Solipsism: A Perceptual Study

Few issues have been as persistent and recurring a theme as solipsism. Modern philosophy traditionally has managed the starting point of solipsism by translating it into a transcendental and apodictic condition for knowledge. Solus ipse, the contention that "I alone am," is reworked to exploit its most valued feature, the analytic clarity which the thought process achieves when restricted to its own operations. In this manner philosophy has endeavored to gain certain knowledge of how the mind embraces the domain of knowledge, the sensory world. As effective as transcendental thought has been in managing solipsism, it does not resolve problems inherent in the position. In emphasizing the theme of self-knowledge or introspection, philosophy erects a barrier between the mind's capacity to know, an internal process, and the world known, an external domain. The external world is known by means of consciousness* internal schemata or patterns of thought. Philosophical relations which describe this process— inference, association, analogical apperception—all bear witness to the inability of consciousness to escape its own sphere of operations. Far from overcoming the pitfalls inherent in solipsism, modern philosophy shows itself to be solipsism's most ardent defender; the repression of the external world in favor of a constituting consciousness amounts to a mere restatement of the solipsistic thesis. The motivation behind the treatment of solipsism discussed above is a classic one. Philosophy has traditionally distrusted the sensory world and the perceptual process through which the world is presented to consciousness. In view of the limited success enjoyed by this approach to solipsism, it is legitimate to inguire whether perception merits such distrust. If not, is it instead the treatment which perception receives at the hand of transcendental exposition which prevents a resolution of the problem? The objective of this es-