In an RGT thread, madnak and I get into it a bit on solipsism. Lets continue it here, for there are more people with actual knowledge/understanding of philosophy here (I have only a little as is fairly obvious).

Tao1;"Solipsism is untenable as an actual belief." (after snipping a big post on other matters)

madnak;"Solipsism is the most stable rational belief there is, and the only one that doesn't arbitrarily invoke unjustifiable premises about an external world."

Tao1;"What I meant was (and im tired so I fudged that up slightly, and might again) that it is not something to build a worldview on, nor knowledge. This is simply impossible by definition. Yes it is the most stable 'rational' belief that doesnt invoke unjustifiable premises. It is also useless.

edit: might be overreaching with the last, but ill let it stand. What I was trying to say was that it is useless to hold to solipsism when one is living. Might not be a bad position to hold that it is useless regardless though."

madnak;"My worldview is built on it, and is quite stable. You claim it's impossible, but you don't actually back up that claim and it doesn't seem that you've tried especially hard to form a solipsistic worldview.

As for "knowledge," either knowledge doesn't exist (and doesn't need to for any functional purpose), or knowledge can easily be constructed on a solipsistic worldview (depending on the epistemology you're looking to push, and your definition of "knowledge")."

Tao1;"Fair enough. I have been reading David Deutsch's the fabric of reality, specifically this passage. And have taken in with that, perhaps I do that too quickly. Everything I could say on it, I feel he has said better and obviously Ive taken the idea from there."

madnak;"Seems naive and circular to me. Virtually all of these objections can be addressed simply based on viewing the external as a model and not a "reality," considering sensations and perceptions as inexplicable inputs (and not "windows into absolute truth"), and acknowledging that "self" in the context of solipsism does not merely describe the current contents of consciousness.

Deutsch has no understanding of solipsism and may well have no exposure to the philosophy except in the caricatured form he presents here."

Tao1;"Perhaps I misunderstand, but that seems to me to no longer be solipsism. It seems to me that solipsism (effectively) denies all things outside of the brain as being real and autonomous.
Regardless, this is wavering very much offtopic, perhaps we should take this to smp?"

madnak;"Maybe so, it seems to be working its way into a lot of different threads."


So, here we are. Perhaps before we go on, we should get a clear definition of solipsism.

wiki: "Solipsism is the philosophical idea that one's own mind is all that exists."

There are likely definitions from better sources, if you have some to share, share them. Please comment if you're interested.

I'm pleased I wrote all this.

My madnak character speaks my truth.

It looks like there's a confusion similiar to that between strong and weak atheism. Maybe there's a strong and weak version of Solipsism. The difference between believing others don't exist and merely asserting that there are limits to what we can know and building a world view based strictly within those limits.

PairTheBoard

Solipsism in itself is not provable, but it doesn't try to hide the fact. It's really just "extreme rationalism" so if you want indepth explanations regarding it, the best discussion on the subject was made between continental rationalists and british empiricists in the late 1700s. Personally I would say the later german idealists (Kant in particular) joined rationalism and empiricism together as well as can be done, many people on this board tend to disagree.

But maybe the most important bit is that you can't really debate solipsism. It's a statement that is logically identically to "what I perceive is always the the mind of a small leprechaun". That is to say that the statement is always internally consistent, can't be measured and can't be disproven in any way. Rationally that makes it fine, empirically it makes it bogus.

Occam's Razor refutes Solipsism. DUCY?

/thread

Occam's razor doesn't really refute anything. It can tell you what model is preferable empirically, but it won't tell you which one is more true. Maybe more importantly; rationalism/solipsism is not based on empirical principle.

I should probably keep my mouth shut, but I didn't think OR could 'refute' anything. As far as I'm aware it's not a tool of verification as such. I give it about a 40% shot your post is a level, though, so I'm ready to hang my head in shame.

Solipsism can't be refuted (of course!) but neither can green cheese gods who are put on the moon by the Great Real God who would fool unbelieving humans. Psychologically speaking (and unfortunately that is about as far as we can go with certain questions) solipsism is not satisfying. At least not for me. Madnak obviously feels otherwise and I appreciate that. In fact, maybe I should try it out for a while and see how it feels. It must be empowering. I feel the same way about "people of faith." If you believe something strongly enough then it's psychologically true.

As a determinist, I know I'm just a puppet. The real question is, who's pulling the strings?

That is only the first sentence of the definition. I think the Wikipedia definition is fine, but the best part of it is this:

"Solipsism is an epistemological or ontological position that knowledge of anything outside the mind is unjustified. The external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist."

