Is There Anything Besides Me?

C. Ulises Moulines (LMU) gives a talk at the MCMP workshop "New Perspectives on External World Scepticism" (9-10 July, 2013) titled "Is There Anything Besides Me?". Abstract: The question “Is there anything besides me?” appears to be a most basic philosophical question. It is basic in an ontological, an epistemological, and—so it may be argued—also a semantic sense. It challenges our most fundamental categories of thought. To this question, four different answers may, in principle, be given: (1) a realist answer: “Yes”; (2) a solipsist answer: “No”; (3) a sceptical answer: “Perhaps, but I’ll never know”; and finally (4) a positivist answer: “This question makes no sense”. Most contemporary philosophers maintain either (1) or (4). Grounding on the scenario laid out by Calderón in his Life Is a Dream I argue in this paper that there is no good reason for maintaining (4), and that the usual arguments for (1) fall short of being fully convincing. Besides being historically prior to Descartes’ genium malignum, Calderón’s model has at least two epistemological advantages: (a) It has some degree of empirical plausibility; (b) it makes a clear case for a coherent answer of type (3) and even opens the door for a conceivable answer of type (2). Through some minor modifications of the plot in Calderón’s play, it will be shown that its main character, Segismund, can rationally choose to take positions (2) or (3).