Editing Solipsism (section)

==History==
Origins of solipsist thought are found in Greece and later Enlightenment thinkers such as [[Thomas Hobbes]]<ref name="Boucher 2018 p. 82">{{cite book|last=Boucher|first=D.|title=Appropriating Hobbes: Legacies in Political, Legal, and International Thought|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2018|isbn=978-0-19-881721-5|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9T5MDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA82|access-date=2023-01-19|page=82}}</ref><ref name="Dyzenhaus Poole Poole 2015 p. 142">{{cite book|last1=Dyzenhaus|first1=D.|last2=Poole|first2=T.|last3=Poole|first3=T.M.|title=Law, Liberty and State: Oakeshott, Hayek and Schmitt on the Rule of Law|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2015|isbn=978-1-107-09338-6|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZZfwCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA142|access-date=2023-01-19|page=142}}</ref> and Descartes.

===Gorgias===
Solipsism was first recorded by the Greek [[presocratic]] [[sophist]], [[Gorgias]] ({{circa|483}}–375 BC), who is quoted by the [[Ancient Rome|Roman]] [[sceptic]] [[Sextus Empiricus]] as having stated:<ref name="Craig(Firm)1998">{{cite book|author1=Edward Craig|author2=Routledge (Firm)|title=Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Genealogy to Iqbal|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5m5z_ca-qDkC&pg=PA146|year=1998|publisher=Taylor & Francis US|isbn=978-0-415-18709-1|page=146}}</ref>

* Nothing exists.
* Even if something exists, nothing can be known about it.
* Even if something could be known about it, knowledge about it cannot be communicated to others.

Much of the point of the sophists was to show that objective knowledge was a literal impossibility.

===René Descartes===
The foundations of solipsism are in turn the foundations of the view that the individual's understanding of any and all psychological concepts ([[thinking]], [[volition (psychology)|willing]], [[perceiving]], etc.) is accomplished by making an [[analogy]] with their own mental states; ''i.e.'', by [[abstraction]] from ''inner experience''. And this view, or some variant of it, has been influential in philosophy since René Descartes elevated the search for incontrovertible certainty to the status of the ''primary goal'' of [[epistemology]], whilst also elevating epistemology to "first philosophy".{{citation needed|date=April 2012}}

===Berkeley===
[[File:John Smibert - Bishop George Berkeley - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|Portrait of [[George Berkeley]] by [[John Smybert]], 1727]]

[[George Berkeley]]'s arguments against [[materialism]] in favour of [[idealism]] provide the solipsist with a number of arguments not found in Descartes. While Descartes defends ontological [[mind-body dualism|dualism]], thus accepting the existence of a material world (''[[res extensa]]'') as well as immaterial minds (''[[res cogitans]]'') and God, Berkeley denies the existence of matter but not minds, of which God is one.<ref name="Jones2009">{{cite book|first1=N.|last1=Jones|first2=G.|last2=Berkeley|year=2009|title=Starting with Berkeley|publisher=Continuum|isbn=978-1-84706-186-7|lccn=2008053026|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=G6ukEYxbW5UC&pg=PA105|page=105}}</ref>