Do Only I Exist: Some Not-so-Solipsistic Views

Introduction

Can reality be subjective yet experienced by others in the same way? Can experience be fully explained through language? Can mental ideas or representations like hallucinations be real when we experience them like other real objects? Can thoughts or memories be related to objects? Can the essence of an object be the same as its appearance? Can a thing exist only in language and not the world or vice versa? Can the limit of experience be the limit of reality? Can a concept that is used to represent reality exist apart from that reality? The central question revolves around solipsism, namely the existence of a world outside of my mind.

A world beyond myself is necessary for ‘me’ to be ‘objectively real’. The possibility of a world beyond the knowable or experienceable reality, i.e., the ‘unknown’, is ‘nonsensical’. Solipsism as the theory of existence of ‘only’ the ‘I’ is incorrect since the question cannot be about the reality of I with ‘doubt’ about the existence of the ‘other’. It can only be about the reality of the world with reference to the I, as I is an entity in the world. 

Solipsism

Solipsism has been of two kinds: methodological, wherein no psychological state other than that of the subject is considered, and transcendental, wherein transcendental idealism is considered to lead to solipsism. “The author of the Logical Investigations was a methodological solipsist … the author of Ideas was a transcendental solipsist, as too [was] the author of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus … Arguably both Husserl’s Crisis and Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations are works written from the standpoint of a non-solipsistic, transcendental idealism.” (Bell, 1990, p.156) The question regarding the extent of this idealism and whether it is transcendental will be discussed further.

In Wittgenstein one finds the possibility of the ‘subjective I’, which is not ‘private’. In his proving that it is ‘public’ with the use of language, another question arises: about the reality of this ‘I’ and whether its reality depends upon its being private. He addresses the inquiries arising from the Cartesian picture of the solipsist, which deals with ‘my’ experiences that cannot be shared with another such that I might understand what the experience of ‘pain’ means, but ‘I cannot experience someone else’s pain’. He famously writes:

The solipsist flutters and flutters in the flyglass, strikes against the walls, flutters further. (Wittgenstein, 1968, p.256)

What is your aim in philosophy? –To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle. (Wittgenstein, 1953, p.309)

He was not a ‘private solipsist’ in the Cartesian sense but was a ‘public solipsist’ linguistically. Wittgenstein’s world view, which was neither idealist/ solipsist nor realist and though was based on the notion that no reality exists beyond the ‘form’ in which we represent it, seems to be that reality is metaphysically independent from that ‘form’ we give it. If considered in the Tractarian sense, this form of the world, which is ‘all that is the case, the totality of facts and not things’, the issue might be resolved since all that cannot be said in language in Tractatus is non-sense, and further, in Investigations, is non-existent.

This can also be understood in terms of what can and cannot be represented, which in Husserlian phenomenology is the question of representations in relation to ‘intentionality’. Husserl rejected the solipsistic thesis of the ‘mind-dependent’ existence of objects. In Wittgenstein, the distinction between the representable and the non-representable leads to the distinction between the thinkable and the non-thinkable, which would in turn lead to the distinction between what can be expressed through language (sensical) and what cannot be expressed through language (non-sensical).

The question here arises: if solipsism refutes that anything beyond language in the world can be considered to exist since it cannot be conceived or thought, does this mean that anything that can be conceived or thought exists? A solipsist would argue that it does but only in the mind and not outside. This thesis would hold correct in a case where I conceive something that doesn’t exist in the real world, but what would such a conceived object be? For Husserl there is a possibility of an irreal, neither real nor unreal object (for e.g., hallucination); hence, there can be a question regarding its existence further: ‘where’ inside the mind or outside it in the world or outside the world in a ‘transcendental realm’. However, for Wittgenstein, since such an object cannot be expressed in language, hence the question of its existence cannot arise since in the instance where it can be given in language, it would become a proposition, which would then have the possibility of being true or false based on ‘facts’.

A corollary of this argument would be the distinction between the appearance of the tree as it is presented to us and the tree, whether it's real or hallucinated. Here the solipsist is trapped trying to answer questions regarding the reality of the tree in the world or outside it (transcendental) rather than understanding the nature of the appearance of the tree to us. Here the tree being presented to me as an appearance only is mistaken for the tree being only an appearance.

