Solipsism?

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I agree with gekitsu in that solipsism is the most basic way that we perceive the world. Also, it is not logically inconsistent, at least in a deductive sense. There is no way to strictly disprove solipsism.

However, if I look at the similarities in the behaviors of others in comparison with my own behaviors and the internal thoughts/emotions that go with these behaviors, I can see that solipsism violates the principle of “Occam’s Razor”. To claim that my mind exists yet other minds do not doesn’t make a lot of sense in terms of consistency. The only simple possibilites are that either 1.) other minds exist or 2.) no minds exist (including my own). I’ve dabbled with the second possibility, i.e. consciousness is an illusion, but found it extremely hard to accept in practice. I also find the concept of free-will somewhat paradoxical but that’s whole other topic.

Anyways, I think most people reject solipsism as a practical matter rather than through the use of logical arguments. They believe other minds exist because they feel the need for other minds to exist. To believe otherwise would be disconcerting to most people because most people expect reciprocity when they deal others. People come to expect others to react to their actions in the same way they would react to others’ actions. I think in the end the motivation to reject solipsism is a selfish one as it is done to satisfy an emotional need.

I think the developmental differences between people with autism and NTs regarding solipsism is that people with autism end up rejecting solipsism through the sense described in the second paragraph, while NTs tend to do it as a matter of practicality because they have a stronger emotional need for social reciprocity. This developmental “delay” can be explained by the fact that the emotional need for social reciprocity typically comes much earlier in life (at least in NTs) than the ability to form beliefs through reasoning.

well-spoken comment, marshall.

i will put some comments:

why should consistency be something that holds the world together? its a nice thought, and a very comforting one, but it may be just another template oneself stamps onto the world (similar to causality after kant or schopenhauer).


that doesnt surprise me. i, for one, find it hard to deny what is the essence of my being - and as i am conscious on that, i must be. (see descartes: "cogitans sum" - in thinking, i am; or, even better, augustinus, when asked what if he erred in his assumptions on being: "only who is can err") what i want to say is: why think of something as an illusion that is as obviously there as it gets. i dont know how to put it in words better - but just look for yourself.


its not quite as paradoxical as it seems when you examine what is meant with the term "free will". obviously, it is not meant that every decision of my will is completely unbound - because that implied complete randomness (a bit like the feeling when feverish, when you dont have full control over your consciousness' contents... just more hardcore).
an individual free will obviously is determined by who the person is. the whole question of "could i have done different" should not hinge on the actual possibility of having the choice, but rather "could I have done different?" - would it still be me, had i chosen differently?

your third paragraph i agree with completely. very well put.

bottom line to the reasoning in your second paragraph: why refer to an objective instance of being (what really is and what in reality is just an illusion, regardless of what it looks to me) when all instance of being you encounter is being yourself? what to base the assumption on, that there is being in the world? and if there was, what would it matter to me? (kind of like the usual argumentation for agnosticism: i have no idea if god exists - and if so, what should i care, when its obviously not part of my world - after gods will then, obviously)

Sometimes the problem is that we think that explanation = determination. That if we cannot explain how something is determined, then we can´t determine if so and so is the case. I cannot explain how I know that I am not dreaming right now, but I can tell that I´m not. I cannot explain to you how I know that the book is red, but I cannot definitely determine that it is. I cannot tell you why I like so and so, but I can tell you that I do. Explanation is not needed in some cases (nor may it even be possible) to determine something. Seperating the two concepts from each other helps to eliminate the confusion.

I didn't like the text: http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/s/solipsis.htm
presented at the beggining of the thread, suggests a kind of psicological egocentric solipsism.

Descartes imagined a malign genius, like those from bottles, that thinks fun to misunderstood everything, in this case, everything around is not real, a kind of virtual reallity.

In order to surpass this possibilitie, Descartes "proved" the existence of a good god, that didn't let tha the malign genius do it to us... well, for whom to believe in his proofs... that are , I think, extremely weak.

By today, it is better to think about virtual reallity than a malign genius...
I'm not sure that all this around is real, in fact Ibelieve that, very probably, the world around is virtual and that we are spectroms, in the sense Will Gibson dreamt with.

Good point. I think you could replace the word "explain" with "prove". I think what you mean by not being able to explain something is not being able to prove something. There's no way to demonstrate with absolute certainty that I'm not dreaming. There's also no way to prove with absolute certainty that there isn't an 800 lb gorilla standing behind me that is capable of instantly disappearing as soon as I turn around.

Logically, all we can only prove that something is true if we assome that something else is true. All logical conclusions are based on a set of premises which may or may not be true. The most basic premises are by definition impossible to prove.

The point is that you can't base what you know only on what you can prove. If you try to do that you it turns out that you can't know anything. The branch of philosophy that concerns how to define knowledge and what we can or cannot know is called epistemology (LINK).

