Abstract

It is trivially true that solipsism, the view that “the world is my world” and that whatever there is is ontologically dependent on my thought or language, cannot be conclusively refuted. The issue of solipsism is, however, an important one. The paper considers this issue mainly from the point of view of Wittgenstein's remarks on solipsism in the Tractatus and in his early Notebooks. It is argued that we should not accept the Wittgensteinian idea that solipsism eventually coincides with “pure realism”. A position labeled “pragmatic realism” is briefly sketched in order to avoid both solipsism and what I call “credo realism”. Thus, I try to show that the issue of solipsism vs. realism should not simply be dismissed and that it should be approached from a pragmatist perspective