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fisk
Posts: 9145
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 Posted: Mon, 30th Dec 2013 05:12 Post subject: Are we all solipsists in a way? |
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Solipsism is the state in which a person truly believe that they are only themselves real (only they/their mind exist), and that ALL the people they meet and ALL experiences they have are creations of their own mind.
Now, upon first glance it's an idiotic notion, and I'm not even sure that there ever has been a solipsist after that very definition, but to an extent - aren't we all solipsists?
To get what I mean we have to understand that pretty much all of our experiences are interpreted and, essentially filtered through our brain - so what we perceive is always interpretations ie. subjective notions that suggest to us what we are experiencing. All of this is of course filtered through memories, education, past experiences and knowledge and socio-cultural upbringing, but it is still an individual, subjective experience.
In some sense some (or most, depending on who you ask) have empathy and are able to imagine and "make real" the pain of others through experiencing it ourselves, but the experience is never shared - we cannot actually feel what they feel, or experience what they experience, we only imagine what it might be like and the stronger we are empathically, probably the more intense that experience is.
So, does that mean that we are solipsists? No, for that to be true we would actually also have to fully believe that all of our experiences are the creation of our own mind. If we acknowledge that others exist, we are not solipsists.
But is that the only thing that separates solipsism from non-solipsism? If not, what other things are there?
Yes, yes I'm back.
Somewhat.
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| Posted: Mon, 30th Dec 2013 06:58 Post subject: |
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I actually understand what you're saying and by your statement, I would have to say that I agree. In a round about way, it actually makes sense.
Simply put; we know what we know, and that's all we know.
I hope that made sense as well cuz if it didn't, then i totally missed your point 
| couleur wrote: | Everything I don't understand is a mental disorder.  |
| couleur wrote: | | If the illegals are drowning its their fault for attempting to cross the river in the first place. Especially the children. /s |
| russ80 wrote: | | Who cares about gameplay. It's one of the few next-gen looking titles out there so BRING IT ON. |
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RatKing
Posts: 1212
Location: Nondescript cave in the land of the polar bears, Finland
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| Posted: Mon, 30th Dec 2013 09:57 Post subject: |
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"Sometimes all my friends seem imaginary."
But no, can't agree with you. You people are not solipsists because I didn't imagine you to be.
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DXWarlock
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| Posted: Mon, 30th Dec 2013 10:14 Post subject: |
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I dont think that makes us solipsists. Reconstructing mentally the situation as explained to you to understand its context. vs believing that the person explaining it to you is only there because you imagine they are standing there, explaining it to you, is different.
It would be the difference between knowing your brain is filtering information relayed to you, vs fabricating that information to start with.
Everybody cant be a figment of everyone elses imagination..that would be a catch22.
But if say, everyone is just a figment of mine, then what about everything that would be rather impossible to be a figment of my imagination that they did?
For example (a bad one but maybe get the jist of what im trying to get at), Say my wife is only a figment of my imagination, but she made dinner. Obviously the food I consume either has been really prepared by someone without my interaction with it, or is also just a figment of my imagination of what she did..and I cant live on eating imaginary food. It would be like saying I could stop eating long as I dreamed I ate her cooking everyday while asleep.
I think i get what your saying about how processing the information means we are only experiencing everyone thru our own brain, and its a bit solipsist like. But like I said at the beginning, its processing data, vs fabricating data. And while arguments can be made of "well you cant prove your not fabricating it" it falls into a circular argument of:
"your a figment of my imagination"
"no you a figment of mine, so that means as figment of mine, Im just imagining your saying that I'm a figment of you brain"
"no..your one of mine, so my brain is imagining that its making your brain think that my brain isn't real, and telling me that Im a figment of yours, inside my own head as its own fake imagination"
and so and and so on forever..
Sort of like that comic skit of "I think you know what she said"..."well maybe you think, I think, that you think I know what she said"..thing.
