recently read about this odd belief that apparantly some people actually believe. it goes something like this:

You cannot proove anything outside ouf your own mind exists, because all the information that comes to your brain comes via your senses. You have no way of telling what someone else is seeing or hearing or smellin etc, and therefore you may be seeing different things. So it goes to say that its a possibility that all of reality is just in your mind, perhaps by the 90% we don't use for the purpouse of entertaining the 10% you DO use.

some whackos actually believe this. any comments are welcomed.

As far as I know the idea can not be logically disproven. However, it is easy to prove that people don't really believe in it, by threatening, and possibly delivering, pain.

And I find the philosophy ultimately pointless. Whether true or false, does it change anything for you?

http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/10percnt.htm

Yes reformedtopunk. I have just been posting something about this. the opposite of this belief, that u should trust ur senses, is called empiricism.I would say that u are an empiricist because u seem to beleive that.

While i agree with veiw that we cannot know if we are all experiencing the same thing like adam said, what does it acheive?? not much

I would agree that I can't prove the world exists, but I believe It does becuase I'm not nearly smart enough to create something as complicated as earth.

right..because there is no consciousness by itself. in otherwords, it can't stand alone.

yeah, i agree its pointless, i was mostly just stating my shock that people actually believe this shit.

I believe it!! its true. Your eyes,ears and all of your senses can deceive u. but i think we should use them to discover things. I mean what we learn might not be 100% accurate like science really wishes things to be, but as long as were close enough eh!? I mean, no scientific study is ever (IMO) going to be 100% accurate. I also think that what we can learn from our senses can be close enough to the truth.

Solipsism

Solipsism is sometimes expressed as the view that 'I am the only mind which exists', or 'My mental states are the only mental states'. However, the sole survivor of a nuclear holocaust might truly come to believe in either of these propositions without thereby being a solipsist. Solipsism is therefore more properly regarded as the doctrine that, in principle, 'existence' means for me my existence and that of my mental states. In other words, everything which I experience - physical objects, other people, events and processes, in short, anything which would commonly be regarded as a constituent of the spatio-temporal matrix in which I coexist with others - is necessarily construed by me as part of the content of my consciousness. For the solipsist, it is not merely the case that he believes that his thoughts, experiences, and emotions are, as a matter of contingent fact, the only thoughts, experiences, and emotions. Rather, the solipsist can attach no meaning to the supposition that there could be thoughts, experiences, and emotions other than his own. In short, the true solipsist understands the word 'pain', for example, to mean 'my pain' - he cannot accordingly conceive how this word is to be applied in any sense other than this exclusively egocentric one.

Source:
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/s/solipsis.htm)

Originally posted by p_ete2001
the opposite of this belief, that u should trust ur senses, is called empiricism.I would say that u are an empiricist because u seem to beleive that.

Empiricism does not say you should trust that your senses give you reality -- empiricism simply says that thought depends on sense stimulation, and that information about the world has to be taken from sense experience instead of "innate ideas". Many empiricists are idealists. George Bekeley was an empiricist. It seems to me that a solipsist could be an empiricist as well.


On solipsism: I think it's quite important and useful to understand the logical possibility of it -- not to consider believing it, but rather to understand that the external world we live in is actually in an internal representation which we can only deduce to be related to an external world (but, due to the nature of sense perception, we have no right to say that our empirical world is anything experientially like the real one -- it simply has the same consistent relationships).

The simplest reason to disbelieve solipsism is simply the resemblence that sensory impressions of the self have to sensory impressions of other people. The simplest explanation for why my brain looks like yours is that we're both the same sort of creature.

Another good point hoth. not seen u on here before.
I understand what your saying about solipsism;that we experience sopmething and we are told that it is pain. the actual experience could be different for every single different person.also true that we are are built virtually and it is probable that our experinces of the senses are the same. how ever, one could say that we are all virtually the same (in design (!?))and so our experiences could all be virtually the same. this doesnt mean they are the same does it!?? i do agree with you though. i think it is probable that our experinces of feelings are the same. (even if they arent they are grouped together because of what we are told)

Hey! pete was right! Looked up empiricism in a text book and it explained how it came from the 17/18th century beleif of using your senses. Why did everyone disagree with him when he was right!?

The Ten-Percent Myth


Thank you Evilpoet. You saved me the trouble.

You are welcome machaon, anytime. :)

Ive actually read about it in a few books and thats why my definition was the same as Petes. Because from different viewpoints the basic definition comes down to the same thing. And where does your definition come from evilpoet!?? *looks at evilpoet* From an internet encyclopedia right!?? One book. I have got my definition from different books (well actually i read about it in different books and thats where my definition cam from). Plus is the author of a philosophy encyclopedia an expert of philosophy or an expert on words!??

Which word? Empiricism or solipsism? I never posted the definition of empiricism in this thread. I posted the definition of solipsism. I also posted a link regarding the ten-percent myth. So I'm a little confused as to what word you are refering to.

