The You-Turn in Philosophy of Mind: On the Significance of Experiences that Aren’t Mine.

Abstract

This dissertation challenges a dominant way of thinking in philosophy of mind that gives rise to a variety of problems of other minds and, thus, different versions of the threat of solipsism. I contend that these problems arise because of a problematic philosophical starting point. For such ways of thinking start from the removed, contemplative position of a solitary individual, conceptually isolated from the world, trying to bridge the conceptual divide between himself or herself and the world at large. Appealing to a recent trend in cognitive science called enactivism, as well as the medieval Indian philosophy of Kaśmīr Śaivism, I suggest that we can dissolve these problems without entirely neglecting their significance if we take a different starting position for philosophy of mind: the lived position. In the lived position, the possibility of solipsism, for the most part, simply goes unconsidered since we are always already involved in participating with each other to make sense of the world.