Its a parallel to infinity, and infinity is illogical. If there can be no definitive end to that argument that appeases both 'brains' then the theory is illogical. and it never does, it just gets compounded into more complexity the more steps you take to try to reach an answer.
Its not so much what 'separates' us from it. That would like saying the only thing that separates us from someone that has hallucinations of flying dragons, is that we don't hallucinate about dragons..Or the only thing that stops me from being labeled an avid golfer, is that I never played golf despite that I can imagine myself playing it.
-We don't control what happens to us in life, but we control how we respond to what happens in life.
-Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times. -G. Michael Hopf
Disclaimer: Post made by me are of my own creation. A delusional mind relayed in text form.
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RatKing
Posts: 1212
Location: Nondescript cave in the land of the polar bears, Finland
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| Posted: Mon, 30th Dec 2013 10:22 Post subject: |
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| DXWarlock wrote: | | Obviously the food I consume either has been really prepared by someone without my interaction with it, or is also just a figment of my imagination of what she did..and I cant live on eating imaginary food. |
Brain in a vat
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DXWarlock
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| Posted: Mon, 30th Dec 2013 10:26 Post subject: |
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But that's not Solipsism RatKing, that's misunderstanding where the simulations is coming from vs it existing in a vacuum and creating it all its own. The machine hooked to that brain is still making those experiences for it by impulses. There is something outside itself creating those experiences.
It would be like being in the matrix thinking your eating a steak. While its true you aren't really eating one, something outside your imagination is making you think you are while feeding you protein paste  ..so technically there is something outside your figments controlling it, and not just your imagination.
Its no different to have a computer hook to the brain, than a body..both are just input devices for what the brain experiences. Just a computer can simulate a bodies reaction without needing the body. The question was do those experiences have outside influences, or is it the brain alone making them all up.
At least thats always been my take on why brain in a vat its not true Solipsism, since there is something real and tangible tricking you into thinking it..vs you making it up. Being tricked by something else, means 'something else' has to exist to do it 
-We don't control what happens to us in life, but we control how we respond to what happens in life.
-Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times. -G. Michael Hopf
Disclaimer: Post made by me are of my own creation. A delusional mind relayed in text form.
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RatKing
Posts: 1212
Location: Nondescript cave in the land of the polar bears, Finland
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| Posted: Mon, 30th Dec 2013 10:49 Post subject: |
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Valid point but the basic idea is the same.
Solipsist is eating an imaginary steak. The means to survive are also figments of one's imagination. Hunger wouldn't be real, just something your mind cooked up.
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DXWarlock
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| Posted: Mon, 30th Dec 2013 11:00 Post subject: |
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Why I tend to only sit on the side lines of philosophy, and dont get into debating it myself usually.
Its questions that's a step past a first unanswerable one.
Sort of a "what cant be answered, now what can we ask of THAT, that cant be answered either".
I tend to think in sequential truths I guess, so that conflicts with how I take it.
So Solipsism cant be argued for or against. Since to do that, we need to ask "can we prove yet if even 1 person outside myself exists in the cosmos as an entity by 3rd party confirmation?" since that's a no we cannot, we cannot goto the next question of "is their thoughts real and of their own, or are we both controlled by something else". Since we haven't be able to answer if they are there or not, we've now added a new element of are they real, AND if something else exists controlling us or not without answering the first one.
I lump Solipsism in with the tree falling in the woods, the teapot in counter orbit of the earth, and such.
I mean on this very topic, cant I argue that you could be a figment of my imagination, that I thought said that..so even if your correct, it means technically I am, since I thought of making you think that. (or vice versa for you). If we cant even get past the debate of whos thinking all this, we cant get to the next question of whos thoughts are making good points , Or if either of us is just talking to ourselves, about ourselves...
While philosophy is great, its a logical debate that has a back door exit to take if needing a counter point that's just as valid, that itself has a backdoor, and so on and so on.
its hard for me to nail down a counter argument, when the thing I'm nailing it to is jello
-We don't control what happens to us in life, but we control how we respond to what happens in life.
-Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times. -G. Michael Hopf
Disclaimer: Post made by me are of my own creation. A delusional mind relayed in text form.
Last edited by DXWarlock on Mon, 30th Dec 2013 11:23; edited 7 times in total
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| Posted: Mon, 30th Dec 2013 11:14 Post subject: |
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“If nothing we do in this world matters, then the only thing that matters is what we do.”
>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> ♪ Viva La Vida ♪ <<<<<< <<<<< <<<<<< <<<
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DXWarlock
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| Posted: Mon, 30th Dec 2013 11:24 Post subject: |
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Philosophy makes my head hurt, its like trying to understand quantum computing kinda to me Where a state can calculate if its 1 or 0, and a million others simultaneously by being both 1 and 0 at the same time...how does it tell if it itself is a definite 1 or a 0, while being both true as 1 AND 0?
While the fundamentals make sense as a single part, put them together as a whole they conflict, vs confirm each other.
I get stuck on a loop of arguments in my head of intangibles that are both an answer and a question, that never end. And I like resolution of a tangled web of logic, not to tangle it more the more I pull it apart . There is no where to stand that's a firm 'believed truth' to work from as a starting point.
-We don't control what happens to us in life, but we control how we respond to what happens in life.
-Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times. -G. Michael Hopf
Disclaimer: Post made by me are of my own creation. A delusional mind relayed in text form.
Last edited by DXWarlock on Mon, 30th Dec 2013 11:30; edited 1 time in total
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Neon
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| Posted: Mon, 30th Dec 2013 11:29 Post subject: |
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zmed
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Morphineus
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| Posted: Mon, 30th Dec 2013 11:55 Post subject: |
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It's a thought once in a while that I have. Questioning solipsism, it sounds too ridiculous for me to believe in it, but it's fun to give that kind of model some thought and wonder about.
For me the world is too uniform, lacking way too much creativity especially to what we experience in our dream state to consider it as a possibility. A lot more arguments for that but that wasn't really the thought you were going on...
In some sense we could say our own observations are touching solipsism but it's not really worth to pursuit. One can always try to find similarities if you look hard enough but isn't it better to just call our observations: model-dependent reality?
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RatKing
Posts: 1212
Location: Nondescript cave in the land of the polar bears, Finland
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| Posted: Mon, 30th Dec 2013 12:53 Post subject: |
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| DXWarlock wrote: | | So Solipsism cant be argued for or against. |
I'd say it's more about entertaining speculation than having a strict logical debate. |
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| Posted: Mon, 30th Dec 2013 12:53 Post subject: |
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If it was all in ones mind, why would we make a bad situations for ourselves? I mean, if everything is just a figment of my imagination, why would I want to live in a bad environment? Why couldn't I just make myself rich?
All in all I really don't see a point in such mental masturbation. And while philosophy can be fun, ultimately I don't see a purpose of just thinking and sounding smart, while not doing anything concrete. That's why I value engineers and scientists more than philosophers...
"Quantum mechanics is actually, contrary to it's reputation, unbeliveably simple, once you take the physics out."
Scott Aaronson | chiv wrote: | | thats true you know. newton didnt discover gravity. the apple told him about it, and then he killed it. the core was never found. |
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RatKing
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Location: Nondescript cave in the land of the polar bears, Finland
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| Posted: Mon, 30th Dec 2013 13:00 Post subject: |
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| dingo_d wrote: | | I mean, if everything is just a figment of my imagination, why would I want to live in a bad environment? Why couldn't I just make myself rich? |
Realizing you're dreaming doesn't necesseraly give you any control over your own dream. Much less if you refuse to wake up.
Wow, deep shit. 
Personally I don't want to think my mind is responsible for all the politics in the world. That would be just sad. |
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DXWarlock
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| Posted: Mon, 30th Dec 2013 13:10 Post subject: |
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If there is one person that imagines us all. Where did he get the context to imagine from?
