Page:Schlick - Gesammelte Aufsätze (1926 - 1936), 1938.djvu/395

 owned by the 'mind' belonging to the body M, because everything seemed to depend on the state of the latter; but under the circumstances described there exists perfect symmetry between O and M ; the egocentric predicament has disappeared.

You will perhaps call my attention to the fact that the circumstances we have been describing are fictitious, that they do not occur in our real world, so that in this world, unfortunately, the egocentric predicament holds its sway. I answer that I wish to base my argument only on the fact that the difference between the two words is merely empirical, i. e., proposition P just happens to be true in the actual world as far as our experience goes. It does not even seem to be incompatible with the known laws of nature; the probability which these laws give to the falsity of P is not zero.

Now if we still agree that proposition Q is to be regarded as identical with P (which means that 'my' is to be defined as referring to M), the word 'can' in Q will still indicate empirical possibility, Consequently, if a philosopher tried to use Q as the basis of a kind of solipsism, he would have to be prepared to see his whole construction falsified by some future experience. But this is exactly what the true solipsist refuses to do. He contends that no experience whatever could possibly contradict him, because it would always necessarily have the peculiar for-me character, which may be described by the 'egocentric predicament'. In other words, he is well aware that solipsism cannot be based on Q as long as Q is, by definition, nothing but another way of expressing P. As a matter of fact, the solipsist who makes the statement Q attaches a different meaning to the same words; he does not wish merely to assert P, but he intends to say something entirely different. The difference lies in the word 'my'. He does not want to define the personal pronoun by reference to the body M, but uses it in a much more general way. What meaning does he give to the sentence Q ? Let us examine this second interpretation which may be given to Q.

The idealist or solipsist who says, T can feel only my own pain', or, more generally, T can be aware only of the data of my own consciousness', believes that he is uttering a necessary, self-evident truth which no possible experience can force him to sacrifice. He will have to admit the possibility of circumstances such as those we described for our fictitious world; but,