On the most basic explanation of Solipsism, the premise of it basically entails that you cannot be sure if the people around you are conscious because you are only capable of verifying your conscious experience rather than someone else's due to the fact that you cannot hack into the mind of others.
At first sight, this appears very disturbingly possible. But when you really think about the entire problem of this theory, it begins to dissipate and only offers a hint of truth about our world.
Solipsism is a product of language. If you were a caveman, with little intelligence to postulate the complexity of a rock, let alone existence, you obviously wouldn't know what Solipsism was. You wouldn't even be able to utilize a language to translate this idea. And this is where the theory begins to fall apart.
In order for Solipsism to work, it needs a language. Language is a product of the human mind. A newborn baby does not automatically know how to speak English or Japanese. It simply cries and makes noises to translate its mood. Therefore this is a clear indication that Solipsism is not the case and other minds, do in fact, exist independently of yours.
If you're still not convinced: let's do some abstract thinking. Say I'm the Solipsist.
If I were a Solipsist, and only I truly existed, while everyone else is merely a figment of my overactive imagination / Wouldn't I need some sort of blueprint/model for me to construct them and discover a way to sustain them? Say I am literally all there is, all there ever will be, how could I have possibly thought up an entire civilization with its inherent features? How could I have known what a human with 2 arms and 2 legs was, had I not seen one? Let alone an entire Universe along with all of its contents? I can't. I need a preexisting mental concept to have an idea of something before being able to successfully replicate it. From a Solipsist POV, I can also argue something like, "I was experimenting until I found a way to create these things", but that's impossible, because how can I translate something I never seen/heard of?
This is why Solipsism just doesn't work. At best, it just tries to test our beliefs and encourages us to become a bit more open minded about the world. The fact that we have grown so much to make up such philosophies negates the possibility of them being true. It's just a way for us to test our limits. The premise of every philosophy is questionable.
At first sight, this appears very disturbingly possible. But when you really think about the entire problem of this theory, it begins to dissipate and only offers a hint of truth about our world.
Solipsism is a product of language. If you were a caveman, with little intelligence to postulate the complexity of a rock, let alone existence, you obviously wouldn't know what Solipsism was. You wouldn't even be able to utilize a language to translate this idea. And this is where the theory begins to fall apart.
In order for Solipsism to work, it needs a language. Language is a product of the human mind. A newborn baby does not automatically know how to speak English or Japanese. It simply cries and makes noises to translate its mood. Therefore this is a clear indication that Solipsism is not the case and other minds, do in fact, exist independently of yours.
If you're still not convinced: let's do some abstract thinking. Say I'm the Solipsist.
If I were a Solipsist, and only I truly existed, while everyone else is merely a figment of my overactive imagination / Wouldn't I need some sort of blueprint/model for me to construct them and discover a way to sustain them? Say I am literally all there is, all there ever will be, how could I have possibly thought up an entire civilization with its inherent features? How could I have known what a human with 2 arms and 2 legs was, had I not seen one? Let alone an entire Universe along with all of its contents? I can't. I need a preexisting mental concept to have an idea of something before being able to successfully replicate it. From a Solipsist POV, I can also argue something like, "I was experimenting until I found a way to create these things", but that's impossible, because how can I translate something I never seen/heard of?
This is why Solipsism just doesn't work. At best, it just tries to test our beliefs and encourages us to become a bit more open minded about the world. The fact that we have grown so much to make up such philosophies negates the possibility of them being true. It's just a way for us to test our limits. The premise of every philosophy is questionable.