Is it really possible to be a solipsist? Even a philosopher like J.G. Fichte, bombastic post-Kantian Idealist, who attempted to ground all knowledge in the 'I', ultimately realised that his 'I' would be nothing, unless it was in contact with a substantial, external world; a world that, crucially, had other people in it. For Fichte, the 'I' is called to an awareness of itself by a 'summons'; a summons which could only be issued by another 'I' – another free and rational being.
I am 'I'. I am certain of my own thinking – the only thing, as Descartes famously asserted, that no one could ever doubt. Cogito Ergo Sum. I know that I am conscious, that I am a point of experience that exists both within, and somehow behind and off to the side of, the external world. Everyone else, on the other hand, might be what contemporary philosophers of mind call a 'cognitive zombie': an empty thing, that just looks like a minded, conscious individual – going through the motions of what it is to be an 'I'.
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