Consciousness and Solipsism
Giovanni Merlo (University of Geneva)
22 November 2024, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)
Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa
Sala Mattos Romão [C201.J] (Departamento de Filosofia)
Abstract: In a characteristically thorny passage of his Philosophical Remarks, Wittgenstein invites us to envisage a language for speaking of pain and other sensations of which any person whatever could, in principle, be the ‘centre’. In this language, one wouldn’t say ‘I am in pain’, but ‘There is pain’ or ‘It hurts’. And, when speaking of individuals other than oneself, one wouldn’t say ‘A is in pain’, but ‘A is behaving as the Centre does when there is pain’ or ‘A is behaving as the Centre does when it hurts’. In this talk, I will identify some aspects of our ordinary conception of pain and other sensations that appear to make the way of speaking about them envisaged by Wittgenstein, not only perfectly appropriate, but also inescapable. I will then outline a metaphysical view that, instead of revising those aspects of the ordinary conception, tries to accommodate them without falling into the pitfalls of solipsism.