Even dreams are based on past stimulus and rules (even if the dreams breaking that rule, it must know it exist in some form to break it, IE it had to experience it, to rebel against it).
Like no one has dreams of being in 4 dimension space, there is no context to put it into to visualize, or place it in a working model, the best they could do is a 'guesstimate' based on info they know of it. Technically "everything you can imagine" is really just an extension of what you already experienced, and combining it in different ways, even if the new thought didn't exist before..its constructed of ones you did.
Like if you could take a new born fresh out of the womb, and ask him to imagine what aliens look like, he has no context or cumulative knowledge to start off with to pick a direction to go. Literally its a clean slate, with nothing to build a reality, real or imagined, out of.
So what I'm asking is, if you was all a figment of my brain, where did it get its context and setting of experiences to start the basis of what I can use as 'lego pieces' to simulate the world? I (or my environmental rules) would have to have existed prior to that in some form or another in a set of 'guidelines' to base my fantasy off of.
And if its something outside myself pumping this info to me, then its not me imagining things..its it leading me where it wants me to go..by its will and it's reality of creating my reality.
-We don't control what happens to us in life, but we control how we respond to what happens in life.
-Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times. -G. Michael Hopf
Disclaimer: Post made by me are of my own creation. A delusional mind relayed in text form.
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RatKing
Posts: 1212
Location: Nondescript cave in the land of the polar bears, Finland
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| Posted: Mon, 30th Dec 2013 13:21 Post subject: |
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Dreams are based on past experiences and follow rules because you imagine them to do so. When thinking about aliens you yourself constructed the pop culture which in return tells you what they should look like. This all leads to figuring what a "mind" even is but that's just you imagining me writing this.
It's good my existential headaches are just imaginary.
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| Posted: Mon, 30th Dec 2013 13:59 Post subject: |
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| RatKing wrote: | | dingo_d wrote: | | I mean, if everything is just a figment of my imagination, why would I want to live in a bad environment? Why couldn't I just make myself rich? |
Realizing you're dreaming doesn't necesseraly give you any control over your own dream. Much less if you refuse to wake up.
Wow, deep shit.
Personally I don't want to think my mind is responsible for all the politics in the world. That would be just sad. |
Realizing you're dreaming is called lucid dreaming and yes that pretty much means you have all the control in it. Look it up
"Quantum mechanics is actually, contrary to it's reputation, unbeliveably simple, once you take the physics out."
Scott Aaronson | chiv wrote: | | thats true you know. newton didnt discover gravity. the apple told him about it, and then he killed it. the core was never found. |
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Nalo
nothing
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| Posted: Mon, 30th Dec 2013 14:13 Post subject: |
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RatKing
Posts: 1212
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| Posted: Mon, 30th Dec 2013 14:15 Post subject: |
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| dingo_d wrote: | | Realizing you're dreaming is called lucid dreaming and yes that pretty much means you have all the control in it. Look it up |
True enough but it won't fully guarantee control over your dreams. I've managed to have lucid dreams and most of the times yes, you can do anything you want. There has been at least one occation where I was (for the lack of better word) trapped in my dream and couldn't wake up. And sure as hell couldn't do much to steer that dream in any way.
Then there's nightmares where everything screams at you you're only in a dream. Doesn't help a bit. |
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| Posted: Mon, 30th Dec 2013 17:00 Post subject: |
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I had them once and could do what I wanted for at least 10 seconds, then I woke up...
OR DID I!?! TAM TAM TAAAAAAA!!!!
"Quantum mechanics is actually, contrary to it's reputation, unbeliveably simple, once you take the physics out."
