One might think that the best metaphysical theory of the world includes the existence of other minds and of the physical world, while denying that we can know or be certain that this theory is true. This chapter considers Solipsism as a theory about reality. It examines the Veil of Perception, and then considers a series of direct arguments against the Solipsistic Veil, Phenomenalism, and Solipsism itself. The chapter looks at two obviously inadequate arguments for the Veil, namely, (...) Berkeley's inconceivability argument and the argument from causal mediation. Then, the chapter looks at two much more interesting and important arguments, namely, the argument from hallucination and illusion and the argument from color and other secondary qualities. Besides the Veil of Perception, arguments for Idealism and Solipsism depend on an appeal to Ockham's Razor. These arguments can be taken either as providing additional support for Perceptual Realism or as a defense of Inferred Anti‐Idealism. (shrink)

This essay examines the strategies that Berkeley and Dharmakīrti utilize to deny that idealism entails solipsism. Beginning from similar arguments for the non-existence of matter, the two philosophers employ markedly different strategies for establishing the existence of other minds. This difference stems from their responses to the problem of intersubjective agreement. While Berkeley’s reliance on his Cartesian inheritance does allow him to account for intersubjective agreement without descending into solipsism, it nevertheless prevents him from establishing the existence (...) of other finite minds. I argue that Dharmakīrti, in accounting for intersubjective agreement causally, is able to avoid Berkeley’s shortcoming. I conclude by considering a challenge to Dharmakīrti’s use of inference that Ratnakīrti, a Buddhist successor of Dharmakīrti, advances in his “Disproof of the Existence of Other Minds” and briefly exploring a possible response that someone who wants to advocate an idealist position could give. (shrink)

A pervasive interpretation among Husserl scholars is that his transcendental idealism inevitably leads to some form of solipsism. The aim of this dissertation is to defend Husserl against this charge. First, I argue that Husserl’s transcendental idealism is not a metaphysical theory. Transcendental phenomenology brackets all metaphysical presuppositions and argues from experience to the conditions of the possibility of experience. Husserl’s transcendental idealism should therefore be interpreted as a transcendental theory of knowledge. Second, it follows from (...) the above characterization of Husserl’s transcendental idealism that the responses Husserl gives to the problem of solipsism are in no way meant to prove the existence in-itself of an external world or the existence in-themselves of other transcendental egos. The purpose of Husserl’s engagement with the problem of solipsism is to explain how it is that transcendental phenomenology can account for the constitution of both the Objectivity of the world of experience and other psycho-physical subjects. The result is a set of transcendental arguments that explain the necessary conditions of the cognition of a shared external world and of other persons. I conclude with Husserl that the solipsism is a transcendental illusion, and that Husserl’s transcendental idealism does not lead to a problematic solipsism. Through a careful study of Husserl’s Nachlass, with particular attention paid to Ideas I, Formal and Transcendental Logic, and Cartesian Meditations, I lay the framework for a transcendental-epistemological interpretation of Husserl’s idealism. Applying this interpretive strategy to Husserl’s discussions of the problem of solipsism and intersubjective monadology, I argue that, for Husserl, empathy is the condition of the experience of other subjects, but that it does not allow us to experience the mental-lives of other transcendental egos. (shrink)

This essay is concerned with Indian Yogācāra philosophers’ treatment of the problem of other minds in the face of a threatened collapse into solipsism suggested by Vasubandhu’s epistemological argument for idealism. I discuss the attempts of Dharmakīrti and Ratnakīrti to address this issue, concluding that Dharmakīrti is best seen as addressing the epistemological problem of other minds and Ratnakīrti as addressing the conceptual problem of other minds.

Idealism is the core of the Pratyabhijñã philosophy: the main goal of Utpaladeva (fl. c. 925–950 AD) and of his commentator Abhinavagupta (fl. c. 975–1025 AD) is to establish that nothing exists outside of consciousness. In the course of their demonstration, these Śaiva philosophers endeavour to distinguish their idealism from that of a rival system, the Buddhist Vijñānavāda. This article aims at examining the concept of otherness (paratva) as it is presented in the Pratyabhijñā philosophy in contrast (...) with that of the Vijñānavādins’. Although, according to the Pratyabhijñā, the other subjects are not ultimately real since all subjects are nothing but limited manifestations of a single absolute subject, the fact that we are aware of their existence in the practical world has to be accounted for. The Vijñānavādins explain it by arguing the we infer the others’ existence. The Pratyabhijñā philosophers, while refuting their opponents’ reasoning as it is expounded in Dharmakīrti’s Santānāntarasiddhi, develop a particulary original analysis of our awareness of the others, stating that this awareness is neither a perception (pratyakṣa) nor an inference (anumāna), but rather a guess (ūha) in which we sense the others’ freedom (svātantrya). (shrink)

