Solipsism

[Someone here]

Now before i begin to even talk about this i want to make clear that i am not a solipsist, i just find this idea interesting. I'ts one of the most hated beliefs in esoteric philosophy and most people think it's defined as i am all that exist and everyone else in the world is not real.
Viewing it this way is wrong because it makes it seem like you have an over inflated ego.

When you contemplate on it and ask it questions it's really defined as anything outside your mind is unsure to exist. The only thing you can't doubt is your own existence, even if i tell you're not real, you know for a fact you are and no one can prove to you otherwise. The fact that you exist is the essence of solipsism and it's an idea that goes both way, you either are or you aren't, a paradox that cannot be solved.

The part where it gets confusing, is that it states anything outside the mind is unsure to exist because you can't experience it without the five senses. Everything that is outside is happening within your mind. "The body-mind and the world are objects, they appear in us, we do not appear in them

[Inliytened1]

@Someone here the main thing is right now it is just a possible way reality could be to you.   The part they miss though is it can be validated.    And you can know for sure thst it is indeed how reality is constructed.   That your Mind is Reality itself and everything else is contained within, though when you are in a limited state of consciousness or finite consciousness, it doesn't appear thst way.  It appears others are external..but this is precisely what a limited state of consciousness means.  When your consciousness expands, what happens is what was external becomes internal.  So you are able to validate for yourself.  But you will need to have an awakening or access a state of infinite consciousness.  It will really feel like you woke up from the dream because you did!

[Someone here]

@Inliytened1 Yep. Seems simple at heart to me. I have all these conscious experiential states about stuff existing and things happening, but there's no way of knowing if any of it exists independently of those images, sounds, feelings, sensations, memories, etc. Even my own body and brain.

You just have to acknowledge that, then you can forget about it and get on with acting as if there's a real world, because if you don't it will bite you in the bum anyway.

[LastThursday]

@Someone here at the root of it all is what is meant by the words existence and real. You could simplify things and just say that everything that is real exists. So what is existence? Even if you have doubt, that is still a form of existence: the existence of doubt about something. So even thoughts exist. Does Harry Potter exist? Yes, as words on a page and in the thoughts of readers.

The thing with the self is that it doesn't exist continuously. Ever get lost in a good film or book? Where does the self go then? It sort of disappears and reappears again when you suddenly get hungry or tired. The thing that doesn't ever seem to disappear is the experience of existence/reality. So it would seem that a "self" isn't necessary for existence to exist. Without a self you can't have solipsism because then existence doesn't belong to anyone or anything. If there isn't a self, then there aren't any other selves either.

[Someone here]

4 minutes ago, LastThursday said:

@Someone here at the root of it all is what is meant by the words existence and real. You could simplify things and just say that everything that is real exists. So what is existence? Even if you have doubt, that is still a form of existence: the existence of doubt about something. So even thoughts exist. Does Harry Potter exist? Yes, as words on a page and in the thoughts of readers.

The thing with the self is that it doesn't exist continuously. Ever get lost in a good film or book? Where does the self go then? It sort of disappears and reappears again when you suddenly get hungry or tired. The thing that doesn't ever seem to disappear is the experience of existence/reality. So it would seem that a "self" isn't necessary for existence to exist. Without a self you can't have solipsism because then existence doesn't belong to anyone or anything. If there isn't a self, then there aren't any other selves either.

I think we at least have enough to on to suggest that there's 'something' there in its consistency that we're reading, ie. there is some sort of landscape. it's an additional leap to say that we're seeing the world exactly as it is through our five senses. What we do have is consistency in certain kinds of information.

The paradox is that Solipsism cannot be proven to be false or true. To find out what is really outside the mind you'll have to step outside of it to observe, however, the moment you do that you end up back in the mind. At first i was confused by solipsism trying to fully understand it, referring to people who hear about solipsism for the first time.

 If I were to propose that everything I perceive via my senses might not exist because my senses might be deceiving me, would that be confusing?

[Inliytened1]

11 minutes ago, Someone here said:

 

The paradox is that Solipsism cannot be proven to be false or true.

What if that's an assumption that you have taken as fact?