Consistency is what most of our knowledge is based on. Without it we wouldn't be able to claim we know anything. There is nothing logically wrong with assuming that. It's just that assuming that we can't know anything isn't practical in real life. In real life we form our beliefs based on the concept of consistency. I think this is true for everyone from the time they are born, even animals learn consistency.

You're right that a world without consistency would not be a comforting thought. In such a world it could be that the next time I walk out my door a giant octopus will grab me and eat me. I know that I have walked out my door many times without being eaten, so I trust that I can walk out my door without worrying about being eaten.

Also, science is based on consistency and finding patterns. Take the theory of gravity for instance. If I drop a ball ten times and it falls to the floor each time I trust that it will also fall to the floor the eleventh time I drop it. If the world wasn't consistent I would never be sure that the ball won't levitate instead of falling the next time I let go.

I didn't say what I meant to say. There's no way to deny what I experience through my senses and thoughts. That's just impossible.

Perhaps what is an illusion is the idea that I have a "mind" that is separate from the chemicals and electrical signals going on in my brain. There's pretty strong evidence that once the brain stops there is no consciousness. Yet the brain is made of the same atoms and molecules as everything else. From a scientific standpoint it is no different than a complex computer. Perhaps we are all like robots in that everything we do is pre-determined by what goes on physically in our brain. My point is that we could all be robots (i.e. no minds exist). It could be that consciousness is just a product of our brain and not some separate entity.

marshall: ah, i see. yes, i fought this discussion countless times over the last years, as this is one of the hot topics right now: free will and neurophysics, even harking back to descartes dualism...
this indeed would take the discussion too far astray.

as for consistency: you of course are right - i just wasnt sure to which degree you visualized that consistency is necessary for most of our thinking, but we shouldnt project it into the world as a factum. it is also practical to think of the world as only physical laws, sometimes (we wouldnt have cars that work, at the very least), but that shouldnt make us think that the physical laws themselves are at work in the world. at best, there is some connection we try to grasp with the formulation of physical laws - at worst, we are randomly grasping something chaotic and try to shoehorn it into static templates. as you said, we dont have actual rove that the next egg we let go wont fall down but levitate.

neuromancer: re descartes and his prove of god:
one needs to keep in mind the circumstances descartes wrote his books in. in his times, it was quite dangerous to attempt to go where he did - questioning everything beyond himself. but he was invaluable for philosophy to come.
it most likely was for this purpose only (not to get clobbered for heresy), that he included a "prove of god". at heart, he was interested in doing science and didnt want to do something without sense. so, as soon as he got a working prove that science is not a senseless undertaking (constructing from his ego backwards: i am sure, then all i can do without experience from outside is sure, too - therefore, maths are sure...), he stopped working in philosophy at once.

I do think that a certain amount of "faith" that the world has consistency is necessary for the way we think. Before science was invented, people saw consistency in most ordinary events, yet unpredictable and/or cataclysmic events (e.g. severe storms, earthquakes, plaques, diseases) seemed to violate their ideas of consistency and thus were attributed to supernatural beings. Now that we can explain most of these events with physical laws, they are no longer attributed to supernatural beings.

On the other hand, you are right that we shouldn't always expect absolute consistency as most all physical laws we come up with break down in extreme conditions. The idea of absolute time seemed consistent to Newton, but it was shown to be inconsistent for objects traveling at high relative speeds. Einstein came up with his theory in the hopes of restoring a consistent set of physical laws that work even for fast traveling objects. But even Einstein wasn't completely successful. Einstein had a certain faith that the universe was consistent, but the behavior of matter and energy on the atomic scale still seemed inconsistent (has quote about “god playing dice” comes to mind). Quantum mechanics seems to imply that the world is fundamentally unpredictable on the subatomic scale.

IMO, the there is always a delicate balance between faith in consistency and doubt. You can’t be too dogmatic about physical laws explaining everything as they are only models, and must be taken with some degree of doubt. There is no proof that physical laws are absolute or that they even exist outside of our mental constructs. Yet the concept of consistency is still necessary even though it requires a certain amount of faith. Faith that there is something beyond what we can directly perceive through our senses.

This is true for both science and in the way we think practically in everyday life. We need to trust that the world is consistent to a certain degree or we would all be paranoid to leave the house. Yet you can’t be too dogmatic in always expecting consistency or you will be in for some surprises.

Total doubt of everything beyond our direct experience of our own existence is the starting point of philosophy. This is what Descartes claimed (cogito, ergo sum : I think therefore I am). I don’t think he ever claimed that we can’t know anything beyond our direct experience of existence. Total doubt is a good starting point because it forces you to isolate where your assumptions lie.

This is by the very nature of thought itself. The ideas which form our world cannot be based on justification. If every justification needed a justification, then nothing could ever be justified. There would be only an infinite regress. The starting point of everything must be unjustified. It must be taken on faith. But, the faith that is used in this situation is not the same as the type of "faith" that is used in religion. People often mistake that two and try to use the former to justify the latter, when equating the two is not possible.

