Page:Avenarius and the Standpoint of Pure Experience.djvu/34

26 metaphysical petitio that lurks in the usual definitions of knowledge and error.

For a solipsistic doctrine is a very different thing from a solipsistic experience. Suppose a solipsistic account to be true, and that my stream of consciousness is the only stream of consciousness. My social experience is quite indifferent to the truth or falsity of solipsism, just as my experience of the outer world is quite indifferent to the truth or falsity of idealism. The important thing for experience is how it is characterized, not what exists outside of it. Our human experience is characterized as life in a real world among real fellows, but it does not follow from this merely that any transubjective outer world or transcendent fellow beings exist in a transubjective way. The fact remains that the denial of solipsism (and we all deny it) defines the fellow being as metaphysically transcendent and this is to put him in the same logical position with relation to the perceiving subject as the house or the tree. On the other hand, the experience itself must be described as equally social, whatever results we come to on matters of theory.

In view of these considerations it is interesting to note how writers shy away from solipsism. They appear to imagine that a solipsistic doctrine means an experience in which fellow beings are represented by thin ghostly shapes, phantoms, which have the character of phantoms. What I insist upon is that a solipsistic doctrine implies nothing whatever as to how the experience under discussion will be characterized. One who was sure of the logical correctness of the solipsistic argument would discuss his doctrines with others, submit to social tests and social demands, and this, I maintain, would not be any repudiation of his solipsism.

The fact simply is that his experience would be characterized by the natural view of the world, the natural Weltbegriff of Avenarius. Whatever doctrine the person in question may have, the reality of fellow beings and the outer world is a fact of his experience. He adjusts himself to them as thus defined; that is his natural attitude, it describes his experience, although it may not describe anything else.

A discussion of solipsism is always a thankless task. Both the writer and the reader know in advance that nothing can be said in such a discussion that will in any way alter their actual experience. We all regard it inevitably as a mere vagary of dialectic of which the absurdity is too manifest to call for careful statement.

Of the 'absurdity' of solipsism I am well aware. I know as well as any one that a solipsistic doctrine, however faultless its logic, however unquestionable its data, would make no difference to me as an interpretation of experience. I am sure that others would