Solipsistic Phenomenology

I have explained before why solipsism, the belief either that nothing but my mind exists or that I cannot know if anything but my mind exists, is false.  My epistemic abilities and limitations do not demonstrate that there is nothing that exists other than my mind or that I cannot know if anything exists other than my mind, because there are thing besides my consciousness that do exist.  Logic and truth exist necessarily and independently of my awareness and existence, and matter does exist--I have a body and there is an external world [1].

But if someone were to redefine what they mean by the word solipsism, and stop using it in the usual manner, it becomes a position that is totally true, in my case at least.  The truth is that I cannot know if there are my other minds, not that I cannot know if anything at all exists other than my consciousness, as there are at least several things that do [2].

As long as someone with my same epistemological limitations (i.e., a big one in this case not being a telepath) means by identifying as a solipsist not that there is nothing but his or her mind or that anything else cannot be known to exist, as both are provably false, but that it is not certain if other conscious minds exist, then that form of solipsism is legitimate.  The difference between the two is blatant, the former being objectively false and the latter being true.  My mind alone is not all that exists, but it might be the only mind that exists.

I wanted to clarify this point since I have mentioned and refuted the more popular definition of solipsism before.  Having done that already, I wanted to show that an alternate definition of solipsism narrows the claim being made to something that is actually logically defensible and that acknowledges the fact that some things do exist other than my consciousness, while also recognizing that some of them exist by necessity even if my consciousness did not.


[1].  See here:
A.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-external-world.html
B.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/11/closing-my-eyes.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/12/metaphysics-and-absolute-certainty.html