The Threat of Solipsism: Can You Insult Me?

     “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

                                                  ―Eleanor Roosevelt in This is My Story  

When, in the blog entry entitled “Are there Really Seven and A Half Billion Human Beings in the World,” we discussed a possible corrective to the notion that reality exists independent of human experience. By pointing out that the real is what is experienced we attempted to lead the reader to understand that all metaphysical theories or theories regarding reality, even those such as realism which claim that reality is mind-independent, must still accept the fact that when we experience others as independent of ourselves, it is still us that is experiencing this. The human other is an experienced other. Experience is how we know that the other exists! In point of fact, we do not even ignore nor do we question whether the other is. The other simply arises in our experience against the uniqueness of our subjectivity--again something we "take for granted" and do not thematically encounter.* We can not know this in any other way. Please note that I say “human experience,” is what is necessary to know the other as other. I did not say that the other exists in our mind or self. This is an important distinction. What we are saying is that solipsism, the view that all that exists must exist in mind (or self) only, is not the view that our project supports. If one has arrived at that conclusion that we have fallen prey to solipsism, it is hopefully a product of a lack of the proper elucidation of our project or the incomplete elucidation of our project and not the result of the erroneous nature of our view.

The answer to our question posed as the title of this blog entry may provide us with a way into a lucid and more complete understanding of our view. “Can you insult me? It would seem that if our project was in fact solipsistic in nature, we would probably be compelled to answer “no.” How could the other as an aspect of my mind or an aspect of my self, insult me? Would it not seem absurd to answer “yes” to our question? I don’t see how I could insult myself, without first qualifying to myself that I am seeing myself both as an object to be insulted and as the subject who insults. As we know, the self is always a subject, never an object. Can a self insult and simultaneously be insulted? Only in some weird fabrication of what a self or what an insult is. It would have to be a fabrication which takes us far afield from our usual way of talking about subjects and objects. However, within the framework of our project, the other can certainly insult me precisely because the other is being experienced as other not as my self or my mind. Yet, Eleanor Roosevelt’s aphorism is not without value. It is certainly the case that I must be vulnerable, i.e., in a mental state of self-doubt or some such state, enough to receive the others insult as such. If I am not in a condition of vulnerability at the moment of receiving the insult, however we account for that invulnerability, I cannot receive the insult as such. I have not given my consent. The insult would probably not be experienced as a painful event. It may be viewed as a failed intent on the part of the other to hurt me.

Now that we have become a bit more informed about our present project, I hope we can understand how we may avoid the pitfall of solipsism. No matter how objectively independent a reality seems to us, it is this “seems to us” that reveals the necessity of its seeming being experienced. The other is as real as we experience it, her, or him to be. We may conclude from this that nothing remains outside of our experience except another’s experience. Is this last possibility truly the case? Can our experience of another’s experience be experienced? (The awkward phrasing is intentional.) Why not? Must we say that this is impossible even if I truly experience that I have experienced another’s experience?

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*This is a most significant point. We will, of necessity, explore this in detail in a subsequent blog. This will be discussed as "existence as a predicate."

Are There Really Seven and A Half Billion Human Beings in the World?

To begin with, let us assume that all that “exists” in the most radical sense of the term is experience. Borrowing a phrase from William James, let us call this the view of “radical empiricism.” Now, I’m not using this term in precisely the same way as James, but we may say that the intent of using such a phrase is pretty much in keeping with James’ project. Our discussions will attempt, at every turn, to stick as close to experience as possible in our treatment of the fundamental, i.e., human life as it is lived. We have, in earlier entries, given at least perfunctory treatment to this fundamental reality. Now, in this entry, we will be using the term “radical empiricism” to point to some rather curious and perhaps unsettling issues.

Let us say for the moment that the ultimately real is experience, the experience of each one of us. We must also take note of the fact that there are approximately seven and a half billion people in the world. However, take the death of one of those people, say yourself. What exactly is it that disappears from this world? Or, to lead us into a more curious position, we may ask what is it that disappears from human life or fundamental reality? See how the questions differ? It is rather obvious, no? Yet, when we speak of the “disappearance” of someone, namely ourselves, are we speaking of something happening to us other than the loss of experience? (Let us say for argument’s sake that death is presumably the loss of experience on the part of the dead. In fact, there may be no loss or gain at all other than the loss experienced during the dying process. So, as each of us dies, we lose the capacity for experience.) If as we die we experience the dissolution of universe, world, sensation, mind, self—in a word, “consciousness"--it is our experience that comes to an end. What about the others who may become, in one sense or another, witnesses to our death? What happens to them? Well, we are compelled to say that their experience of us changes. It must be the case what changes for them is their experience, that’s all they ever had of us the dying. This change may be all-encompassing if they were our friends or enemies, or may be quite minimal if they were mere acquaintances. Therefore, from the point of view of radical empiricism, we, the dying, experience a loss of experience and they the witnesses experience a change of experience in relation to us. Has the world changed? What world?

If we posit a world wherein seven and a half billion human beings exist, then we may say there is one less person inhabiting the world. However, this world is an abstract world, a world conceived, i.e., a conceptual or imaginary^*world. From the perspective of inside/out thinking, the reality of the inside, i.e., experience, is the most fundamental and in our sense most “real” and most lived dimension. It is what can be said to truly “exist.” When we move the initial step of taking account of our experience, we have entered the imaginary* or theoretical dimension. Some might refer to this as the phenomenal world as opposed to the noumenal or “world-in-itself.” Our project of radical empiricism demands that we stick to that which is experienced. The content of this experience is not “to be gotten hold of,” but to be lived. To get a hold of experience is to render it theoretical. While the project of getting a hold of experience is a purely cognitive one and valuable to many an explorer of living, by the process of abstraction, we run the risk of losing sight of the real and becoming seduced by the theoretical to remain in the abstract. This often takes the form of a forgetfulness of the real that replaces the real with a theory that is all too frequently a poor substitute for the living. We will be addressing this issue further later in our work.

So, to ask the question “How many people are there in the world?” is to miss the nature of the living assumptions that frame the question. As a critical move, we must ask of the questioner “What world?” and proceed to elicit the foundations of such a question. These foundations, or sedimented beliefs, are only revealed by an appeal to experience itself. If what may be said to truly exist is experience alone, then we are able to understand that such a question presupposes a world that exists independently of experience, a world that we enter upon birth and depart upon death. This world is reduced by one member when we die, and has a member added when we are born. Such a world is not a living world, but a purely theoretical one that has little to do with direct experience. The world that we experience is experience. The is no outside of this world. There is no separation of self, mind, body, world, and universe in this world. This world that is experience is fully alive. It is the source of satisfaction. (This satisfaction is something that will concern us more later in the project.)

So, are there seven and a half billion human beings in the world? Or, are there seven and a half billion worlds? What question would we choose to answer to bring us closer to an understanding of the way things really are?

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* We are using the term “imaginary” not in the restricted sense of being inferior to the real, but of qualifying the nature of the world produced by theorizing as conceptual.