Solipsism is the strangest creature in philosophy’s menagerie. It seems just that its defense should be so simple and reasonable. As similarity or difference in the length of things presuppose their commensurability in respect of spatial extension, so similarity and difference between conscious subjects presuppose the commensurability of their experience. But comparing what I feel with what I fail to feel seems worse than inconvenient. Like location and duration or color and quantity, these seem strictly incommensurable. Yet just as (...) a fact of the matter about things’ length presupposes their commensurability, so a fact of the matter about others’ experience presupposes intersubjective commensurability. If, then, it is not merely difficult but a priori impossible to compare experiences, there seems but one explanation: the grand and solitary thought that I alone am the unique subject of experience. (shrink)

To say that something is extreme, as solipsism is, implies that there exists a spectrum of which this extremity is one limit. Knowing one limit, we are then curious about the other, the opposite end of the spectrum. In many cases the answer is too well-known to cause comment: i.e., the spectrum of greyness has black as one extreme and white as the other. But in the case of solipsism neither the spectrum nor the other extreme is obvious.

Integrated Information Theory (IIT) is currently one of the most influential scientific theories of consciousness. Here, we focus specifically on a metaphysical aspect of the theory’s most recent version (IIT 4.0), what we may call its idealistic ontology, and its tension with a kind of realism about the external world that IIT also endorses. IIT 4.0 openly rejects the mainstream view that consciousness is generated by the brain, positing instead that consciousness is ontologically primary while the physical domain is just (...) “operational”. However, this philosophical position is presently underdeveloped and is not rigorously formulated in IIT, potentially leading to many misinterpretations and undermining its overall explanatory power. In the present paper we aim to address this issue. We argue that IIT’s idealistic ontology should be understood as a specific combination of phenomenal primitivism, reductionism regarding Φ-structures and complexes, and eliminativism about non-conscious physical entities. Having clarified this, we then focus on the problematic tension between IIT’s idealistic ontology and its simultaneous endorsement of realism, according to which there is some kind of external reality independent of our minds. After refuting three potential solutions to this theoretical tension, we propose the most plausible alternative: understanding IIT’s realism as an assertion of the existence of other experiences beyond one’s own, what we call a non-solipsistic idealist realism. We end with concluding remarks and future research avenues. (shrink)

This book suggests that to know how Wittgenstein’s post-Tractarian philosophy could have developed from the work of Kant is to know how they relate to each other. The development from the latter to the former is invoked heuristically as a means of interpretation, rather than a historical process or direct influence of Kant on Wittgenstein. Ritter provides a detailed treatment of transcendentalism, idealism, and the concept of illusion in Kant’s and Wittgenstein’s criticism of metaphysics. Notably, it is through the (...) conceptions of transcendentalism and idealism that Wittgenstein’s philosophy can be viewed as a transformation of Kantianism. This transformation involves a deflationary conception of transcendental idealism along with the abandonment of both the idea that there can be a priori 'conditions of possibility' logically detachable from what they condition, and the appeal to an original ‘constitution’ of experience. -/- The closeness of Kant and post-Tractarian Wittgenstein does not exist between their arguments or the views they upheld, but rather in their affiliation against forms of transcendental realism and empirical idealism. Ritter skilfully challenges several dominant views on the relationship of Kant and Wittgenstein, especially concerning the cogency of Wittgenstein-inspired criticism focusing on the role of language in the first Critique, and Kant's alleged commitment to a representationalist conception of empirical intuition. (shrink)

This article aims to understand the primordial experience of the existence of the Other, presented by Jean-Paul Sartre in the third part of Being and Nothingness. In order for our intention to be effectively understood, we have organized this reading into three duly articulated moments. In the first moment, it is essential to clarify how the French philosopher delimited the problem of solipsism as an obstacle constituted by realist and idealist philosophies that generally deny the conditions of possibility for (...) the existence of the other, as well as the critical description that questions the permanence of solipsistic theories in contemporary times, bequeathed by Husserl, Hegel and Heidegger. From this critique, we will lead our reading to the second moment, which consists of establishing an understanding of the existence of the Other, showing how it appears and affects the subject’s daily life, above all because the Other requires the presence of a body and a consciousness that is distinct from the subject’s. In the last moment, we will emphasize the interesting approach to the gaze and shame, this original feeling that strips the consciousness of any certainty that it is isolated in the world. Thus, the experience of shame comes to be understood as the unveiling of the subject’s consciousness, which perceives itself as “invaded” by the gaze of the Other, thus making the Other’s existence in the concrete relationship effective. (shrink)

