On the Road to Solipsism

Extract

The first task, in the philosophical therapy that opens the way to constructive appropriation of the theological tradition, must be to examine one’s notions of the soul. The very idea of the mind, let alone of the soul, has been eliminated by one powerful philosophical school — exemplified here by Quine. We are far more likely, however, to endorse, or unwittingly host, a certain incipient Solipsism. John Stuart Mill’s argument from analogy for our knowledge of other minds may be classical, but it is not free from objections. On the contrary, it only confirms the myth of the Little Man inside the shell of the body which it is intended to refute. The problem is not intra-theological. The difficulty of the relationship between mind and body, and between myself and others, may be illustrated by some quotations from Proust. This brings us to the threshold of a re-examination of the work of Wittgenstein on the philosophy of psychology — but his work is best read in the context of further work by John Wisdom and Stanley Cavell, two of his finest interpreters, in this matter at any rate.

One line is to eliminate talk of the soul altogether. This could not satisfy Catholics, or any other Christians who regard themselves as obliged to make sense of the tradition which they have inherited. We may well feel strongly tempted by a Platonizing dualism that longs to release the soul from the barnacles and cirripeds with which it is encrusted in this present life (Republic, 612). But out and out behaviourism can have little attraction for people who find themselves at home, or even simply searching, within any Christian tradition. It is hard even for us to imagine what the allurements might be of any such strict materialist theory of consciousness. Quine’s eliminative physicalism will do as an example.