Wittgenstein em oposição a Descartes: uma resposta possível das investigações filosóficas contra o solipsismo da meditação primeira

Abstract

The problem of solipsism is a philosophical question much investigated in modern and contemporary philosophy, especially by the philosophy of mind. Perhaps a possible answer to this problem can be found in Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophy of language in his posthumous work Philosophical Investigations. Solipsism can be defined as a philosophical concept where only the perspective of the SELF can be considered. In this perspective, the existence of other minds is something that must suspend judgment, i.e., a certain skepticism is maintained about the knowledge of other minds. In an attempt to identify when solipsism gained prominence in philosophy, we reached the Metaphysical Meditations by the philosopher René Descartes. In this work, Descartes moves to put all his knowledge into doubt to find only what can be considered undoubted truth. To this end, he employs skepticism. But the way out that Descartes proposes in Meditations to solve solipsism that he is to suppose and, more, to prove the existence of a God. However, we are in search of an answer that does not need to prove the existence of a Creator, considering the difficulty of obtaining definitive proof that God exists. The way out that seems most likely to be true is the one presented by Wittgenstein in Investigations: a private language, as solipsism suggests and Descartes presents, is impossible, but language must be public and externally accessible to other people. In this sense, for a language to be public, it is a necessary condition that it has been apprehended in contact with other people, with external correcting factors, and, therefore, with necessarily existing external minds.