## Boundaries of The Mind Solipsism is the [[Belief]] that there is nothing outside one’s own mind. It’s a strange view that very few people have seriously advocated, but it’s surprisingly difficult to disprove, and so it’s kind of a sticky problem in the history of Western philosophy. Understanding solipsism will allow you to understand one of the most central problems of [[Philosophy]]: the [[Boundaries]] between the self and the world. https://philosophyterms.com/solipsism/amp/ The idea that only one’s own mind is sure to exist, provides an intriguing lens for understanding how someone might misuse [[Thomas Kuhn]]’s ideas explored in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), in an unscientific or self-serving way. By focusing on the primacy of individual perception and subjective experience, solipsism inherently dismisses external objectivity. This mindset can create fertile ground for distorting Kuhn’s work, especially when it comes to [[Relativism]] and paradigm shifts. Here’s how: #### 1. Solipsism and the Misuse of Paradigm Relativity Thomas Kuhn’s concept of paradigms highlights how scientific understanding is shaped by collective frameworks, but solipsism undermines this communal aspect by prioritising personal perception over shared reality. • Misuse: A solipsist might interpret Kuhn’s idea of paradigm shifts as justification for rejecting any external consensus or evidence that conflicts with their own subjective views. For example, they might claim, “If paradigms are just human constructs, my personal perspective is as valid as any scientific framework.” • Result: This could lead to pseudo-scientific claims or conspiracy theories that dismiss rigorous, evidence-based paradigms in favour of individual whims. #### 2. Radical Subjectivity and Rejection of Evidence Solipsism asserts that external truths are ultimately unknowable. If someone influenced by solipsism were to adopt Kuhn’s ideas, they might overemphasise the incommensurability of paradigms, arguing that no paradigm can ever be objectively better than another. • Misuse: This could enable an “anything goes” attitude, where scientific consensus is treated as mere opinion. For example, a climate change denier might argue that current climate science is just one paradigm and that their personal “truth” (based on no empirical evidence) is equally valid. • Danger: This approach abandons Kuhn’s emphasis on [[Empirical]] problem-solving, instead weaponising his ideas to reject inconvenient scientific truths. #### 3. Solipsism and Power Dynamics Solipsism often centres the individual’s experience as the ultimate arbiter of truth, which can easily be co-opted to serve personal or ideological agendas. In the context of Kuhn’s work, this might involve misinterpreting paradigms as subjective constructs that can be manipulated to justify harmful actions. • Example: Someone might use this mindset to justify social inequality or pseudoscience, arguing that “truth” is just a matter of perspective. For instance, they could defend discriminatory practices by claiming they are part of a “different paradigm” that cannot be judged by external standards. #### 4. Kuhn’s Awareness and Mitigation Kuhn was aware that his ideas could be taken out of context, but he maintained that paradigms are not purely subjective constructs. They are developed and validated through rigorous testing and empirical evidence within a scientific community. • Mitigation Against Solipsistic Misuse: Kuhn’s emphasis on the communal and empirical nature of paradigms directly counters solipsism’s extreme subjectivity. While paradigms are influenced by social and historical factors, Kuhn insists they are judged by their ability to solve real-world problems, not merely by personal perception. ##### Conclusion Solipsism, with its radical focus on individual experience, could easily lead someone to distort Thomas Kuhn’s ideas, using them to reject scientific objectivity or justify unscientific claims. Such misuse ignores Kuhn’s insistence on the communal and empirical foundations of paradigms. To guard against this, it’s essential to engage with Kuhn’s work as a nuanced exploration of scientific progress—not as a license for unchecked relativism or subjective truth. --- ### [[David Foster Wallace]] on Ludwig Wittgenstein In order for language both to be meaningful and to have some connection to reality, words like tree and house have to be like little pictures, representations of real trees and houses. Mimesis. But nothing more. Which means we can know and speak of nothing more than little mimetic pictures. Which divides us, metaphysically and forever, from the external world. If you buy such a metaphysical schism, you're left with only two options. One is that the individual person with her language is trapped in here, with the world out there, and never the twain shall meet. Which, even if you think language's pictures really are mimetic, is an awful lonely proposition. And there's no iron guarantee the pictures truly are mimetic, which means you're looking at solipsism. One of the things that makes Wittgenstein "There's a kind of tragic fall Wittgenstein's obsessed with all the way from the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in 1922 to the Philosophical Investigations in his last years. I mean a real Book-of-Genesis-type tragic fall. The loss of the whole external world. The Tractatus's picture theory of meaning presumes that the only possible relation between language and the world is denotative, referential. a real artist to me is that he realised that no conclusion could be more horrible than solipsism. And so he trashed everything he'd been lauded for in the Tractatus and wrote the Investigations, which is the single most comprehensive and beautiful argument against solipsism that's ever been made. Wittgenstein argues that for language even to be possible, it must always be a function of relationships between persons (that's why he spends so much time arguing against the possibility of a "private language"). `Concepts:` [[Psychology]] `Knowledge Base:`