Terminology Tuesday: Solipsism
Solipsism (Lat. solus, ‘alone’, and ipse, ‘oneself’). The philosophical belief that the individual self is the only existent and that all other selves are illusions. It is doubtful whether any philosopher has ever held this extreme form of theoretical egotism; its chief use in philosophical debate is to reduce opponents to absurdity. The word is less commonly applied to the doctrine that the self is the only object of real knowledge, without prejudice to the existence of other selves. Either doctrine is a particular form of ‘Subjective Idealism’.
Cross, F. L., & Livingstone, E. A. (Eds.). (2005). In The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd ed. rev., p. 1526). Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
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