Solipsism

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by Bowser, May 7, 2020.

  1. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

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    I'm not certain how I feel about this idea, or if it were true, would I want to know. To wake up and discover you are the only real thing that exists seems rather lonely in the long haul. Hmm, thoughts on this?

    https://www.iep.utm.edu/solipsis/
     
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  3. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Many people believe that their mind is the only mind that exists...right now. Lol Look at our government...
     
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  5. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

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    What other implications might it hold? I once downloaded cheats for a video game, that gave me the ability to fly, which I did. What I discovered was how small the game map truly was. It spoiled the game and I never went back. If you were the only real thing that existed, would you want to know?
     
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  7. elte Valued Senior Member

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    There'd be no competition with or against other beings and no added existential complexity from other beings as well. There'd be no question about needing or having a benevolent world exploder because the person could just commit suicide (so long as she isn't eternal).
     
  8. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Hmm, I’m not sure that I’d want to know but this reminds me of the movie “I am Legend,” with Will Smith. He seemed uncomfortable in knowing he was the only one left on earth (so he surmised)

    What would scare me is not being able to rely on anyone else. But, at the same time, we would have to push ourselves to learn more...faster. On our own. I’d not be afforded laziness.
     
  9. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    It's not bare of ontological dogma or speculation since it indeed posits that "these experiences" have an owner. An owner that is more than the subjective POV of the phenomenal continuum and the human body concomitant with that succession of sensory events and feelings. The latter body and its consciousness is as vulnerable as any other living or non-living corporeal appearance. So solipsism posits something beyond the manifestations, something supersensible that is more fundamental than the experiences themselves. It doesn't escape or eliminate metaphysics, but still wallows in it like any other existential claim.

    If a materialized reality adheres to regularities and reliable narratives which are internally consistent with the idea or belief that other brained organisms are not zombie props but likewise have private internal affairs corresponding with their outer appearances, then that's the only "verification" that is possible. There isn't anything else -- there is no waiting on an absolute proof to come along that can top that. If a "true identity" wakes up and discovers it was all a dream, then that's a "fact" for another level -- not this one. The avatar residing in this dream would already have dissolved away, been assimilated, rendered irrelevant, etc -- s/he would not partake in the discovery and the return of non-deceptive memory.
     
  10. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    Met a guy in college who told me that everything was a product of his mind. Nothing else existed...

    I noticed that he still looked both ways before he stepped off the side walk to cross the parking lot.
     
    river and sideshowbob like this.
  11. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

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    A lot of people act as if they were. It doesn't seem to bother them as much as it bothers those around them.
     
  12. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    No need to ponder such. The solipsist wouldn't even be "real" by the standards of an awoken level since like the other residents s/he can't control the oneirocosmos (dream world), as well as suffering amnesia about the former. It's a false status that the solipsist is indulging in via believing that s/he's the "true-ego" simply because the manifestations seem to be converging on or issuing from his/her point of view (which is actually part of the experiences, not outside them). A game character isn't the Player.

    Any transcendent ego slash generative principle that could produce a "movie" as internally coherent as this one would have no problem instead instantiating its creation from countless observational perspectives rather than a solitary phenomenal continuum. Leibniz's synchronized, holographic-like monads (polipsism), with their varying degrees of cognition and POVs, would be more plausible than solipsism. Since the latter entertains the idea that its archetypal nous lacks omniscience with regard to its own product -- can dream no better than a human mind confined to a sole observational stance.
     
  13. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

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    Bob! Long time. I was concerned about you. Happy to see you are still kicking.
     
  14. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

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    I would think game rules would need be established so that the dream didn't unravel because of an errant thought. If you are going to play the game of human, you can't walk around farting lightening bolts and thunder from your ass on a whim.
     
  15. river

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    Solipsism and the Problem of Other Minds
    Inotherwords a solipsist is detacted , unconnected , to the world around him .

    Narcissism .
     
    Last edited: May 10, 2020
  16. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    That's straying off a bit into contemporary appropriations of the term in contexts like modern social alienation, ego-driven selfishness, the later psychological ambience of J D Salinger's Glass family stories, incel parlance ("female solipsism" might ironically graze the "Karen" meme), and so-forth.

    There are indeed different stripes of meaning, but solipsism originally stems from epistemological issues (Descartes) and ancient Greek predicaments over being. The word wasn't coined until 1652 by Giulio Clemente Scotti -- (Latin solus ("alone") and ipse ("self") -- but the related philosophical activity was around before there was that label to designate it (or this specific product of it).

