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Solipsism (/ ˈ s ɒ l ɪ p s ɪ z əm / ⓘ SOLL-ip-siz-əm; from Latin solus 'alone' and ipse 'self') [1] is the philosophical idea that only one's mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind.
Thomas Hobbes was born on 5 April 1588 (Old Style), in Westport, now part of Malmesbury in Wiltshire, England.Having been born prematurely when his mother heard of the coming invasion of the Spanish Armada, Hobbes later reported that "my mother gave birth to twins: myself and fear."
The Elements of Law provides insight into Hobbes’s moral philosophy through ideas of sensation, pleasure, passion, pain, memory and reason. [6] This is expanded upon in De Cive: “… human nature… comprising the faculties of body and mind; . . .
Hobbes, on the other hand, conceived of the mind and the will as purely mechanistic, completely explicable in terms of the effects of perception and the pursuit of desire, which in turn he held to be completely explicable in terms of the materialistic operations of the nervous system.
Hobbes' materialistic presuppositions also led him to hold a view which was considered highly controversial at the time. Hobbes rejected the idea of incorporeal substances and subsequently argued that even God himself was a corporeal substance. Although Hobbes never explicitly stated he was an atheist, many allude to the possibility that he was.
Hobbes saw human beings as being violent, self-seeking, and power-hungry. Such a view left no place for genuine altruism, benevolence or concept of morality as traditionally conceived. [21] In the Sermons, Butler argues that human motivation is less selfish and more complex than Hobbes claimed. He maintains that the human mind is an organized ...
Hobbes supervised an English translation of De Corpore, which was published in 1656. There were some changes, and a provocative appendix Six Lessons to the Professors of Mathematics was added. [7] It has been claimed that the translation was vitiated by errors, undermining its usefulness as a guide to Hobbes's philosophy of language. [8]
According to Hobbes, the outcome is that people choose to enter a social contract, giving up some of their liberties in order to enjoy peace. This thought experiment is a test for the legitimation of a state in fulfilling its role as " sovereign " to guarantee social order, and for comparing different types of states on that basis.