[LastThursday]

3 minutes ago, Someone here said:

The paradox is that Solipsism cannot be proven to be false or true.

However, Solipsism does have a definition. That is that my experience is the only one. But if you remove my from the definition, then Solipsism can't hold - by definition. It really does hinge on there being a self to experience something, i.e. the self "owns" its experience. If there is any doubt at all that the self carries on continuously without interruption, then that puts Solipsism into doubt too. 

My definition of Truth is something that continues to exist without interruption. I would say that the self isn't a Truth, and anything that relies on a self for its definition also isn't a Truth. The argument about Solipsism is really an argument about truth, existence and the self.

12 minutes ago, Someone here said:

 If I were to propose that everything I perceive via my senses might not exist because my senses might be deceiving me, would that be confusing?

The problem with this sort of thinking is that you've got nothing else to go on other than your experience - there's nothing more or less than that. The higher likelihood is that the notion of having "senses" is wrong and is what is actually causing the confusion.

[Someone here]

16 minutes ago, LastThursday said:

However, Solipsism does have a definition. That is that my experience is the only one. But if you remove my from the definition, then Solipsism can't hold - by definition. It really does hinge on there being a self to experience something, i.e. the self "owns" its experience. If there is any doubt at all that the self carries on continuously without interruption, then that puts Solipsism into doubt too. 

My definition of Truth is something that continues to exist without interruption. I would say that the self isn't a Truth, and anything that relies on a self for its definition also isn't a Truth. The argument about Solipsism is really an argument about truth, existence and the self.

The problem with this sort of thinking is that you've got nothing else to go on other than your experience - there's nothing more or less than that. The higher likelihood is that the notion of having "senses" is wrong and is what is actually causing the confusion.

Is your point that there is no self which is said to be alone?  I think we can bypass that and assume that there is in fact a constant consistent agent that is self. 

Since reality is only subjective to you and no one else i don't believe there i s a need to prove anything to anyone. In the objective reality the people use the scientific method to prove something the we can agree upon. We are all sharing the experience of reality.

The objective reality only appears in your subjective point of view, inside of your mind. Even the tools and measurements you use, come from the objective reality, you're using the objective reality to prove an objective reality. This isn't to say that there is no objective reality, its to say the objective reality only exist in the subjective experience.

[Someone here]

24 minutes ago, Inliytened1 said:

What if that's an assumption that you have taken as fact?

Could be. 

The thing is...It seems to me that we are all born solipsistic, and immediately learn that there is a world ouside the womb. The idea that all the sensory input might be as the result of some mad scienctist who has your brain in a vat is a useful, though utterly flase, thought experiment based on a healthy skepticism.
Where this experiement is useful is to teach us that all we see and feel of that world is interpreted and filtered through our existing conception and set of expectations of the world.
This is useful to give us caution that the way we perceive the world can be less than perfect.
Beyond that to make a fetish out of solipsism is not way to live your life, and you might as well shut yourself in a box and beleive all your imaginings.
Pretty soon you'll get hungry and ask mummy from some tea and biscuits.

Edited February 28, 2022 by Someone here

[LastThursday]

8 minutes ago, Someone here said:

Is your point that there is no self which is said to be alone?

That is exactly my point.

8 minutes ago, Someone here said:

I think we can bypass that and assume that there is in fact a constant consistent agent that is self.

I disagree. Why would spiritual circles even have a idea of "no self" if it didn't have some validity?

8 minutes ago, Someone here said:

In the objective reality the people use the scientific method to prove something the we can agree upon. We are all sharing the experience of reality.

I really do think you've got your feet in both camps: materialism and subjective idealism and you're struggling to reconcile the two. They're not completely mutually exclusive: they both agree that reality exists. But they're very different in their approach to reality and existence. You really do have to be a contortionist to hold both views at the same time and you should allow yourself to keep them separate when necessary.

Edited February 28, 2022 by LastThursday

[Someone here]

16 minutes ago, LastThursday said:

That is exactly my point.

I disagree. Why would spiritual circles even have a idea of "no self" if it didn't have some validity?