    Solipsism arguably does apply more to an "other minds" problem rather than the "external world", since the latter is manifest in perception (naïve realists are right to treat that as the original "external world" rather than the metaphysical version which rationalists abstract from such). Some eliminative materialists may seem to deny that there are other minds with respect to phenomenal experiences and propositional beliefs, but that wouldn't quite qualify for solipsism since they include themselves as lacking such, too.
     
  17. Janus58 Valued Senior Member

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    I never could really accept the concept of solipsism. Mainly because I don't think that even in the deepest, darkest recesses of my mind I could have dreamed up the idea of television shows which consisted of watching other people fish.
     
  18. river

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    Solipism , the philosophy , is Greek .

    It caused chaos in Greece .

    Greece went from doing good for the whole of society , to a philosophy that was selfish based .
     
  19. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

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    I suppose. It's an interesting idea, but also a lonely prospect in the long haul. It is easier for me to accept that each of us is a reflection of the same spirit, that we are reflecting that same light in our own unique way.
     
  20. river

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    Life Energy

    The Human Spirit is important for our survival in this Universe . Not just on this planet .
     
    Last edited: May 11, 2020
  21. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    The idea that all that exists is an individual's own mind and that individual's ideas and perceptions (which would have to be imagination I guess, in this kind of scheme where nothing external to the mind really exists to be perceived) is basically the fantasy that he/she is God. It's more than a little crazy in my opinion.

    I suppose that many solipsists kind of embrace a softer version in which they accept the existence of other minds, but claim that each of those other minds inhabits a "physical"/phenomenal universe of it's own. So when I talk to you I'm talking to somebody else, yet we each inhabit our own "world". Explaining how these multitude of minds interact becomes a problem.
     
  22. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    Ultimately, solipsism simply isn't a pre-programmed orientation of ours. Especially because we innately consider our experiences to be the world itself rather than mental representations (i.e., commonsense realism -- a blue sky is "showing" and extending itself beyond the directional POV and limits of my eyesight regardless of whether I'm there to observe it or not.)

    The dissipation of such naive realism only came later via philosophy and science. In terms of learning or conditioning by life, we later resist embracing solipsism because individual humans (and the whole as society) can react with negative consequences to the idea, especially if someone truly espouses that only their experiences or personal phenomenal continuum exists. Unlike rocks, trees, planets, clouds, etc which could not care less. That in turn engenders moral reasons against it, though we've usually already acquired those.

    However, a non-mental or "things-in-themselves" version of the external world -- by definition of eliminating the natures of both rational and phenomenal objects -- can't be proven to exist, which was arguably the point of that metaphysical antipathy of the positivists and phenomenalists like Ernst Mach. It's kind of like some religious folk proclaiming that a particular type of invisible God is necessary, when the latter is superfluous -- makes no difference whatsoever if you can't ever produce such an entity in consciousness and more importantly how it would exist minus the characteristics of the latter, and intellect. (With respect to the former, that's consciousness as in the intersubjective version of comparing experiences to arrive at a consensus of what is "real". Not the private revelations of an individual who supposedly had God bodily appear to him/her in an introspective vision, with that personal event still being causally impotent apart from the effect on that person and whoever he/she influences.)

    By eliminating both types of representation -- the outer corporeal appearances of immediate perception and the (abstracted) technical descriptions of reasoning (which is completely artificial), what "remains" is a useless absence of everything as the way that be-ing subsists to itself when minus the qualitative manifestations and conceptual furniture of the "mental" domain. In stark contrast, the original external world of extrospection we daily abide in is realized by such to begin with, whether that's the manifestations of humans or other brained animals (though our language-based apprehensions are missing in the latter).

    Due to that inutile "not even nothingness" manner of non-mental existence, most humans are at least subliminal panpsychists -- in practice, despite our personal denials or lack of verbal acknowledgment in that regard. Both primary and secondary properties have to show or materialize themselves to be verified as well as manipulated (primary properties are quantitative description or "rational objects"). So we do indeed project mental characteristics upon our ideas about an objective world -- we don't literally accept the blankness or invisible affairs of a non-mental or non-represented realm.

    The most astonishing idiocy transpiring in academic circles today seems to be treating those technical descriptions which disciplines depend upon as if they are non-phenomenal and non-invented (thereby a replacement for phenomenal objects). Thus what Galen Strawson calls the most ridiculous thought orientations which philosophers have ever produced: illusionism and eliminative materialism. Even if one contends the description refers to a non-artificial entity devoid of sensible properties, it's back to invisible God territory in terms of how that _X_ exists (superfluous metaphysical babble).
     
    Last edited: Aug 25, 2020
  23. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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