Ohio_Infidel

I was in a discussion on philosophy on another board and the topic seemed to slide from God to solopism. What does everyone here think of solopism?

Personally I don't think the idea is valid, and the idea that I created fundies in my head is disturbing to say the least. Anyone else have an opinion on the subject?

[ November 17, 2002: Message edited by: Ohio_Infidel ]</p>

Hugo Holbling

<a href="http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/s/solipsis.htm" target="_blank">Here</a> is a link that may be of interest. Alternatively, you could read through the PLA yourself in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0024288101/qid=1037565372/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-4654877-7027807?v=glance&s=books" target="_blank">Wittgenstein</a>. <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/private-language/#Krip" target="_blank">Here</a> is a link discussing it if you don't want to buy the book.

Bible Humper

So it slid from one branch of solipsism to another, that's all!

The Xian religion has necessarily evolved into mere solipsism by being forced to imagine convulted motivations for a deity to explain an indifferent naturalistic universe to be the handiwork of a benevolent superhero.

The free will defense is a good example of this, they use it as an apologetic bolt-hole when the deity's non-behavior is called into question, as well as to rationalise why this deity didn't design the universe much better.

The brain in a bottle concept is a classic example of solipsism, we have to take for granted that we can trust our own senses, it is impossible to prove that you are or aren't being fed stimuli directly to your brain, bypassing the sensory organs we presume are responsible for sending these signals, so the only thing you can really be absolutely sure of is "I think, therefore I am". Epistemological Nihilism challenges even that!

Your example works fine too, but it might be a bit less clear.

Clutch

Somewhere, I think in his autobiography, Russell has a hilarious and wonderful argument against solipsism. Basically, it's this: "If solipsism is true, then not only did I write all my books, but I also wrote the books of Newton, Galileo, Hume, Mach... And this leaves something unexplained. Why was it so easy to write their books, and so hard to write mine?"

Ohio_Infidel

I also see they used the wrong spelling. No doubt to make it more difficult for me to find information on it. Thanks for the links Hugo.

[ November 17, 2002: Message edited by: Ohio_Infidel ]</p>

JP2

Hmmmmm..... interestingly I'm having a discussion about solopsism on another board. You're not a member of ilp are you Ohio_Infidel?

Anyway, the discussion included a contrast of Cartesian skepticism and solopsism, but certainly solopsism was the main gist of it.

The trouble with solopsism, as I see it anyway, is that it postulates a higher truth than human experience. I'm not suggesting that the solopsists were theists (quite the opposite actually) but they still conceived of "truth" as something that existed independantly of human beings. For me, I don't think we can appeal to a truth higher than the human condition. To quote what I said on the other board:

"Anyway, my point is that the distinction between "reality" and "illusion" is quite blurred. One man's reality is another's illusion: how do we go about finding which subjective perspective is the more "true" perspective then?

I don't think we can say that there is a "greater" truth, that remains true in defiance of human experience (unless you're a deist of course). We cannot appeal to a perspective beyond our own: it's a sad fact of the human condition, that the human condition cannot be transcended. The fact is we cannot view the universe through the eyes of another being, we are doomed to uncover what is real for ourselves, whether that leads us down the path of extreme ontological doubt or not.

Perhaps the "real world" is, by some definition of the world, "illusory" but even to this extent it is the only reality we are privy to. I may be dreaming my entire existence, or I may be the puppet of some grand devil, but I don't think that these possibilities make my existence, or my conception of existence in itself (dasein) any less "real". Once again, if there is a grander truth than the one I immediately perceive, and I do not know it, it does not make that "grander truth" real and my "immediate truth" unreal, they merely mark two seperate realities, or, perhaps, two separate conceptions of the same reality."

The main difference between Cartesian skepticism and solopsism:

"I think it's important to distinguish between the skepticism of Descartes (or even that of Hume) and the solipsism of the Greeks. Solopsism - correct me if my interpretation is wrong here - seems to take the doubt of Cartesian philosophy one step further, where instead of stopping at "the world may not exist" they seem to go on to assume that they can transform this epistemological doubt into a form of skeptical certainty: that the world, definitively, does not exist.

Of course, Descartes was saved from his skepticism through his faith in the benevolence of the Catholic God, but even if we end his meditations at the point where he postulates a "devil" may be controlling his mind (i.e. before he goes on to justify the existence of God) his skepticism simply amounts to the identification of those things which are epistemologically fallible. The solopsists, on the other hand, presumably reached the same skeptical depths as Descartes (in that it is impossible to prove that the real world exists) but instead of ending here and merely "doubting" the existence of the real world, or identifying how exactly the real world could be doubted (a la Descartes) they seem to use this doubt to breed a sort of certainty that the real world does not exist."

So you see, the solopsists discard the epistemic validity of human experience, yet embrace the epistemic validity of something "greater": which takes a larger leap of faith?

To conclude:

"I think that is why we must be compelled towards the Cartesian conception of the cognito as the basis for all epistemological and ontological enquiry, rather than towards some external source, or - even worse - convince ourselves that there can be no concrete foundation for epistemological enquiry at all, as the solopsists would have us believe."

Hopefully that's of some use.

Any thoughts?

Kharakov

A solipsist believes that they are the only existent thing/being/whatever. They believe everything they experience is a creation of their own mind/self. I don't think they think anything exists independant of their own self.

Synaesthesia

Solipsism is simply a rejection of the validity of the formation of truth-preference with respect to theories. As far as my system of thinking is concerned, the solipsist is no more justified in their knowledge of their own mind than their knowledge of the outside world.

It is a happy fact that the human condition is continually being transcended. We improve with our knowledge about a reality that is beyond us. It is a part of our theories, our human perspective, that we can gain knowledge about what was there before but we didn't know about.

Yet reality, as we well know, CAN defy our experience. We can be systematically, stubbornly wrong. Our perspective is not the last word and we know it: reality continually provides words.

They simply mean that you CAN be wrong. We also know that in many respects you are almost certainly wrong. If your particular idea of real acknowledges this, of course the outside world is real.

fando

I thought the problem with solipsism is that a solipsist cannot logically accept an objective reality. By definition, everything is subjective to the solipsist. Things that the solipsist does not sense does not exist. Am I off track here?

ieyeasu

I've always thought of solipsism as a perversion of "Cognito Ergo Sum"... I'm thinking, therefore I am, but how do I know you're thinking? Maybe I'm just thinking about you, and therefore you are.