This is critical context given the common perception of solipsism (ie the naive conceptions such as those you linked). Even though it can be simplified into "one's own mind is all that exists," this statement cannot be parsed through a conventional set of assumptions. The best way to express solipsism to someone uninitiated is with that second sentence, and with the following:

Solipsism is the belief that no knowledge other than that of one's own mind can be rationally justified.

This is an important theoretical distinction, but while there are numerous skeptics/weak solipsists, I am not aware of any strong solipsists outside of drug users and psychotics (who are usually only temporarily "strong solipsists," and who usually have no systematic philosophical framework supporting their beliefs).

Not only can OR not refute anything, but OR actually favors solipsism. Solipsism invokes fewer assumptions than views invoking an external reality, but it produces the same results. If you work according to the Razor, then solipsism is your only option.

Kant "joined" rationalism and empiricism by saying "well, we have absolutely no reason to believe in an external world, but because it's necessary to believe in an external world I'm going to do it anyway." He did not actually show that it's necessary to believe in an external world, he just found the conclusions he himself derived to be inconvenient and thus assumed premises that were more appealing to him. This hardly strikes me as rigorous, and I think that is a good summary of my position on Kant: He can be rigorous when he wants to be.

There are numerous problems with this assertion. The first being that empiricism itself suggests solipsism (at least if you accept modern brain science as your model). In fact, empirically speaking, given the basic external world assumptions that we accept, the two hypotheses of "there is an external world that exists in such-and-such a form" and "my brain is sitting in a vat which presents to me the scenario of a world existing in such-and-such a form" are equally supported. There is no logical justification for accepting the former over the latter, and thus a "true" empiricist must always proceed as though he is likely to be a brain in a vat. But that reduces either to absurdity or to solipsism.

The only way to avoid the reduction to solipsism is to assume (with no logical justification) that the brain-in-a-vat scenario is false. Ergo, the belief in an external reality governed by empiricism not only requires the unsupported assumption that external reality exists, but also the unsupported assumption that external reality is as it is observed. I believe that a number of "pile-on" assumptions are also necessitated, but to establish that systematically seems daunting so I'll hold off on it.

No, Kant noted (correctly so) that rationalism lets you prove statements that contradict eachother.

There is no difference in the logic value or truth value of assuming a universe or assuming a mind, both are merely untestable axioms.

Kant made effective critiques of his contemporaries. He did not make effective critiques of rationalism itself (in the general philosophic sense).

Assuming a universe requires assuming a mind. Assuming a mind does not require assuming a universe.

So this is the "weak" position? I like it.

I was going to write something like this. Invoking the beautiful Razor is to call upon aesthetics.

Yeah, I think that's the "weak" one. I'm really more inclined to call it "skepticism," and it's almost a Cartesian rationalism, but "solipsism" works just fine as well.

I was going to wade into this debate against solipsism, but the way madnak is using it, a so-called weak solipsism, seems reasonable. I would go a step further and say that no belief is ever justified, that justification is necessarily impossible. But if we were to adopt a sliding scale of justification (or knowledge), then beliefs about one's own mental states would be the most justifiable. In fact these beliefs would be closer to knowledge than analytic truths. Knowledge of one's own mental states have epistemic power in virtue of being undeniable (like Descartes' Cogito) whereas analytic truths are based on relations of ideas which even the most intelligent people can be wrong about (e.g. Hobbes' belief he had squared the circle). Presumably somebody can be wrong about something they find undeniable, but from their own epistemic point of view these are the only beliefs they are rationally permitted to having a credence of 1 in (i.e. full belief).

Strong solipsism is definitely rendered probabilistically insignificant by Occam's Razor. The evidence suggests that other people are composed of the same things we are, and therefore given the evidence that we have mental states, it's more likely that other people also do than that they don't. I think a lot of people misunderstand Occam's Razor as basically endorsing the theories which are quickest and easiest to explain. A really quick and easy explanation might be something like "God did it. He did everything." or "All that exists is my mind and the ideas it processes." These theories are much more complicated than the conjunction of all our best scientific theories which nobody in the world is at all close to simultaneously understanding all of.

That's the basic idea. I'm looking for the strongest possible justification. I see no reason to move any further than that. The only real potential pitfall is that morality can become less intuitive when a person's morality is based on the premise that "those other people feel things just as I do," and I wouldn't necessarily try to persuade anyone of my view because they might not be able to make the leap to "I'll act as if those other people feel things just as I do, even if I can't really know whether they do."