Wittgenstein states that the concern is not regarding the relation between our experience of reality and the reality in itself; rather, it is of our experience of reality. It is expressed through his rejection of the conception of experience (supposedly metaphysical) as that which 'cannot be said' since it is nonsensical, not due to its being ‘ineffable’ but due to its being ‘grammatically confusing’. Such an approach is a strong attack on the basic principle of solipsism, namely that only one's mind exists in reality with the world dependent on it, because there can be no question regarding the reality of the existence of the mind or its thoughts (in the case of methodological solipsism) independent of the world that is experienced by it.

He writes:

Always when anything is seen, something is seen that which … continued during the experience of seeing was not any particular entity “I”, but the experience of seeing itself. (Wittgenstein, 1964)

To understand Wittgenstein’s non-solipsistic approach here is to understand that the question of solipsism doesn’t arise at all. It isn’t about my experiencing something that makes it real; I experience it because it is real. A question might arise: whether everything I experience is real. The answer as a non-solipsist or realist would be yes. This point here is further supported by the claim made by him that the idea of ‘I’ is in no way implicit in ‘my having a toothache’, just like the example of the eye not being present in the seeing. Hence, what is there or what exists is not any ‘private experience’ felt only by the ‘I’ but an ‘experience’ that is independent of the ‘I’ and is open to being felt by others too. It can be better understood by thinking of the ‘I’ as not referring to myself exclusively but as a common word in language used to refer to no person in particular but every person in particular terms. As he writes,

“The man who says that he has pain, doesn’t choose the mouth which says it.” (Wittgenstein, 1964, p.68)

Since the word ‘I’ is used in referring to only one person, which is myself, the proposition ‘I have a pain in my tooth’ seems sensical, but the proposition ‘I have a pain in another person’s tooth’ seems nonsensical. Hence, understanding the I not as one (in the sense of an individual) but as one (in the sense of the unity of all I’s), we can understand the ‘me’ and ‘mine’ associated with the I as not being entirely ‘my’ experience but an experience that any of ‘us’ can have. 

Intersubjectivity

There can be no one subjective experience, as there is no one subject, but rather one experience that seems to be subjective given the way we experience the world. This phenomenological approach to the concept of intersubjectivity is found in Husserl’s Fifth Cartesian Meditations, wherein, in the general reading, he is considered to be a ‘transcendental solipsist’; however, a closer examination will show his ‘transcendental intersubjectivity’ is ‘objective’. The concept of intersubjectivity presents a paradox, as it requires a ‘subject’ and the subject’s experience of the world, which leads to the concept of the ‘metaphysical subject’, and at the same time requires these subjects to experience the world ‘objectively’. This leads to the question of whether the world is constituted by these subjects and their ‘ego’ or the world is “as it is in itself” (Schnell, 2010, p.11) in the transcendental, almost Kantian sense.

Wittgenstein in his Investigations discusses the “visual room”- the room with no outside and no owner. In seeing something, one is seeing the way no other can experience it, and though others might see the same thing, but my experience of the thing is something only I can have. However, he argues,

“There is no question of a ‘seeing’- and therefore none of a ‘having’- nor of a subject, nor therefore of ‘I’ either”? (Wittgenstein, 1953, p.398)

Taking an intersubjective perspective here, it is correct to say that this ‘seeing’ has no subject, but it is also not the metaphysical transcendental thing-in-itself because this idea of the world in-itself beyond the subject is indescribable. There is no subject in the solipsistic sense; further, the ‘transcendental ego’ “should not be considered as private or as “solipsistic” either – because otherwise, it is impossible to escape it.” (Schnell, 2010, p.17) 

Transcendental Idealism

Husserl’s transcendental idealism is not metaphysical, and the rejection of solipsism doesn’t imply in any way that there is an existence of the others and the world ‘in-itself’. Solipsism is generally considered to arise out of Husserl’s ‘transcendental’ idealism rather than building an ‘objective’ world of shared experience. Husserl, in his Formal and Transcendental Logic (1969), a work that can be considered to make metaphysics ‘logical’, states,

“Objectivity as being not only for me but “for everyone” or as existing for “everyone capable of cognition.”