This article examines Hegel's treatment of self-consciousness in light of the contemporary problem of the other. It argues that Hegel tries to subvert the Kantian opposition between theoretical and practical reason and tries to establish a form of idealism that can avoid solipsism. All of this requires that Hegel get beyond the Kantian concept of the object - or the other. Hegel attempts to establish an other that is not marginalized, dominated, or negated. What he gives us is (...) a valuable alternative to post modernism, which attempts instead to deconstruct or dissolve the other. Key Words: mastery • objectification • recognition • self-consciousness • solipsism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.1 (2002) 132-133 [Access article in PDF] Book Review The Other Husserl: The Horizons of Transcendental Phenomenology Donn Welton. The Other Husserl: The Horizons of Transcendental Phenomenology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. Pp. xvi + 496. Cloth, $54.95. Few philosophers have been as ill-served by their reception as Husserl. The books he managed to publish during his lifetime provide a very limited perspective (...) on his thought but have determined what Donn Welton, in this magnificent treatise, calls the "Standard Interpretation," shared by analytic and deconstructionist readers alike, in which Husserl is a neo-Cartesian wedded to epistemological immanentism, methodological solipsism, and ontological idealism. That a very different Husserl is found in his vast Nachlass has long been known, but because of its sheer volume and relative inaccessibility it has had little impact on the Husserl-reception beyond a small circle of specialists. Hence in recovering the "Other" Husserl, Welton's aim is not the usual historical one of stripping away anachronistic readings to arrive at an original reception, but one of negating this Rezeptionsgeschichte to reveal a philosophy that has, in a certain sense, never been present.In this, the book succeeds wonderfully. Welton threads through the tangle of the Nachlass to reconstruct the unfulfilled "great systematic work" that occupied Husserl off and on from about 1920 until his death, uncovering thereby the revolutionary implications of Husserl's move from "static" to "genetic" phenomenology that force us to reconsider the Standard Interpretation point by point. While admitting that Husserl never abandoned his Cartesian proclivities altogether, Welton shows how these can be read as dependent moments in a system of "transcendental phenomenology" that ends up "much closer to Heidegger's approach than is usually thought" (233). The relevance for current debates in philosophy is made plain, such that Husserl is, at last, our contemporary.Briefly reviewing a book as ambitious as this inevitably distorts it, but let me comment on its central methodological claim. Transcendental phenomenology emerged from the pre-transcendental phenomenology of the Logische Untersuchungen when Husserl began seeking the "ultimate ground" for scientific cognition (chapters 1-4). This approach, dubbed the "Cartesian Way" by Husserl himself, generated the "Cartesian Enclosures" (chapter 5) of the Standard Interpretation: demanding evidence that is apodictic, adequate, and directly intuitive, Husserl identifies "transcendental subjectivity" with the individual, indeed solipsistic, "stream of consciousness" and interprets this ontologically as the "relativity" of the world. In his pivotal chapter 6, however, Welton shows that Husserl's reflections on time and memory forced him to admit that the "transcendental field" could not be secured by appeal to "adequate evidence" (154). Hence Husserl adopted a "Kantian Way" (158) that supplements intuitive evidence with elements of transcendental "construction" (148). The concept of transcendental "subjectivity" is thereby transformed from an egocentric stream of consciousness to an intersubjective, communicative, embodied, and historical site of the "transcendental genesis" of meaning.Chapters 7-9 detail how Husserl's increasing interest in the genesis of meaning in the 1920s calls forth this transformation. Tracing the problem on the levels of "speech" and "experience," Welton carefully elucidates how, in moving from static through constitutive to genetic analyses, Husserl came increasingly to see that his original "leading clue"--the phenomenon of cognitive act-intentionality--depended upon the passive syntheses and contexts of "motivation" that make up the world-horizon of pre-cognitive "life." Chapters 10 and 12 argue that Husserl's desire to force these insights into a Cartesian framework yielded the dead-end of "transcendental psychologism" and the dubious teleology of an ethico-political "one-worldism." Meanwhile in chapters 13-15, Welton sketches a phenomenologically more defensible concept of world as "horizon"--a nonperceptual, inherently plural, space of meaning structured as "context" (speech) and "background" (embodiment).Chapter 11 is central to the argument, since it describes how the Kantian notion of transcendental deduction ("construction") is to be integrated into phenomenological method. Things move very quickly. Welton relies heavily on Jay Rosenberg's idea that transcendental deduction is a species of "practical reasoning," and on Charles Taylor's... (shrink)

Husserl's explication of "self" and "others" occurs within his founding science of pure possibilities or "bracketed" consciousness and experience. His analysis of self and others seeks, in part, to demonstrate that "personal" or "self-experience" is not the only possibility of immanent consciousness but that "other persons" are also given as possibilities. The possibility of others, though in a form of givenness different from that of self, provides a basis for inter-subjectivity. Thus, Husserl's phenomenological analysis can, if it does avoid (...) class='Hi'>solipsism and subjective idealism in general, establish inter-subjectivity as coextensive with subjectivity within the deepest possibilities of experience. Husserl's discussion of how the other as an external person or alien ego occurs as a given after all beliefs in an independently existing world are suspended (bracketed) shares some interesting parallels with psychological concepts and also suggests foundational possibilities for research on how the other is constituted as a separate "person" within our consciousness. (shrink)

The paper, on the one hand, presents a reconstruction of the origin and development of the concepts of “anthropotechnics” and “homeotechnics” in Peter Sloterdijk’s thought, of the anthropological basis of his social philosophy, and of the question of subjectivity addressed in his book You Must Change Your Life (2009). On the other hand, it investigates with a critical aim the different forms of otherness that Sloterdijk theorizes in his philosophical works and the possible solipsistic implications of this concept.

