---
title: "Solipsism"
description: "Solipsism is the self taken for the whole world."
author: "Rahim Rasul"
type: "Defined term"
section: "Logos"
noted: "2023-05-13"
url: "https://iloveprocess.com/logos/solipsism/"
site: "I Love Process"
---

# Solipsism

_Latin sōlus, alone + ipse, self_

## Definition

**Solipsism** refers to the philosophical belief that only one's own mind is sure to exist. In everyday use, it also describes self-absorption: living with little regard for what other people think, need or want.

## First-Principles Definition

**Solipsism is the self taken for the whole world.** As philosophy, it holds that only your own mind is certain to exist; everything outside it is open to doubt. As a way of living, it treats other people as scenery in your story rather than selves with stories of their own. Either way, nothing outside can answer back, so nothing outside can change you.

At its core, it asks:

- **What can I be sure of?** Only my own mind is given to me directly; everything else is inferred.
- **Do other minds count?** Solipsism begins when other people become scenery rather than selves.
- **What breaks the circle?** Something that answers back: a voice, a fact, a world that does not come from me.

## Etymology

- *sōlus*: alone, only
- *ipse*: self, itself

The word **solipsism** comes from the Latin *sōlus* meaning "alone" and *ipse* meaning "self," with the suffix *-ism*. Combined, they form "the self alone." The idea it names is often traced to the 17th-century thinkers René Descartes and Thomas Hobbes.