The Importance of Avoiding Solipsism

I remember once in an undergraduate poetry workshop my professor called one of my poems solipsistic. To be specific about my plight, I stubbornly refused to add one minor detail to clarify something for my reader because I felt it was unnecessary and would detract from the point of the poem itself. At the time, I was quite frustrated about the remark... but I soon came to realize that I was not entirely sure what he meant by his comment. Out of irritation, I never did follow up with my professor to find out why he thought my poem was solipsistic or why it even mattered. 

This week’s readings from Barry Brummet and Richard Cherwitz/James Hikins deal with the problem of solipsism and methods to avoid it. They deal with reality and what we as humans make of it, how we construct it, and rhetoric’s role. For Brummet and Cherwitz/Hikins, solipsism is problematic because it is completely subjective view of reality. Basically, it is the idea that only your mind surely exists. The external world, to include objects and other minds, do not exist; rather, they are an extension of your own mind, representations of your own reality, and exist dependently on your own meanings. In other words, the solipsist deals with pink elephants.

If you have ever seen Disney’s Dumbo, you have seen the bizarre intoxication segment entitled “Pink Elephants on Parade.” Dumbo and Timothy Mouse share a hallucination of pink elephants (and “technicolor pachyderms”) performing amazing yet impossible stunts. Later as they were sleeping off their hangovers in a tree, a group of crows laugh at Timothy’s muttering of pink elephants. I offer Dumbo’s pink elephants as a means of thinking about Brummet’s pink elephants intersubjective process and Cherwitz/Hikins’ perspectivism as well as determine why avoiding solipsism is important to the rhetor (and poet!).  

Brummet’s intersubjective process is a participatory promotion of reality constructed by an exchange of meaning among humans, i.e., meaning-makers. Context determines meaning; meaning is based on agreement; agreement establishes certainty; and certainty measures truth. Brummet suggests “Intersubjectivity holds that the discovery of reality and the testing of it is never independent of people but takes place through people. Yet this reality is found through communication between people” (30). The solipsist does not fit into this model of meaning-making because he does not participate in the process of exchange to construct reality. Rather, the source of meaning for the solipsist is himself. Had Timothy Mouse been a solipsist, he would not have asked Dumbo if he is also experiencing the sight of pink elephants because Dumbo’s mind does not exist outside of Timothy’s mind’s projection of it. Asking would involve verification of truth, an inquiry of agreement, to determine “the extent to which the meanings of experience (that is to say, reality) of that individual are shared by significant others” (34). Brummet’s intersubjectivity counters solipsism because it forces meaning-makers to exchange meanings in a process to realize reality and discover truth.

Cherwitz/Hikins do not agree with Brummet about the value of intersubjectivity in understanding reality, but they do agree with him that solipsism is unproductive and should be avoided. However, they criticize intersubjectivity as being inherently solipsistic because of its construction of reality:

“And if humans have the capacity to create reality through meaning, who is to say that this activity is not done purely subjectively, the notion of ‘other minds’ being an elaborate conceptual illusion . . . ? Moreover, who is to say there is not just one mind, the mind of the thinker, everyone else merely appearing to have an intellect?” (Cherwitz and Hikins, 254)

They essentially suggest intersubjectivity, or rather subjectivity in general, is solipsism. The Cherwitz/Hikins solution for avoiding a subjective sense of reality is perspectivism. This theory also considers others’ meanings, or perspectives, like intersubjectivity, but it does so in order to identify an “impasse” in perspective arguments, not an agreement upon meanings (C and H, 265). It allows one to consider different perspectives on the same issue. Disagreement becomes the vehicle to truth. Again, the solipsist does not fit into Cherwitz/Hikins’ perspectivist model. Just as with intersubjectivity, the solipsist cannot come to terms with the existence of a mind, or perspective in this case, outside of their own. Again, Timothy Mouse ask Dumbo if he sees the pink elephants as well, but he does so with an inclination towards an intersubjective agreement rather than a perspectivist disagreement. 

So, why should a rhetor avoid solipsism? And why was my poem solipsistic? To the former, I suggest solipsism does not have a place in rhetorical applications because it distrusts externals and ultimately communication, the means of dis/agreeing on meanings and reality. I still cannot answer the latter, but perhaps because I cannot find accord with my professor’s meaning nor can I move from our disagreement, I am at least a little guilty of egocentrism. Anyway, without some sort of external integration with society, i.e. rhetoric, neither Brummet’s nor Cherwitz/Hikins’ theories are relevant as methods of understanding the how’s and why’s of reality. As Brummet suggests: “madness is by definition an inability to share conventional meanings” (31).

Brummet, Barry. “Some Implications of ‘Process’ or ‘Intersubjectivity’: Postmodern Rhetoric.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 9 (1976): 21-51.

Cherwitz, Richard and James Hilkins. “Rhetorical Perspectivism.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 69 (1983): 249-266.