This book presents three of Blondel's important turn of the century articles. These are The Idealist Illusion, The Elementary Principle of a Logic of the Moral Life and in two parts, The Starting Point of Philosophy. These essays uncover a certain pragmatism in Blondel's thought while Fiachra Long's introduction argues that Blondel veered away from idealism and towards a logic of the concrete life which allied him closely if unwittingly with the Scottish common sense school of Thomas Reid.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 361-363 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Henry David Thoreau and the Moral Agency of Knowing Henry David Thoreau and the Moral Agency of Knowing, by Alfred I. Tauber; xi & 317 pp. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001, $40.00. Among the marvelous qualities of Thoreau's writing is its vivid concreteness and immediacy. As befits one who spent his life seeing for himself, Thoreau (...) shares a vision of a cosmos whose significance is there to be discovered in the things themselves, if only one cultivates the desire, faith, and discipline required for seeing to the bottom of things. An ironic and happy consequence of Thoreau caring more for the company of nature than for that of his fellow man is that it ultimately made him a finer, more engaging writer with a large audience. Whereas Thoreau might have lost himself and his subject-matter (not to mention the better part of his audience) amidst the twists and turns of Kant's or Fichte's conceptual plumbing, he came to his senses instead--and avoided their abstractions and the intellectual fuss they generate. Imagine how tedious and stale his reflections on the supposed bottomlessness of Walden pond would be if he had framed them explicitly in the terms of intellectual debates revolving around skepticism and realism, phenomena and noumena, and their like. It belongs to Thoreau's enduring genius and charm that he avoided such trappings. One can rely on him for a philosophically inflected appreciation of the realms of nature and spirit, while Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, and Nietzsche are more reliable for philosophically incisive articulations of the first principles governing these realms.Inevitably, scholarly books like Alfred Tauber's Henry David Thoreau and the Moral Agency of Knowing will not have the same fresh, original spirit as do their subjects. But though a scholar addresses someone's views rather than the things themselves, one nonetheless chooses whether to develop one's subject's views primarily in light of (what the scholar understands to be) the things themselves, or whether to focus on how the subject's views relate to the views of others. By claiming his book is philosophical, Tauber in effect claims that it is of the former sort, but in fact it is of the latter sort. As such, readers interested in Thoreau's Zeitgeist and contemporary influences, in past and recent assessments of his thought, as well as in some discussion of its place in contemporary intellectual currents will find Tauber's book timely and valuable. For example, prior to articulating his own view of Thoreau's relation to the science of his day, Tauber gives the reader a primer on the history of positivism. Similarly, in the course of assessing how Thoreau viewed the relation of self and nature, Tauber leads the reader through summary appraisals of (and here I give only a sampling) some relevant swatches of Kant, Fichte, and Barthes's thought. And this is not the half of it. Tauber also weaves into his argument reflections on Augustine's discussion of time in the Confessions, themes from Polanyi's Personal Knowledge and James's Principles of Psychology, as well as Goethe's interpretation of what should constitute scientific activity. So Tauber's [End Page 361] book addresses itself to Romanticism, Transcendentalism, positivism, environmentalism, postmodernism, mysticism, idealism, solipsism, and the like. Though eclectic in their material, his discussions are grounded in copious references to and an interpretation of Thoreau's own words. (One pleasure of the book for this reviewer was the opportunity to become acquainted with more of Thoreau's journal entries.) Yet the variety of the book's sources and themes contribute to some repetition as well as diffuseness in the main arguments.Tauber sees his book as "structuring [Thoreau's] project on a philosophical edifice" and thereby making possible "critical insights into certain quandaries that reach into the very mainstream of contemporary science studies" (p. ix). He argues that his approach is novel (Tauber's own background is the history and philosophy of science) because most... (shrink)

It seems natural to suppose that the burgeoning field of critical phenomenology would come to bear at least some affinities or resemblances (whether implicitly or explicitly) to critical theory, insofar as both are deeply concerned with directing a rigorous critical eye towards the most pressing political, economic, cultural, and social issues of our time. Yet critical theory has also had its share of critics of phenomenology itself, not least of which was the foremost member of the first-generation Frankfurt School critical (...) theorists, Theodor W. Adorno. Adorno’s critique of phenomenology was, for historical reasons, confined to Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, and might be concisely put as follows: for Adorno, classical phenomenology is insufficiently critical towards contemporary realities of oppression and domination (an insufficiency variously attributed to an alleged pernicious idealism, solipsism, methodological individualism, descriptivism, or ahistoricism in classical phenomenology). On this count, critical phenomenologists today may very well agree—at least to the point of affirming that phenomenology’s critical potential remained largely “untapped” in its classical formulations. However, in a twist of historical fate, Adorno failed to engage with a contemporaneous phenomenologist with whom he perhaps had more in common than anyone else: Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas himself was also notably critical of Husserl and Heidegger (while of course also being enormously indebted to them), for reasons not altogether dissimilar to Adorno’s. For Levinas, phenomenology had hitherto neglected the fundamental ethical or moral dimensions of experience—in particular our ethical responsibility towards the Other in the face of the manifold evils and injustices of the world. What might Adorno have thought of Levinas’s work, and Levinas of Adorno’s? What might they have learned from one another? And how might this exchange have affected the trajectories of critical theory, phenomenology, or critical phenomenology? (shrink)

