistemology of reality and the experience of that reality solely from your personal point of view to the exclusion of all other points of view. The true solipsists thinks that everything is actually the sole result of their own making

In my opinion, It is an extreme philosophical position worth studying only in contrast to a spectrum of more rational positions.TWH 06212006 Day of Summer Solstice

Answer 3

I'm not an atheist, but I'm going to answer your question anyhow. Although I believe in God, I'm also a big fan of science, but when it comes to actually having answers to the great mysteries of our lives (i.e. Why do we exist?), the best grade science can get is "incomplete." So far, everybody I've asked about how they differentiate between that which is subjective and that which is objective has been unable to give me a definitive answer. What's also generally accepted as true (I believe a man named Heisenberg figured this out) is that the very act of observing something changes it. If atheism works for you, that's fine, but after doing considerable research on what atheists have to say (I'm a member of the Richard Dawkins Forum), I find that their set of explanations are at least as full of holes as what believers have to say. Best wishes to you!

Answer 4

Solipsism implies that you are the only thing that you have the ability to know is real, and I am the only thing that I have the ability to know is real. For all we know everything else and our interactions with everything else is a figment of our imagination or dream state. From your mind I was made up by your imagination, so to speak, in order to interact with you, and from my mind you were made up by my imagination just to interact with me. Very egocentric principle, you could say. I believe this was a concept started by Decartes and continually kicked around/rebutted by later Existensial philosophers.

Answer 5

since the concept is that nothing external from one's personal perceptions and experiences doesn't exist but in the mind, and are considered just parts of the mind, i can only conclude that implies one's own mind is the center of the universe. i know it's a rather simplistic answer, but a very interesting question.

Answer 6

Sol=I; Ipse=exist. I alone exist. I cannot know if anything else or anyone else exists. The universe could be just my own concept. Extreme view, but logical in a sense.

Answer 7

Extreme scepticism. No belief in anything outside your own experience.

Answer 8

is it question in english?