Quote:
Originally Posted by tame_deuces
Ok, my apologies for the drama. I'll repost my last statement and we can take it from there.
Madnak:
Is this description "The assertion that we can never be certain whether all of our putative outer experience is not mere imagining" very different from "weak solipsism"? The followup question is also rather self-evident. If invoking other minds is a fallacy, is not then a fallacy to invoke one's own mind AND assert that it is the only mind in existence? (this in regard to strong solipsism)
I'm not saying that invoking other minds is a fallacy. I'm saying that invoking other minds is not solipsism. What you've presented here is Kant's definition of idealism. Solipsism is a subset of idealism. And yes, I think Kant's definition is fine. So if that makes me a "Kantian idealist," then I am a Kantian idealist.
But I would not characterize Kant as a solipsist, because Kant believed in God and other minds.
Quote:
The last point is that one of the original points of solipsism is that you can't know the minds of others, but I would say the discovery of mirror neurons counter this very well. Sure it is not a "fullproof case", but I would say it is interesting nonetheless.
What mirror neurons establish is that when we feel we are in contact with "another mind," we are really only in contact with our own mind. The neuroscientific perspective that the mind is the brain supports solipsism fantastically. The real problem with idealism in the 20th century is that the assumption of everything existing in the mind was unsupportable. However, modern neuroscience shows us that everything within our experience is, in fact, within the brain.
The idea that when I feel empathy I am in actual, direct contact with another human being is falsified by a view of the brain as the "house of the mind." Mirror neurons establish that empathy is actually a localized function of my brain. It is not direct contact with anything "external." Modern developmental psychology also supports Kant's notion that reality is internally constructed - infants . If we accept that reality is internally constructed and that we only have access to that which is within the mind, then the result is idealism. The main opposition to Kant's idealism came in contradicting these two premises, so the fact that modern brain science supports those premises gives new life to idealism (if only by showing the contradictory nature of empirical realism).