It would be easy enough to support the claim that the man who introduced post-Kantian idealism into the French universities did so primarily because he found in this system a way to demonstrate the Spiritualist doctrine which came from Biran, the Eclectics, and particularly from Ravaisson. Idealism, in effect, was to Jules Lachelier more of a premise than a conclusion. Now although it might be true that post-Kantianism had been able to provide the right kind of support for (...) the main Spiritualist beliefs, notably the thesis of the reality of Spirit, its presence in nature, and indeed its primacy over nature, the fact remains, and this is what I shall attempt to show, that this idealism is incompatible with a notion that plays a prominent role in the Spiritualist doctrine: that of the existence of a transcendent God. Here, then, is what I should like to claim: that the same principles which were used to prove the Spiritual nature of both thought and matter should render impossible not only the proof of a transcendent God, but also the mere entertaining of the hypothesis of such a being. (shrink)

It would be easy enough to support the claim that the man who introduced post-Kantian idealism into the French universities did so primarily because he found in this system a way to demonstrate the Spiritualist doctrine which came from Biran, the Eclectics, and particularly from Ravaisson. Idealism, in effect, was to Jules Lachelier more of a premise than a conclusion. Now although it might be true that post-Kantianism had been able to provide the right kind of support for (...) the main Spiritualist beliefs, notably the thesis of the reality of Spirit, its presence in nature, and indeed its primacy over nature, the fact remains, and this is what I shall attempt to show, that this idealism is incompatible with a notion that plays a prominent role in the Spiritualist doctrine: that of the existence of a transcendent God. Here, then, is what I should like to claim: that the same principles which were used to prove the Spiritual nature of both thought and matter should render impossible not only the proof of a transcendent God, but also the mere entertaining of the hypothesis of such a being. (shrink)

In the early twentieth century, a rare strain of British idealism emerged which took Leibniz's Monadology as its starting point. This paper discusses a variant of that strain, offered by Hilda Oakeley. I set Oakeley's monadology in its philosophical context and discuss a key point of conflict between Oakeley and her fellow monadologists: the unreality of time. Oakeley argues that time is fundamentally real, a thesis arguably denied by Leibniz and subsequent monadologists, and by all other British idealists. This (...) paper discusses Oakeley's argument for the reality of time, and Oakeley's attack on the most famous account of the unreality of time offered in her day: that of J. M. E. McTaggart. I show that Oakeley's critique of McTaggart can be extended to challenge all monadologists, including that of the great monad, Leibniz himself. (shrink)

This article initially presents Ernst Mach's anti-realist or instrumentalist stance that underpin his opposition to atomism and reveal his idea that science should be based totally on objectively observable facts. Then, the details of Mach's phenomenalist arguments which recognize only sensations as real are revealed. Phenomenalist thought is not compatible with the idea of realism, which evaluates unobservable entities such as atom, molecule and quark as mind-independent things. In this context, Mach considers the atom as a thought symbol or a (...) metaphysical fiction. This results in the idea that the existence of matter or entity is not independent of the perceiving minds, which is considered Mach’s subjective idealism. As a result of these arguments, the article argues that it would not be wrong to associate Mach's thoughts with solipsism, a radical form of subjective idealism. -/- Bu makalede ilk olarak Ernst Mach’ın atomun varlığına ilişkin itirazının temelini oluşturan ve bilimin sadece gözlemlenebilir olgulara dayandırılması gerektiği yönündeki düşüncelerini ortaya koyan anti-realist ya da enstrümantalist görüşlerine yer verilmektedir. Ardından Mach’ın enstrümantalist tavrının alt metninde bulunan ve yalnızca duyumları gerçek olarak kabul eden fenomenalist argümanlarının ayrıntıları serimlenecektir. Fenomenalist düşünce atom, molekül ve kuark gibi gözlemlenemeyen varlıkları zihinden bağımsız şeyler olarak değerlendiren realizm düşüncesi ile uyuşmamaktadır. Bu bağlamda yapılan incelemeler, Mach’ın atomu bir düşünce sembolü ya da metafiziksel bir kurgu olarak değerlendirmesine ve dış dünyadaki varlıkların var olmasını, onların bir zihin tarafından duyumsanması koşuluna bağlaması ile sonuçlanmaktadır. Makalede Mach’ın öznel idealizmi olarak ele alabileceğimiz bu argümanlarının radikal bir sonucu olarak onun düşüncelerini solipsizm ile ilişkilendirmenin yanlış olmayacağı sonucuna varılmaktadır. (shrink)