That faith that my hand exists allows us state for a fact that the hand has bones in it. Were we to doubt the existence of hands, we could not state that hands have bones in them. There is no way to justify that if a=b, then b=a. Russell wrote thousands of pages about this and in the end he came to the conclusion that no logical proof for such a basic mathematical statement existed. In the end, we must accept certain things for anything to be possible. This does not meant that they are unreliable, only that they are unprovable. This of course begins to cause confusion, because in reality the most reliable things are those which cannot be proven. Such statements as "here is a hand", "I am not sleeping right now", "that book is red" are unprovable/unjustifiable statements which are certainly more certain that anything else in life.

The contradiction of unprovable things being the most reliable has been exploited to advance the agenda of those who seek to belittle science and enhance the credibitily of religion, when the two are completely seperate issues. The faith used in everyday life cannot be compared to the faith of religion. The word here tricks us because its the same word, but, they are no more compatible than the word God when used in a pantheistic sense, and a theistic sense. One use cannot prove, nor disprove the use of the other. No more than the use of the word "game" in the statement , "he´s got game" can be used to prove the existence of game in the statement, "there is a basketball game going on".

To a degree, but this is the first time I have ever really looked at the definition of the word. I am not so completely self absorbed as to not ever take anyone else's thoughts or emotions into account, unless their thoughts are just plain stupid. And then I'll be the first to tell them.
I am perhaps something close to silipsism, but not nearly as selfish as this definition describes. I don't rely on other conventional ways of thinking, in fact I can consider a world of possibilities that never enters the minds of others in my thinking strategies. I'd almost say I analyze things like a computer.

jonathon79:

You bring up an interesting point that even the rules of logical deduction cannot be justified. I think the problem there is that, by definition, in order to "justify" something you need to use rules of logical deduction. You can't use use rules of deduction to prove rules of deduction because that's just circular reasoning.

I think the idea of consistency and recognizing patterns is even more basic than logic itself. I think the rules of logic themselves only come with our experience and recognition of certain patterns and a certain sense of consistency in the world as we experience it through our senses. I don't think logic or any form of abstraction exists independent of our experience. I guess I'm anti-platonic. I think abstraction is just our minds' way of lumping a buch of things together and picking out the most basic similarities rather than seeing the "whole" in all its details. It's just a way of making our reasoning more efficient. Alright, I'm rambling on now.

On religion:

I don't think the difference between religion and science has as much to do with faith as it has to do with the suppression of doubt. Almost all religions make it uncomfortable to have doubt, as you have an emotional attachment to what you believe. This might be true of other things besides religion, but religion takes it to extremes. Science, on the other hand requires doubt. Theories need to be tested. That is how science progresses. There would be no need to test theories if people were always certain their theories were true.

Religious beliefs are never tested or scrutinized because people are required to have certainty. However, I have a suspicion that even the most fervently religious people never have complete certainty in their beliefs. They just think they need certainty and so they tend to suppress doubts. I know from experience that this was how I was back in my religious days.

Some good posts here. Solipsism is basically correct. No one will ever know a single thing outside of his/her own perception. Sad but true. It took me a while to come to grips with this and its implications, but really, it's not so bad At least we're all completely isolated together! haha

let me put my own point of viewabout solipsism.
I think it is the belief at the existence of only one thing, that can be called: the whole, universe, everything, buda, god, me, du...
well, any name isagood name for it...
if there is only one thing, so, you are me, I am you, I am that cloud... I am the Buda...

now i am going to post something quiteoff topic but it urges to be typed:
marshall, i am quite absolutely opposed to your opinion on logics. hardcore husserlian, here.

as for religion and science: its terrifying to see how many people today overload science in a metaphysical way that their "believing" in science is akin to practising any other religion. people keep and keep forgetting that science is method - and frequently mistake method for actual being. (again, husserl)

I looked up Husserl. I'm ashamed I've never read about his philosophies. I like to think about philosophy, but when it comes to actual reading I prefer to read science. Philosophy is difficult to read, at least for me. Though, it's funny how I come up with my own philosophies, then I take a class and read about someone who had the exact same thoughts 100, or 400, or 2000 years ago.

Now that you mention Husserl, I may have to backpedal on what I said earlier concerning logic. Yes, I change my mind easily . Platonic ideal objects don't make sense to me, but I'm not sure I want to go as far as claiming that logic (and mathematics) is only an abstraction process of the brain. After thinking more deeply about it, I do believe logical rules and mathematical structures can exist independent of our thought processes. I just don't think they exist independent of real world objects. I also think it would be difficult (maybe impossible) to conceive of mathematics without perceiving real world objects.

I apologise for derailing this thread further. This is just too interesting and I'm feeling way too lazy to start a whole new thread.