The poverty of solipsism. Column in KompyuterrOnline #24

"The world," he taught, "is my representation!"
And when he found a pin under the seat
His son stuck a pin in,
He shouted, "Guard!
How terrible my representation!"
English epigram translated by Samuel Marshak
A philosophically experienced reader must strain: I dedicate this column to a morbid theme. What can be said about it after numerous philosophers, after the English quintain in the epigraph, and after Herbert Chesterton’s story “The Crime of Gabriel Gale”?
And yet I will try. So, why solipsism?
Both Soviet and post‑Soviet education opposed “materialism” and “idealism.” Lenin claimed that the choice between them is the fundamental question of philosophy. Is such a choice really important for us?
Knowledge begins with its subject becoming aware of its own existence. Descartes offered the formula “cogito ergo sum” — “I think, therefore I am.” Thought is a complex phenomenon. Thinking, the cognition of reality (or of actuality – I wrote about the difference of these terms here) grows out of perception. Let us replace the basis of being with “percipimus ergo sum” — “I perceive, therefore I am.”
I will continue the exposition in the first person singular — from “I.”
Two philosophy merchants approach me. One says that our being is derived from eternal Matter, existing independently of any relation to whether we perceive it or not. Matter forms an Objective (perception‑independent) Reality (the world of objects, “things”), where I am one such “thing.” What seems to me to be my being is merely a partial reflection of the being of matter. The other says that this world is the realization of some someone’s Design or of a universal Idea. The phenomena of this world, like me, are imperfect incarnations of primary ideas.
Both philosophical wares demand extraordinary credulity. One must take on faith the primary and untestable existence of some abstraction: either Matter or Idea. Plague both your houses! In my percipimus ergo sum there are no non‑perceivable primary entities.
Thus I arrived at solipsism. The simplest solution is to accept that only my perception exists, and whatever I do not perceive does not exist. It is impossible to prove this idea false!
Many minds have traveled this path. Why, then, are sincere solipsists not seen around? Because besides logical refutations there are other grounds for rejecting certain ideas. To show them, I will guide you along a route that passes through solipsism. First, let us adopt this simple and logical view of the world. So, only I exist (you understood, dear readers, where you are in this, he‑he, right?). Or perhaps “I” is your “I,” the reader? For the rest this does not matter.
Thus, pleased with my own insight, I survey the landscape created by my own psyche and make several important observations.
First. Sometimes I feel good, sometimes bad. Good is better than bad!
Second. Part of the world that seems to me is my body. Some essential choices between good/bad are linked to the state of this body. Sitting on a pin is painful and bad.
Third. The properties of the world that seem to me split into two groups. Some I can change arbitrarily, control over the others is closed to me. In my arbitrariness I may sit on the pin or not, but if I sit on it – it will hurt.
Fourth. The properties of the world (i.e., my fantasies) are not chaotic but regular, coherent. Compare two ways of thinking.
Version 1. If I imagine that I sit on an imaginary chair with a fictitious pin, an uncontrolled part of my psyche will generate the illusion that the image of the pin breaches the integrity of my imagined buttocks, leading to a seeming experience of pain.
Version 2. If I sit on the pin, it will prick – it will be painful.
A reasoning in which cause‑and‑effect relations are taken out of my psyche for convenience turns out to be simpler! It will be easier for me to play billiards if I imagine that the balls move and collide (interact!) by themselves, “releasing” my world‑creating psyche from each step of the argument.
I will introduce the notion of adaptation (adjustment) — the correspondence between mutable and immutable parameters of reality. Adaptation allows solving certain tasks: reducing suffering, satisfying desires. The second mode of reasoning is more adaptive.
Fifth important observation (on which we will stop so as not to become tedious). In my perception there are, among other things, other beings: people similar to me, “scientific creationists,” and other animals. Regularities obtained from observing them can be useful for my adaptation. If my imaginary neighbor sat on an imaginary chair and then, with an imaginary cry, jumped up, observing this fantasy will be useful for me: I will not imagine that I myself sit on that chair. Again, it is simpler to use a mode of reasoning that assumes that imaginary phantoms are beings just like me.
The philosopher of the epigraph had a son (the result of a certain interaction of adults). From some stage onward, children, rascals, can cause mischief. If the philosopher were more adaptive, he would have understood the regularities of his son’s behavior and predicted the presence of a pin under the seat.
Before we studied the properties of our inner cosmos, we might have assumed that solipsism is the optimal way of thinking. But the reality drawn by our perception turns out to be highly interconnected.
Other realities can be imagined; some we regularly visit in our dreams, others are entered by mentally ill people. There our premonitions, desires and fears clearly echo our mutable environment. And on the daytime surface (this is a geological term!), in the reality of waking, cause‑and‑effect chains work as if they are carried out externally.
Thus, we have not made any excessive, unfounded judgments about the external world and nevertheless have concluded that it is more adaptive to think of reality as an external environment with which we interact.
Here the shift from first‑person singular (I) to plural (we) occurred automatically. Yes. The point is that when we accept that other people (and, more broadly, other animals) function as we do, we become more successful ourselves. Solipsism ended. It is not erroneous, it is not internally contradictory — it is maladaptive. For example, it simply hinders empathy for other people and understanding them.
Do you think empathy is a cultural phenomenon that does not touch our essence? Neurologist Oliver Sacks (“The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat”) writes about a way to reach deep‑seated mental disabilities that have lost themselves. This is the experience of another! “Drama… through role can organize, assemble the patient into a new complete person. The ability to play a role, to act, to be someone is given to a person from birth and has nothing to do with measures of mental development. This ability is present in newborn infants and in decrepit old men.”
A priori knowledge of the existence of other people is embedded in the very foundation of our being. Approach a newborn who has just learned to use his eyes (naturally, when he is not sleeping), and begin to open and close your mouth widely. Most likely he will imitate your movements. Even before any learning, his brain construction contains innate knowledge of the existence of other people and of the correspondence of their movements to the movements of the infant himself. At the “hard‑wired” level it is built in that the mouth of the face he sees corresponds to his own mouth! The neurological basis of such reactions was called mirror neurons. They were discovered in monkeys and now also found in humans.
Thus, three closely linked concepts entered our discussion: environment, adaptation and interaction. We introduced them while discussing the experience of our inner life, and in our “adult” interpretation these concepts form the basis of ecology — the biological science of interactions.
For the highly valued Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the main criterion of truth was not practice, not conformity to Revelation, not intuition, not the consent of authorities, but the growing limit of internal connection. It concerns a potentially unlimited growth of understanding causal links in our model of reality. Using this criterion, I understand that I am on the right path, and I arrive at what can be called ontological adaptationism. It cannot be proved flawlessly, but, having accepted it (and any world model rests on the acceptance of some axioms), it can be successfully used to understand both ourselves and our world.
Matter independent of perception, Divine design, the arbitrariness of will in the inner cosmos… I do not find reflections of these primary principles in our nature. But adaptation to interaction with the environment and with others is evident both in our bodies and in our psyche.
I prefer to build a model of reality on this foundation.