: The problem of intersubjectivity has undergone multifold discussions in the philosophical, neuroscientific and psychological fields. Currently, the predominant theories in this ongoing debate contend that simulation or explicit reasoning must ground other-understanding. Yet this contention confines the subject to solipsistic self-projection without actual communication. I will provide an analysis suggesting that the roots of the concept of “empathy” reveal not only a dualistic inner-outer distinction but also an emerging reference to the bodily dimension. I claim that, by examining the (...) verifiable-in-experience ideas of expressivity and dynamical value-based perception, the limits of the Theory Theory and of the Simulation Theory are resolved by means of a direct perceptual encounter that implies a unitary and never-isolated subject. I aim at showing that perception-based empathy provides an adequate basis for considering social dimensions from intersubjectivity to shared agency, since it allows for both direct embodied communication in cooperation and for the autonomy of agents involved in a collective domain. Keywords : Empathy; Expressivity; Embodiment; Perception; Collective Intentionality Esperire l’altro. Come espressività e percezione fondata sul valore forniscono un approccio non solipsistico all’empatia Riassunto : Il problema dell’intersoggettività è stato oggetto di diversi dibattiti in ambito filosofico, neuroscientifico e psicologico. Le teorie oggi dominanti si interrogano se debba essere la simulazione o il ragionamento esplicito il fondamento della comprensione dell’altro. Tuttavia, questa discussione confina il soggetto in una solipsistica proiezione di sé, priva di reale comunicazione. Proporrò un’analisi che suggerisce come le radici del concetto di “empatia” rivelino non solo una distinzione dualista tra interno ed esterno, ma anche un riferimento emergente alla dimensione corporea. Sosterrò che, esaminando concetti verificabili nell’esperienza quali espressività e percezione dinamica fondata sul valore, i limiti della Theory Theory e della Simulation Theory vengono dissolti dall’incontro percettivo diretto, che considera il soggetto come unitario e mai isolato. Intendo mostrare come l’empatia fondata sulla percezione costituisca una buona base per considerare dimensioni differenti, dall’intersoggettività all’agentività condivisa, poiché riconosce in entrambe una comunicazione diretta incarnata, che rispetta la cooperazione, ma anche l’autonomia, degli agenti coinvolti in dominio collettivo. Parole chiave : Empatia; Espressività; Embodiment; Percezione; Intenzionalità collettiva. (shrink)

What one has when one imagines something or when one sees something is not something which others, by contrast with oneself cannot see. For one does not see one's mental images or visual impressions. It makes sense to talk of oneself as having a visual impression or mental image only if it also makes sense to talk of someone else having the same impression or image. To talk of things being blurred at the edge of one's visual field (unlike talk (...) of images on a photograph being blurred), of conjuring up an image of something revolving, is to introduce a new way of speaking. Idealists and solipsists attack the normal form of expression as if the mere form stated how things are; whereas the only cogent case that can be made out in their favour is a recommendation to adopt a different form in which the very same facts are represented in different guise. (shrink)

I show that some of the most initially attractive routes of refuting epistemological solipsism face serious obstacles. I also argue that for creatures like ourselves, solipsism is a genuine form of external world skepticism. I suggest that together these claims suggest the following morals: No proposed solution to external world skepticism can succeed which does not also solve the problem of epistemological solipsism. And, more tentatively: In assessing proposed solutions to external world skepticism, epistemologists should explicitly consider (...) whether those solutions extend to knowledge of other minds. Finally, and also tentatively: epistemological solipsism warrants more philosophical attention than it currently enjoys. (shrink)

This essay examines how, in the early twentieth century, ontological arguments were employed in the defense of metaphysical idealism. The idealists of the period tended to grant that ontological arguments defy our usual expectations in logic, and so they were less concerned with the formal properties of Anselmian arguments. They insisted, however, that ontological arguments are indispensable, and they argued that we can trust argumentation as such only if we presume that there is a valid ontological argument. In the (...) first section I outline the history of this metalogical interpretation of the ontological argument. In the subsequent sections I explain how Royce and Collingwood each developed the argument, and how this impacted their respective conceptions of both logic and metaphysics. (shrink)

The Malayalam poet, Kunjunni, is known for his short and simple poems. Some of his poems are filled with rich philosophical insights, and a few such poems are gathered in this paper with a view to unravel the philosophical view point embedded in them. By explicating the poet’s views about space, time, the world and the other, the paper contends that the philosophical vision that unfolds in these poems is a form of solipsism, the doctrine that the self alone (...) exits. It is shown how the poet considers the other minds including God, and the spatiotemporal universe as various manifestations of his self and refuses to grant them independent ontological status as people generally tend to do. The paper concludes by noting also certain sceptical tendencies in the poet. (shrink)