This gives rise to the problem in separating the ‘mind-independent objective world’ from the ‘mind-independent transcendental world’.

 Since whatever seems to exist is experienced by me through my ego, can it not just exist through my intentionality? The notion of objectivity is wrongly constructed such that its being ‘mind-independent’ is connected to its ‘existing-in-itself’. Husserl criticises the Cartesian doubt that becomes the basis of solipsism, stating that Descartes failed to recognise the ‘I’ or ego as constituting “both the world and itself as a human subject in the world”. (Husserl, 1969, p. 227) Phenomenology deals with one’s ego; it deals with ‘transcendental subjectivity’. However, this subjectivity isn’t solipsistic; rather, it is objective, making it ‘intersubjectivity’ in a world that is shared by ‘everyone’. This world has ‘mind-independent’ objects that can be cognised by everyone but do not exist ‘in-itself’ beyond our cognition.

This Husserlian objective world is constituted by consciousness without the possibility of falling into “subjective idealism or transcendental realism” (Parker, 2013, p.56). Husserl gives the example of an ‘empty room’ to explain that:

Consciousness is not some empty room with windows through which a world that exists prior to and independent of experience may enter … It is an “Objective” world, experienceable and experienced as the same world by others too. (Husserl, 1969, p.232-233)

Here it is essential to recognise that though I experience the world through the ‘intentionality of my consciousness’, it shouldn’t be held that what I experience and how I experience it is a part of me. This can be done by distinguishing the ‘objects of my consciousness’ from ‘my consciousness of them’. ‘Consciousness is always consciousness of something and that nothing exists apart from my consciousness of it’, here, it is such not because nothing actually exists outside my consciousness but because my consciousness is the only way in which I experience the outside. “There is nothing in ordinary sense perception to support the metaphysical claim that what we experience as external exists in-itself and is alien to and independent of my consciousness of it.” (Parker, 2013, p.60)

The notion of ‘private experience’ is inner experience of something external and not inner experience of something internal. Our so-called ‘private’ experience is actually ‘public’, as it ‘does not belong only to me’. It is important to understand that my ego is a part of the world in order for me to experience anything, which in line with the idea of a shared world constituted by everyone, including myself. Thus, solipsism arises only when “we take other subjects to be a kind of object that exist-in-themselves, and then conclude that no such objects can exist” (Parker, 2013, pp. 80-81) 

Private Language

Wittgenstein famously refutes solipsism in his Investigations through his arguments against private language and ‘private pains’. He starts his ‘privacy thesis’ on the basis of my not being able to experience the pain in ‘another person’s toothache’ the way I experience it in ‘my own toothache’. The solipsist here asks how we can know or believe that another is experiencing pain. In order to counter this, Wittgenstein creates what can be called a “selfless solipsism” (Button, 2018), which again is Tractarian and is refuted in order to refute solipsism. This selfless solipsism can be understood using these two propositions: ‘I hurt’ and ‘It hurts’. In the latter, there is ‘no one self’ but only ‘self that hurts’.

In order to move away from ‘I’ as a subject that leads to solipsism, the ego or I, is thought of as myself, or subject, and as worldly, or object, in order to prove the existence of others like me for whom I would be the other. Wittgenstein refutes the possibility of the existence of a ‘private language’ because such a completely private language would not qualify as language. Another way to put it is to say that even if we get something so private that it is known only to me, expressing it in language would imply it is not private and not known only to me. If we try inventing a private language for my private sensations, as Wittgenstein says, it would merely be meaningless sounds without reference to anything in the world.

The ‘inner picture’ of the sensation of an object or memory of a previous sensation cannot be referred to in the same way as the object designated by it does; hence, there is no possibility of a ‘private sensation’, and thus a ‘private language’ cannot exist. If we want to refer to an ‘inner sensation’ as private, we would need a word with a meaning that refers to a private object in the first place – ‘beetle in the box’. This can be understood through the ‘meaning’, ‘concept’, ‘image’ of the word ‘pain’ and the ‘sensation’, ‘feeling’, ‘experience’ of pain. Even if we recall what pain is like, we remember ‘what it means’ but not exactly ‘how it feels’. This is best illustrated through Wittgenstein’s famous “beetle in the box” analogy given in his Investigations:

The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty- No, one can “divide through” by the thing in the box; it cancels out whatever it is. (Wittgenstein, 1953, p. 293)

This means that even if we have a private meaning for the word “beetle”, which is not known to anyone else inside our mind, it would have no meaning in the world; hence, it would not even matter whether there was a meaning in the first place. It is not due to the solipsistic tendency of not being able to access other people’s minds but because that ‘meaning inside the mind’ is not equivalent to the beetle in the real world.

