On Solipsism

For what represents, if anything, an instance of the philosophers overindulgence andor fetish for technical terms, look no further than solipsism, the name we generally give to the claim I alone exist. Taking the claim at face value, its doubtful whether anyone could form a suitable concept for the term. The attempt to render a solipsistic world view immediately runs up against our familiarity of basic social relationships and the manner in which we have learned to conduct ourselves, both entrenched in our everyday or common sense experience of the world. The notion is so far removed from our lived experience that, with the possible exception of fiction, a precise or exact conception is impossible to grasp. Not surprisingly, when philosophers use the term solipsism they do not mean what they say. Today, the word solipsism can refer to any of several related ideas-only I exist, nothing can be known but the self, there is nothing but self, all I know is myself-all of which sound equally preposterous to the non-philosopher, but each of which carry particular commitments and preconceptions implicit to the beliefs held by a great many philosophers. The fundamental assumptions on which solipsism rests-that what an individual can know with the greatest certainty are the contents of his or her own mind, that man is made of body and soul and that no two people can have exactly the same experience- underlie much of todays philosophical reasoning and are still accepted in wider society as fact.