Although Hegel's absolute idealism is often presented as a solipsistically self-grounding, the Realphilosophie offers us an another image of Hegel which not only challenges standard interpretations, but more importantly gives us valuable resources to rethink living being. The zero-level determinacy of nature as “the idea in its otherness” has two consequences. Firstly, the starting point of any philosophy of nature must be a realism, insofar as nature's material constitution shows itself as unthought-like. Secondly, if idealism is to (...) be viable, it must prove itself to be a result of nature's immanent auto-development. Taking as my guide the category of “trembling” (Erzittern) and exploring its intimate connection with the emergent ideality of bodies producing sound, the chemical process and the voice of animals, I aim to show how the Realphilosophie is a reconstruction of the painful odyssey of the material genesis of the autopoietic self-referentiality of the concept as it is paradoxically begotten, by immaculate conception, in the pure extimacy of nature. The dialectics of nature is not a naturephilosophical theory of material being as implicit, self-unfolding productivity which necessarily leads to life via an intrinsic teleology, but rather an account of the contingent material emergence of unpredictable kinds of ontological determinacies from within the immanent field of mechanical nature. Only a naturalized idealism/idealized naturalism is capable of arguing for the ontological irreducibility of living being while simulta eously articulating its dependence upon different scientific domains which form its ontogenetic ground. It avoids both eliminative materialism and naïve vitalism. (shrink)

It is commonly believed that Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), well known as the founder of phenomenology and as the teacher of Heidegger, was unable to free himself from the framework of a classical metaphysics of subjectivity. Supposedly, he never abandoned the view that the world and the Other are constituted by a pure transcendental subject, and his thinking in consequence remains Cartesian, idealistic, and solipsistic. The continuing publication of Husserl’s manuscripts has made it necessary to revise such an interpretation. Drawing upon (...) both Husserl’s published works and posthumous material, Husserl’s Phenomenology incorporates the results of the most recent Husserl research. It is divided into three parts, roughly following the chronological development of Husserl’s thought, from his early analyses of logic and intentionality, through his mature transcendental-philosophical analyses of reduction and constitution, to his late analyses of intersubjectivity and lifeworld. It can consequently serve as a concise and updated introduction to his thinking. (shrink)

Solipsism indicates an epistemological position that denies the existence of ‘others’ by asserting that the ‘self’ is the only thing that can be known to exist. For sophist philosophers, the belief that “we can not know anything, and even if we do so, we cannot communicate it” is central to this theory. However, until now there has been little academic scholarship that has tried to provide answers to the pressing issues raised by solipsism. In Solipsist Ontology: Physical Things (...) and Personal Perceptual Space, Ural aims to redefine solipsism by analyzing and elaborating on traditional philosophical problems, such as empiricism and rationalism, as well as discussing problems of language, communication, and meaning. Ural reveals where solipsism has been previously ignored, pseudo-problems have arisen that disguise the sources of the problems with prejudices that concern the philosophical problems in question. Notably, many current, as well as traditional problems of ontology, epistemology, and language are bound up in discourses of solipsism. Ural argues that discarding solipsism as a philosophical discourse hinders new interpretations of traditional philosophical thought. This book offers a fresh perspective to solipsism by defining it in relation to concepts such as ‘physical things,’ ‘personal perceptual space’ and ‘identity.’ Importantly, Ural proposes that an understanding of ‘identity’ is not necessary in order to redefine solipsism. By building a logical system that fashions communication and solipsism as interrelated, it is possible to reject ‘identity’ as a useless concept and thus overcome the classic solipsist dilemma of “we are not able to communicate.” This original piece of research is an important and timely contribution to the field of philosophy that will be of great interest to teachers, researchers, and students. (shrink)

Philosophers usually have been anxious to avoid solipsism. A large number of good and great philosophers have tried to refute it. Of course, these philosophers have not always had the same target in mind and, like everything else, solipsism over the centuries has become increasingly elusive and subtle. In this book I undertake to state the position in its most modern and what I take to be its most plausible form. At some points in the history of philosophy (...) the solipsist has been one who denied the existence of everything except himself or even the existence of everything except his own present sensations. At other times, the solipsist instead of doubting these things has merely insisted that there could be no good reason for believing in the existence of anything beyond one's own present sensations. Roughly, this doubt is aimed at reasons rather than at things. A solipsist of this sort appears in Santayana's Scepticism and Animal Faith. (shrink)

A person skeptical about other minds supposes it is possible in principle that there are no minds other than his. A person skeptical about an external world thinks it is possible there is no world external to him. Some philosophers think a person can refute the skeptic and prove that his world is not the solitary scenario the skeptic supposes might be realized. In this paper I examine one argument that some people think refutes solipsism. The argument, from Wittgenstein, (...) is grounded in a thesis about language. Some people believe that in using language a person necessarily is linked to persons other than himself. Some people think a person can use the ‘communalist’ principle to refute forms of solipsism. I show that people do not refute solipsism with the Wittgensteinian, language-necessarily-is-shared principle. (shrink)