If words were to refer to only a person’s private reference for the world, there can be no common words, hence no common language at all. Since the sensation of ‘pain’ seems so private to us that stating that it is not such seems to be saying that it doesn’t exist, so Wittgenstein says:

[Pain] is not a something, but not a nothing either! The conclusion was only that a nothing would serve just as well as a something about which nothing can be said. (Wittgenstein, 1953)

Here he shows how pain can stand for everything it does without being subjective. This objectivity of pain is the key to his refutation of solipsism. If there is no private language, no ‘inner I’, there is no subjectivity but intersubjectivity.

Using an example from Wittgenstein:

If water boils in the pot, steam comes out of the pot and also pictured steam comes out of the pictured pot. But what if one insisted that there must also be something boiling in the picture of the pot? (Wittgenstein, 1953, pp.296-97)

This example perfectly explains our inability to point to the ‘hurting’ pain even though we might have the memory of the previous sensation of pain. This shows the distinction between the actual hurting pain and the picture of this sensation in our mind. The problem clearly arises by mistaking both to be the same, which would lead to solipsism, which can be avoided by avoiding the need to ‘see’ that pain when there is ‘nothing to see’.

Criticisms

Zahavi (2003) states representation is not an intermediary between a subject and the object; for it to be true, there needs to be a subject different from the representation, which is clearly not the case. Further, such a notion leads to the wrong assumption of the existence of the object in-itself. Moreover, such a conception would equate our ‘sensation’ of an object with any representation of that object, which is not true; hence, representation is not the third ‘something’ apart from the subject and object but our means to experience the object. Representation is not something ‘intramental’, but it is also not ‘extramental’; moreover, it is not ‘transcendental’ too.

Experience of objects is not a secondary thing, i.e., a representation of a primary object; it is simply the experience of an object. The distinction between our experience and a mental representation would be the much-debated dreams, hallucinations, and memories that construct the illusion of a solipsistic self, different from the experiencing self. If it is argued that we know all of these to be mental representations because even though they might seem real, they are unreal, it can sceptically be asked whether we can ever be sure if what we experience is real. However, it can be countered by stating that it is purely metaphysical, and if we cannot know whether the world is real, we cannot also know that it is unreal. Husserl is interested in the objective experience of the objects in the world and not the subjective experience that wrongly seems to be occurring 'only' in one's mind. His phenomenological reduction gives rise to neither methodological nor epistemological solipsism.

Though the world is given to me in my experience, it doesn't mean that the world is 'my' experience. The self with thoughts that bracket the world and its objects in reduction has to exist in the world as a part of it to do so. The pure consciousness after reduction has been the basis for solipsistic charges against Husserl; however, this consciousness is not subjective but intersubjective and makes the world possible only because of its existence in the world in the first place.

Conclusion

The confusion created by the experience of the ‘I’ being received in ‘first person’ leads to the misconception that ‘I’ is psychological when it is not. We need to understand that there are no different ‘the world’ and ‘my world’ limited by the ‘metaphysical subject’ but the ‘objective world’. “There is nothing, therefore, in the world which can be said to be mine in the relevant sense of the word” (Hintikka, 1958, p.89). Thus, ‘my’ existence in the world as it is ‘experienced’ by me is not one marked by solipsism.

References

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3. Hintikka, J. (1958). On Wittgenstein’s Solipsism. Mind, 67(265).
4. Husserl, E. (1969). Formal and Transcendental Logic. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. 
5. Parker, R. K. (2013). Husserl's Transcendental Idealism & the Problem of Solipsism.
6. Schnell, A. (2010). Intersubjectivity in Husserl’s Work. Meta: Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology & Practical Philosophy – II (1).
7. Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations. Macmillan Publishing Company.
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