Wednesday, October 28th. The talk will be in Talbot College, Room 310, at 5:30.
Abstract: Solipsism is a philosophical position that traces back to at least the early Greek philosopher Gorgias and is traditionally viewed as a challenge faced by all forms of philosophical idealism. It is the one position that almost every thinker tries to avoid falling into when setting up their philosophical system. Yet, there is very little philosophical literature that takes solipsism seriously, that is, as more than just a skeptical hypothesis. This is in part due to the fact that in the history of philosophy, very few thinkers have endorsed solipsism as a positive position. In this presentation, we will give a brief sketch of what solipsism, as a sophisticated philosophical problem, really looks like, how Edmund Husserl understood it as the “one truly disturbing thought” that might be entailed by transcendental idealism, how he sought to deal with this, and why he fails. However, I will argue that this is not a shortcoming of Husserl's phenomenology, but the discovery of an interesting an important tension that phenomenology brings to our attention.
Rodney Parker
Solipsism: A Truth I Alone Can Know
Abstract: Solipsism is a philosophical position that traces back to at least the early Greek philosopher Gorgias and is traditionally viewed as a challenge faced by all forms of philosophical idealism. It is the one position that almost every thinker tries to avoid falling into when setting up their philosophical system. Yet, there is very little philosophical literature that takes solipsism seriously, that is, as more than just a skeptical hypothesis. This is in part due to the fact that in the history of philosophy, very few thinkers have endorsed solipsism as a positive position. In this presentation, we will give a brief sketch of what solipsism, as a sophisticated philosophical problem, really looks like, how Edmund Husserl understood it as the “one truly disturbing thought” that might be entailed by transcendental idealism, how he sought to deal with this, and why he fails. However, I will argue that this is not a shortcoming of Husserl's phenomenology, but the discovery of an interesting an important tension that phenomenology brings to our attention.
Note to faculty members: We hope you will join us, particularly when the student's research lies in your area of specialty. The PGSA series aims to develop the presenter's oratory confidence, a part of which consists in the defense of his or her research before both specialists and non-specialists.
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