Henry Allison is one of the foremost interpreters of the philosophy of Kant. This new volume collects all his recent essays on Kant's theoretical and practical philosophy. All the essays postdate Allison's two major books on Kant, and together they constitute an attempt to respond to critics and to clarify, develop and apply some of the central theses of those books. Two are published here for the first time. Special features of the collection are: a detailed defence of the author's (...) interpretation of transcendental idealism; a consideration of the Transcendental Deduction and some other recent interpretations thereof; further elaborations of the tensions between various aspects of Kant's conception of freedom and of the complex role of this conception within Kant's moral philosophy. (shrink)

'Modernity' has come to refer both to a contested historical category and to an even more contested philosophical and civilisational ideal. In this important collection of essays Robert Pippin takes issue with some prominent assessments of what is or is not philosophically at stake in the idea of a modern revolution in Western civilisation, and presents an alternative view. Professor Pippin disputes many traditional characterisations of the distinctiveness of modern philosophy. In their place he defends claims about agency, freedom, ethical (...) life and modernity itself, all of which are central to the German idealist philosophical tradition, and in particular, to the writings of Hegel. Having considered the Hegelian version of these issues the author explores other accounts as found in Habermas, Strauss, Blumenberg, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. (shrink)

The solipsist, on the analogy of our dream-experience, imagines a higher mode of selfhood or spirit to whom the world is like a dream; his own self is a lower or deluded mode of this selfhood and to it the world appears as real. Thus objectivity appearing to the lower self is illusory and contingent, not ultimate. This analogical argument for a higher self, as against an alien God, has this counter-argument. In dreams I have unpleasant experiences because of certain (...) external causes, such as physiological and psychological. But what compels my higher self to have the unpleasant dreams that are my waking experiences of life? In other words, why cannot my higher self have nothing but rosy dreams when there cannot be anything else than itself to force on it bad ones? The answer to this is that in our dreams and fantasies we do not have unpleasant experiences due to external causes only, but also due to our inherent love of experience for its own sake. Our dreams are our wish-fulfilments too. We love to have all sorts of experiences, to taste all kinds and shades of emotion. Thirst for passions, curiosity after the unknown, and adventure for the strange and the new mark our empirical self. So it is not absurd to conceive the higher self fashioning its dreams, our waking experiences, as a mixture of pleasant and unpleasant elements rich in variety and complexity. And just as my empirical self is said to enjoy the experiences of my dreams, so this higher self may be said to enjoy his dreams, my waking experiences. (shrink)

The space of possible worlds is vast. Some of these possible worlds are materialist worlds, some may be worlds bottoming out in 0s and 1s, or other strange things we cannot even dream of… and some are idealist worlds. From among all of the worlds subjectively indistinguishable from our own, the idealist ones have uniquely compelling virtues. Idealism gives us a world that is just as it appears; a world that’s fit to literally enter our minds when we perceive (...) it. If the world is an idealist world, we live in a perceptual Eden. We did not fall from Eden. Rather, we deluded ourselves into believing that we couldn’t possibly live in Eden when we committed to materialism. Reflecting on these big-picture issues gives us reason to question this commitment and embrace a radically new account of reality and our relation to it. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's view of philosophy in the Tractatus presupposes that thought may be revealed without remainder in the use of signs. It is commonly held, however, that in the Tractatus he treated thought as logically prior to language. If this view, expressed most lucidly by Norman Malcolm, were correct, Wittgenstein would be inconsistent in holding that thought can be revealed without remainder in the use of signs. I argue that this is not correct. Thought may be prior to language in time (...) but not in logic, for non-verbal symbols must have a logical structure in common with verbal ones. A view comparable with Malcolm's holds that Wittgenstein, under the influence of Schopenhauer, is committed to some form of solipsism. I argue that neither Schopenhauer nor Wittgenstein held any version of solipsism. For both philosophers, subject and object are correlative, so that it is incoherent to affirm the existence of the one without presupposing the existence of the other. (shrink)

Pantheistic Idealism explores the philosophical belief that all reality is a manifestation of the divine. Harrison Delivan Barrett delves into the nature of God, the universe, and the self from a pantheistic idealist perspective. The book is a thought-provoking read and provides an important contribution to religious philosophy. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in (...) the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Mock interviews with Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Reinhold, Jacobi, Schlegel, and a letter from Schopenhauer.

Standard accounts of nineteenth-century German philosophy often begin with Kant and assess philosophers after him in light of their responses to Kantian idealism. In _Continental Idealism_, Paul Redding argues that the story of German idealism begins with Leibniz. Redding begins by examining Leibniz's dispute with Newton over the nature of space, time and God, and stresses the way in which Leibniz incorporated Platonic and Aristotelian elements in his distinctive brand of idealism. Redding shows how Kant's interpretation of (...) Leibniz's views of space and time consequently shaped his own 'transcendental' version of idealism. Far from ending here, however, Redding argues that post-Kantian idealists such as Fichte, Schelling and Hegel on the one hand and metaphysical sceptics such as Schopenhauer and Nietzsche on the other continued to wrestle with a form of idealism ultimately derived from Leibniz. _Continental Idealism_ offers not only a new picture of one of the most important philosophical movements in the history of philosophy, but also a valuable and clear introduction to the origins of Continental and European philosophy. (shrink)