Strong solipsism is definitely rendered probabilistically insignificant by Occam's Razor. The evidence suggests that other people are composed of the same things we are, and therefore given the evidence that we have mental states, it's more likely that other people also do than that they don't. I think a lot of people misunderstand Occam's Razor as basically endorsing the theories which are quickest and easiest to explain. A really quick and easy explanation might be something like "God did it. He did everything." or "All that exists is my mind and the ideas it processes." These theories are much more complicated than the conjunction of all our best scientific theories which nobody in the world is at all close to simultaneously understanding all of.[/QUOTE]

if you want a real guide to solipsism, or preferably cerebral narcissism, search -Sam Vaknin.

Doesn't a mind require external input to function? Otherwise it would be nought but a blank slate. If thats true then the stuff the mind perceives exists to facilitate its' functioning in the first place.

off topic links included!

-http://www.amazon.com/Psychopaths-Bi.../dp/1561841749
-http://www.amazon.com/Malignant-Self...978264&sr=1-10

good stuff for the budding solipsist.

We see the usefullness of the actual definitions.
Perhaps im misguided again, but as I see it, solipsism is the direct claim that the 'outside' world is not autonomous.

Those two lines weaken that position and degrade it to "well, we dont REALLY know anything but our minds so yeah, everything we think we know might be something different". I feel this is not solipsism. It doesnt take an actual stand, it just puts in a maybe. Is the outside real or not...I dont know is fine as an answer, but you cant build on that. Or can you(please explain how)?

Two questions.
Have you ever been drunk or otherwise intoxicated? (ever tried to use your mind at such a time?)
Do you believe the outside world is autonomous?

Ok, so you are only what is in your head. Aside from the fact that you should really speak to what your "mind" is and its characteristics do you consider that your perception of "self" is also in your "mind" as is the external world. therefore you cannot know "yourself" and in fact you , yourself is a mere illusion as is the faulted external world. According to your rational if you also are an illusion (no knowledge of self or experience of self) then how is it that we can have this conversation( hesitant...).

We see the world as a mighty panorama of disconnected events such as air,tree, wind, fire but there is no connection given to our percepts, that is that which is experienced through our senses. Whether our senses are reasonable and right or disconnected as in blindness we have no doubt that we see this external world. Perception of self, our emotions and thoughts, the mickey jimmy on our finger, the movement of the sun, the postman dropping off the mail. the rain in the night and the expression of love from our beloved are all percepts and have no connections what so ever with anything that is related to our perceptive self.

The moment thinking springs into action then the connections between seemingly disconnected events can be brought forth. If I see a bush waver and later see a rabbit running away. I conclude the rabbit caused the wavering bush. I. through thinking, have come upon the concept of causality, that which can only be known through thinking. the role of thinking is the bringing together the percepts of an objective world in a rationality of thought. thinking is an activity and to "think" your way out of the objectivity of the external and internal world is really solipsism and is irrational. But the irrationality is not terminal, more in the nature of error. If this were Aquinas he would call it a "sin" because it is against reason. In short , to deny your senses is to deny yourself and everyone knows you have a self.

So now we have "percepts" disconnected and through thinking we connect the dots. Does this mean that each and everyone of us has our own brand of thinking thusly falling into the same trap previously noted? Self consideration reveals that we "experience" thoughts in the same way that one experiences emotions or sees the external world. Getting aphoristic here...we believe we produce our own thought but the truth is that we are being thought. the thoughts have their own existence irrespective of what we believe. Correspondingly "thinking" is that activity, given to us, which carries the individual throughout the perceptive and supersensible world. Supersensible as the nature causality is supersensible unless you can point to a member of the animal kingdom which is called causality.

the ability of one to "think" clearer than others is directly related to an openness hopefully devoid of preconceived conceptions. Not making a judgment here but but being "open" is a good beginning.

What really happens when we think? We sense or feel the connections between percept to percept via concept or correspondingly concept to concept via concept. this relates to our senses in that our sense bound reality is only half the world and in the act of thinking we bring the world together as it is originally but due to the nature of our senses we don't see it all. through thinking we see the entire reality of the world as it is, not as we desire. We bring the world together and through this very activity of bringing the world together for us and others we acknowledge our "self". We live in the dynamic and man is "self" in the very dynamic of bringing the world in a conceptual whole. He is not self as a perceiver but needs to "think" and the process of self perception comes about through thinking.

Through "thinking" we explore the fabric of the world, and in the process come to the presentation of ourselves, the immortal "I" or "Ego" through which as a Drop of the Divine does its activity spiritually and that is through "thinking".