> On Aug 23, 3:32 pm, "andy-k" wrote:
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>> Regarding Witt's comments on the metaphysical self in section 5.6
>> (excerpts copied below), I take it that his comment "what the
>> solipsist _means_ is quite correct; only it cannot be _said_" (5.62)
>> follows from the fact that language pertains to what is _in_ my world,
>> and so language cannot legitimately address "my world" as though it
>> were an object _in_ my world (2.174, 5.61). (And I take Witt to be
>> speaking of epistemological solipsism, not metaphysical solipsism.)

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>> But surely, given that "what the solipsist _means_ is quite correct",
>> the puzzle implicit in the solipsism vs. realism issue remains,
>> even if that puzzle can't legitimately be put into language.
>> Does anybody really feel that the problem of epistemological
>> solipsism has "vanished" (6.521), even if it can't legitimately be
>> phrased as a problem?

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>> ===============================

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>> Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Pears and McGuinness translation).
>> 5.6:
>> "_The limits of my language_ mean the limits of my world"

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>> 5.62:
>> "[...] For what the solipsist _means_  is quite correct; only it cannot be
>> _said_ but makes itself manifest. The world is my world: this is manifest
>> in the fact that the limits of language (of that language that I alone
>> understand) mean the limits of my world."

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>> 5.63:
>> "I am my world. (The microcosm.)"

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>> 5.631:
>> "There is no such thing as the subject that thinks or entertains ideas
>> [...]"

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>> 5.632:
>> "The subject does not belong to the world: rather, it is a limit of the
>> world."

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>> 5.633:
>> "Where _in_ the world is a metaphysical subject to be found? [...]"

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>> 5.64:
>> "Here it can be seen that solipsism, when its implications are followed
>> out strictly, coincides with pure realism. The self of solipsism shrinks
>> to a point without extension, and there remains the reality co-ordinated
>> with it."

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>> 5.641:
>> "[...] The philosophical self is not the human being, not the human body,
>> or the human soul, with which psychology deals, but rather the metaphysical
>> subject, the limit of the world -- not a part of it."

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> There is much I don't understand about epistemology.  I can sort of
> see the doubt about the external world but I don't understand the
> certainty that the solipsist exixts.  How could one demonstrate to
> one's self that one is real?
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> Perhaps "I" am a figment of someone elses imagination and so am no
> more real than the putative external world.  This may be naive, if so
> point me at an argument.- Hide quoted text -
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> - Show quoted text -