You are correct, I did use an internet dictionary (for lack of one here at home at the time). In my opinion it is a good resource or I wouldn't have used it. Funny you should bring it up philosophical dictionaries, I just got The Cambridge Dictionary Of Philosophy. In your opinion are definitions from there more accurate? Or do you consider any resource like that as not acceptable? I can list out the board of editorial advisors and you can check them all out for yourself to see if they meet the proper qualifications if you like. If I may ask - what books are you refering to?

quote:
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Originally posted by p_ete2001
the opposite of this belief, that u should trust ur senses, is called empiricism.I would say that u are an empiricist because u seem to beleive that.
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Empiricism does not say you should trust that your senses give you reality -- empiricism simply says that thought depends on sense stimulation, and that information about the world has to be taken from sense experience instead of "innate ideas".
: Posted by Hoth I have read about empiricism in a few places ('Sophies world',2 psychology text books and other places) and my impression of it was that empricism. I am not argueing against your sources evilpoet but simply the fact that you (and others) disagreed with me and my understanding when from what i can tell, is correct!! i too will use a dictionary source: "British Empiricism" refers to the 18th century philosophical movement in Great Britain which maintained that all knowledge comes from experience.... British Empiricists staunchly rejected the theory of innate ideas and argued that knowledge is based on both sense experience... : www.utm.edu/research/iep/e/emp-brit.htm - 5k - 21 Nov 2002 other sources are: Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz were all rationalists in their epistemologies; they stressed a world of metaphysical truths that could be discovered by reason. In contrast to this kind of philosophizing, a quite different approach developed in Great Britain, stressing the importance of sense experience as the basis of knowledge. Starting with Sir Francis Bacon, the empirical theory of knowledge was propounded both as a way of eliminating various metaphysical and theological difficulties and as a way of genuinely advancing knowledge. The most important statement of this theory was made by John Locke. He claimed that all knowledge comes from sense experience. : http://pratt.edu/~arch543p/help/empiricism.html Primarily, and in its psychological application, the term signifies the theory that the phenomena of consciousness are simply the product of sensuous experience, i.e. of sensations variously associated and arranged. It is thus distinguished from Nativism or Innatism. Secondarily, and in its logical (epistemological) usage, it designates the theory that all human knowledge is derived exclusively from experience: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05407a.htm i could find more but im pretty sure that my original definition was correct: the opposite of this belief, that u should trust ur senses, is called empiricism So why did you disagree with me and argue against me when it appears that i was correct! :confused:

I am unclear in what way I disagreed with you by posting the
definition of solipsism (http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/s/solipsis.htm) (which is the topic of the thread) and a
link regarding the ten-percent myth. Can you please clarify?

I am curious - do you agree or disagree with this definition:

empiricism (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=empiricism)

well from what i read, its when nothing but you're mind is real and everything you see, feel, hear, or smell is but something sort of like a dream where everythings thats there has been produced by your mind.

if thats the case then everyone you see in this "dream" have the same view and same brain as you its because your mind made them that way.

Empricism Evilpoet. And i agree with the definition in the link but you did disagree with me on an earlier post.

Originally posted by Neville
but you did disagree with me on an earlier post.
I am still confused - would you mind showing me the post
you are refering to? Was it in this thread or another one?

Sorry not you evilpoet. i meant hoth

No wonder I was confused. Thanks for the clarification. :)

Neville, empiricism does mean that knowledge depends on the senses... but it doesn't mean that the senses should be trusted as a recreation of the actual world.

A rationalist is someone who thinks there's innate knowledge, knowlege in the mind prior to sense experience. However, it's often the rationalists who claim realism and say that god implanted the proper truths within us which allow us to bulid a perfect knowledge of the world. Empiricists, on the other hand, tend to be more skeptical -- Berkeley, Hume, and then the whole logical positivist camp. Saying that all knowledge depends on the senses is a sort of skeptical position to begin with -- it says there's nothing to call on to confirm or justifiy the senses outside of the senses themselves (and their consistency). A rationalist like Descartes would claim innate ideas allow him to get at proper truths of the world, while an empiricist like Berkeley can dismiss the whole world as nothing more than substanceless sensations.

Just for fun, here's Wittgenstein's somewhat cryptic when out of context but still interesting remarks on solipsism from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus:

See here (http://www.rosinstrument.com/cgi-bin/showtext.pl/Philosophy/Wittgenstein/Tractatus_Logico_Philosophicus.txt) for the e-text

We cannot think what we cannot think; so what we cannot think we cannot say either.

This remark provides the key to the problem, how much truth there is in solipsism. For what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said , but makes itself manifest. The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world.

The world and life are one.

I am my world. (The microcosm.)

There is no such thing as the subject that thinks or entertains ideas. If I wrote a book called The World as l found it , I should have to include a report on my body, and should have to say which parts were subordinate to my will, and which were not, etc., this being a method of isolating the subject, or rather of showing that in an important sense there is no subject; for it alone could not be mentioned in that book.--

The subject does not belong to the world: rather, it is a limit of the world.

Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be found? You will say that this is exactly like the case of the eye and the visual field. But really you do not see the eye. And nothing in the visual field allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye. For the form of the visual field is surely not like this.

This is connected with the fact that no part of our experience is at the same time a priori. Whatever we see could be other than it is. Whatever we can describe at all could be other than it is. There is no a priori order of things.

Here it can be seen that solipsism, when its implications are followed out strictly, coincides with pure realism. The self of solipsism shrinks to a point without extension, and there remains the reality co-ordinated with it.

Thus there really is a sense in which philosophy can talk about the self in a non-psychological way. What brings the self into philosophy is the fact that 'the world is my world'. The philosophical self is not the human being, not the human body, or the human soul, with which psychology deals, but rather the metaphysical subject, the limit of the world--not a part of it.