The Rejection of Solipsism in Husserl’s Fifth Meditation: Carr’s Paradox and the Diversity Problem

The Rejection of Solipsism in Husserl’s Fifth Meditation: Carr’s Paradox and the Diversity Problem

Paulo Mendes Taddei

Iso Kern famously identified an “inner tension and ambiguity” operating in the Fifth Cartesian Meditation (Kern, 1973, p. XVIII). Textually two ambiguities stand out. The first concerns the extension of the dimension reached by the thematic epoché: while some passages suggest that this dimension is deprived of every act bearing a minimal vestige of an alien consciousness, other passages suggest that the intentionalities directed at others should be part of that phenomenological residue, even if their noematic counterparts are to be excluded. A second textual ambiguity concerns the characterization of the meditation both as a static and as a genetic investigation. Following Smith (2003), I propose that both textual ambiguities amount to the same “inner tension,” that is, that the thematic epoché which includes acts directed at others produces a dimension proper to a static investigation, which aims particularly at founding knowledge through apodictic evidence, while the thematic epoché which excludes these very acts is cut out for a genetic investigation. The question I intend to address is how these two related projects subsume to the announced main objective of the Fifth Meditation, namely, that of repelling the threat of transcendental solipsism. I propose here that two systematic challenges must be overcome when interpreting the Fifth Meditation, one by each project: the static investigation must come to terms with Carr’s paradox and the genetic investigation should face up to what has recently been called the “diversity problem”. In regard to the first challenge, it is important to note an additional ambiguity concerning the very notion of solipsism as it appears in the meditations. This talk of a solipsistic threat at the outset of the Fifth Meditation is to be contrasted with two earlier positive mentions of solipsism in the Cartesian Meditations, in which the very phenomenological endeavor is characterized as solipsistic. It is clear, on the one hand, that there would be no threat of solipsism, if the meditations were not, in a sense, solipsistic; on the other hand, this very fact forces us to consider what the rejection of solipsism is supposed to achieve: it is either (i) a complete rejection of solipsism, which generates an intrinsic problem for the Husserlian project, especially in its neocartesian vein, a problem best captured by Carr’s paradox (Carr, 1973, p. 34-35), or (ii) it is a restricted rejection which decisively relies on a conceptual distinction between diverse senses of the word ‘solipsism’ and which manages to safeguard the unity of Husserl’s thought (Moran, 2012; Heinämaa, 2021) at the expense of rendering it vulnerable, at least in principle, to a charge of solipsism. In regard to the second challenge, one must consider that Husserl’s Fifth Meditation is committed to the idea that alien-consciousness is made possible through an analogical transference of sense, which reveals the other precisely as alter ego, that is, as another ego. The diversity problem calls into question whether such accounts, be they naturalistic, inferential or, as Husserl’s is, transcendental and non-inferential, are able to do justice to the manifold diversity of possible actions that other minds enjoy in our experience. To paraphrase Gallagher’s recent formulation: when I project myself imaginatively into the other’s mind, am I not merely reiterating myself? (Gallagher, 2020, p. 79) Though presently leveled against simulation theory, which is a naturalistic account of social cognition, this criticism has its historical roots both in Scheler (1923, p. 277) and in Ryle (1949, p. 52, 53), when it was directed against the argument of the inference from analogy. In responding to this challenge, I propose that the difference between the sphere of the lived-body (Leiblichkeit) and the higher psychic sphere (höhere psychische Sphäre) is key: while the criticism has no force against the empathic accomplishments at the level of the lived-body, it does generate problems, I shall demonstrate, when complex mental states are at stake.