Scott Aaronson | chiv wrote: | | thats true you know. newton didnt discover gravity. the apple told him about it, and then he killed it. the core was never found. |
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Nalo
nothing
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| Posted: Mon, 30th Dec 2013 17:09 Post subject: |
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ixigia
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| Posted: Mon, 30th Dec 2013 17:14 Post subject: |
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I think I'm suffering from reverse-solipsism. Everything and everyone around me is real, tangible, with its own course and their own lives, whereas I'm here, daydreaming all the time and trying to figure out who I am, why am I even here, do I have an impact at all? am I a ghost?
xD
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couleur
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| Posted: Mon, 30th Dec 2013 18:52 Post subject: |
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Wall of text incoming:
If by solipsism we mean that we are like "dreaming our own dream" then it is indeed difficult to argue against. Allthough John Locke f.e. challenges you to hold your hand over a candle flame. His argument is not so much against solipsim but he argues for common sense. You may still dream the flame and the pain, but you will be compelled to react, or be a complete idiot (my personal observation).
He stays in a relative subjectivism though. Our senses dont say enough about an external object to make it objective for everyone, which means everyone has a completely different subjective view of the world. So there is no objective knowledge in his empiricism. But still, the senses are enough to help the survival of our body, so they do indeed inform us that there is something outside ourselves that is either good or bad for us.
As a good sceptic you will always be able to say "Well, this may just be a dream". Mathematicians can have dreams of real theorems. You can dream of an equilateral triangle, so ideas can be true even in a dream. Being fast asleep most people will be convinced that they dont dream and so on. How can we be sure a world outside us really exists? It could indeed be a dream.
Personally, the strongest argument against solipsism to me has always been language. I mean of what use is language if not to communicate with other people. I wouldnt have words or concepts written out like this, no grammar nor orthographe if it werent for the need to communicate with other people and to create a common "objective" sphere of abstract notions that designate more or less the same objects. Language is an objectivator.
Even so, a solipsist can still call "dream". But then again, somehow dreams cannot create new memories, new concepts or new experiences. If I were to dream my life, that would mean I had to experience it all before or how else would I be remembering all those images that I dream? I may indeed, by combination create new ideas, I may even invent new mathematical theorems as mathematics are a priori anyway, but I will never know the taste of wine or the smell of salt in the air without having made that specific experience (in that I agree with empiricism).
What is more interesting though is that my interpretation of all those experiences is completely conditioned by my personal past (to make it short) and by my a priori conditions of possible experience (reason). So interestingly enough, while I may experience the taste of wine. My expression of this, just like my memory of it and my concept and even the taste itself are completely subjective and constructed. This is why I dont believe in objectivism.
That means that it is impossible for me to know anything objective about anything outside of me, beyond my own (multiple) conditions of experience, except for ideal concepts like mathemathics, which are a tool of reason. So either we accept the idea that there is a common transcendental condition of experience that is right for all of us, which would give us at least some sort of objectivitiy for us reasonable animals, or we must accept that objectivity is a constructed reality conditioned by similar animals with similar brains and conditions of experience adapted to the needs of their bodies.
In conclusion, I do not believe in solipsism, which is imo just a one way route of a mind that evolved to adapt and not to speculate, but I do not believe in an an objective given world either. There is me and others, we create and share concepts of the world by language and we percieve what we need to percieve to be able to survive/impress/etc. What we experience is the "unknown" percept plus our added concept. We solidify in concepts what we cannot hold back in duration, that is our constructed reality, we share. Interestingly enough, computer visualisation and symbolification of reality adds to the illusion of an objective world.
edit:
@DXWarlock: I support your argument against the brain/vat idea. The problem is obvious, information has to come from something or someone other than me. Even if something were stimulating me to have hunger or pain, there would still be something. So it is not so much an argument for solipsism. It is more of an Gedankenexperiment (thought experiment) than an argument.
"Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) "Have the courage to use your own understanding," is therefore the motto of the enlightenment."
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HubU
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| Posted: Wed, 1st Jan 2014 19:46 Post subject: |
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I'm eating a croissant. Suck it.
"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life." ~Berthold Auerbach
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