Tony asked:

A question I have concerns solipsism, which seems much discussed hereabouts. How would people
respond to the following reply to solipsism, which I came across in Bryan Magee's excellent book on
Schopenhauer? To anyone who claims they are a solipsist, the retort is to ask how they came to write
the complete works of Shakespeare and all nine of Beethoven's symphonies.

While this does not refute solipsism, it does question its value as a philosophical standpoint. It does
ask of what interest it can be, how does it work, what can it tell us that is new. To justify a belief that
the Earth orbits the Sun, the early physicists had to explain how come we don't feel the Earth moving.
It was the latter that lead to much that is great in physics, more so than the original assertion.
Likewise, a solipsist must explain their bounteous creativity, for solipsism to become both tenable and
worth pursuing further. It seems to me there is a lack of imagination present in the solipsist attitude,
and this is reason enough to reject it, at least until something inspirational ever comes of it. But is this
reason enough? It leads us to question why we philosophise. As a search for absolute truth? Or just
to stretch the imagination?

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You're missing something rather important here. Solipsism isn't a hypothesis, put forward in the spirit
of, 'Let's see whether the solipsist theory proves useful.' The solipsist, or anyone who as ever felt the
grip of solipsism, has an argument, which says, in effect, 'It is completely irrelevant whether you like
being a solipsist or not, or whether or not solipsism is a useful thing to believe. These are the facts,
and when you look at the facts without prejudice you will see that there isno alternative but to
embrace solipsism.' (I'm not going to rehearse the argument now, or possible responses to it. The
important thing is that Magee's 'refutation' of solipsism is not such a response.)

As a solipsist, as one who believes that reality is co-extensive with 'the world of my possible
experience' I have to acknowledge that my experience (to date!) does not include writing, or
remembering having written Hamlet.The character William Shakespeare and the Hamlet experience
are simply features-to-be-encountered, part of the stuff and furniture of my world.Without me they
would be nothing. But that is not a reason for saying that I must be the author of Hamletany more
than it is for saying that I must be the father (or inventor?) of Shakespeare.

As a solipsist, I can raise the question, 'Why all this? Where does it come from?' There is no answer
except to say, 'It's just there.' But then exactly the same thing can be said about the world of the
non-solipsist! In the world that you and I supposedly share, there is Hamletand the playwright
Shakespeare who wrote the play. Why? Why was there a Shakespeare? Why did he write Hamlet?
Every explanation you give will just refer to more facts, which might have been otherwise. Why,
indeed, is there anything, rather than nothing?

Whether you are a non-solipsist or a solipsist, whether you think that Shakespeare and Beethoven
were 'real people' (whatever that means!) or just 'characters in the story of my world' (whatever that
means!) you have to accept that things are the way they are. Things might have been otherwise than
they are, There might have been no Shakespeare and his plays, or no Beethoven and his
symphonies, but there is and that's just a brute fact which is no more embarrassing to the solipsist
than it is to the non-solipsist.

Geoffrey Klempner