Topics Knowledge

Question Even if there is overwhelming evidence in opposition of solipsism, it still cannot be disproven to 100% certainty. Is it just the nature of any conscious entity to have to have faith in their surroundings being external and objective to the mind, while still viewing them subjectively, in order to just live their lives? Or can one really live their entire life suspecting solipsism?

Accepted:
June 14, 2012

Comments

This is not a disproof, so much as a way to think about what is obviously wrong with solipsism:

To whom do you take yourself to be asking this question?

(What would it be like to take solipsism really seriously in the practical domain?)

I'd question your assumption that solipsism "cannot be disproven to 100% certainty," unless by "disproven to 100% certainty" you mean "shown to be logically impossible," but in that case I'd question your use of "disproven to 100% certainty." I think the latter phrase, or something close to it, has a use in our language, and therefore a conventional meaning, and its meaning isn't the same as "shown to be logically impossible." That is, I think we use the phrase in such a way that something can be disproven to 100% certainty without being shown to be logically impossible. Furthermore, although they don't quite convince me, some argue that solipsism can be shown to be logically impossible because it requires the existence of a "private language," something that's allegedly incoherent. For (much) more on that argument, you might start with this SEP article.

Whether one thinks there is overwhelming evidence in opposition of solipsism may depend on what one takes evidence to be. Arguably, if evidence is just the way things seem, construed in the most minimal, least question-begging way possible, then there is no evidence in opposition to sopipsism at all. Things might seem just this way, and yet there be nothing in the universe other than my own experiences. Why suppose that in addition to those experiences, those things of which one does have knowledge, there is some other stuff about which one has no knowledge at all? It seems hard even to form a conception of what such other stuff might be like, since conceptions seem to be formed from the material of experience itself and unsuited to picture for us this myserious others stuff of which we know nothing.

Personally I don't buy into that sort of soplispistic reasoning. But I expect that a solipsistic worldview could be made consistent with the beliefs one needs to live a normal life. The loaf of bread is really just a bundle of experiences, etc. However it would take a lot of work and a lot of philosophical nous to spell it all out properly.