Definition
Methodological Solipsism
Methodological solipsism is a research stance, not a thesis. One reasons as though only the contents of one’s own mind were given, then asks what can be reconstructed from alone.
Formally, it prescribes the methodological rule
It does not assert that nothing else exists — it brackets the question and works from the inside out.
Role
Methodological solipsism functions like a proof assumption: it isolates what is epistemically self-standing before importing further commitments. It is the working posture behind epistemological solipsism’s analysis, and the natural starting point for any theory of perception or consciousness that wants to avoid begging the existence of the external world.