SOLIPSISM (

See also:

• LAT

Lat. solus, alone, ipse, self)  , a philosophical term, applied to an extreme form of subjective idealism which denies that the human mind has any valid ground for believing in the existence of anything but itself . " It may best be defined, perhaps, as the doctrine that all existence is experience, and that there is only one experient . The Solipsist thinks that he is the one!" (Schiller) . It is presented as a solution of the problem of explaining the nature of our knowledge of the external world . We cannot know things-in-themselves: they exist for us only in our cognition of them, through the medium of sense-given data . In . F . H . Bradley's words (Appearance and Reality): " I cannot transcend experience, and experience is my experience . From this it follows that nothing 'beyond myself exists; for what is experience is its (the self's) states." See IDEALISM; also F . C . S .

Schiller, Mind, New

Series (April 1909) .