I really do think you've got your feet in both camps: materialism and subjective idealism and you're struggling to reconcile the two. They're not completely mutually exclusive: they both agree that reality exists. But they're very different in their approach to reality and existence. You really do have to be a contortionist to hold both views at the same time and you should allow yourself to keep them separate when necessary.

I disagree with the "no self " philosophy. At least partially. There is a self. The only problem is how you define the self .if you define it as unicorn then it doesn't exist. But if you define it as the body-mind phenomenon..then it does exist as that. You can't deny that you exist at the physical level of the body .

So back to solipsism..how do we know that our existent self and the content of our perceived world is not a simulation?

Ever heard of the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis? 

  the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis might be true, whatever we might think. There are no grounds at all to assert its utter falseness. That's the point, just as there are no grounds to assert its truth. It is unknown, and a great example of something we can't know. The probability of us being brains in vats is not calculable; there is no evidence at all upon which to base our statistical speculations, so there can be no statistical speculations.

Edited February 28, 2022 by Someone here

[LastThursday]

38 minutes ago, Someone here said:

So back to solipsism..how do we know that our existent self and the content of our perceived world is not a simulation?

I would say that under Subjective Idealism it's just a distraction. If you were suddenly unplugged, Matrix style, then your subjective experience would have a discontinuity in it, nothing more. The nature of that subjective experience wouldn't change, just the content of it. But I fail to see the connection with Solipsism, what do you think the connection is?

[Someone here]

@LastThursday here is my overall point that I'm trying to make in this thread.....

It is as absurd to assert the correctness of solipsism (or brain-in-a-vat, or any other example) as it is to assert its incorrectness. Neither of these assertions can be justified. The facts are that solipsism is possible, and that this possibility cannot be refuted. No more is, or can be, known.

An associated understanding is that it is also absurd to assert that apparent reality is Objective Reality. All of these things are unfounded speculations; they cannot be confirmed or denied.

[Mason Riggle]

@LastThursday @Someone here

The 'brain in a vat' thought experiment shows you that the only thing you can be certain of is 'experience itself'.

Something seems to be happening, but it's possible to be totally confused about what exactly that something is- I could be a brain in a vat [dreaming or hallucinating all this]. 

This is basically what Solipsism is.. I can only confirm the existence of my own subjective experience, and not the contents of it, which may not be what they seem. 

 

[Someone here]

@Mason Riggle I agree ? 

[Someone here]

you will find that you cannot actually defend a contra-solipsism position. After reading around, there is one basic detail that is entirely unassailable: the simply analytic unavailability. Whatever it is, a couch, the moon, an oceanic tidal wave, if it is going to be accepted as there, outside of consciousness, your are going to have do the very obvious task of explaining how that thing out there puts itself into your brain.

The brain in a vat is just an illustration of inaccessibility and you have to allow your thinking to focus on the simplicity of the problem. It has to be acknowledeged that in philosophy, what appears to be the case at first blush is always in error.

[Mason Riggle]

@Someone here do you agree that it doesn't make any difference AT ALL which of the following is true??

1) You are a brain in a Vat, hallucinating all this, and none of it is REAL, it just REALLY seems that way. 

2) All of this is REAL. 

[LastThursday]

5 minutes ago, Mason Riggle said:

This is basically what Solipsism is.. I can only confirm the existence of my own subjective experience, and not the contents of it, which may not be what they seem. 

That's a tighter definition of Solipsism, so that's good because it worries less about brains in vats and simulations - which should really have nothing to do with Solipsism. In fact the looser definition of Solipsism would exclude simulations and brains in vats.

But again if there is no "my" then there is no Solipsism. Solipsism relies on there being a "my". If you take a "my" as given, then that's faith and belief. You could just as well take it as the experience of being a self and not the self having an experience. With the former this fits in better with having experience itself as the stage on which everything happens.

[Someone here]

2 minutes ago, Mason Riggle said:

@Someone here do you agree that it doesn't make any difference AT ALL which of the following is true??

1) You are a brain in a Vat, hallucinating all this, and none of it is REAL, it just REALLY seems that way. 

2) All of this is REAL. 

It both make a difference and doesn't make a difference at the same time. 

With respect, I think that is exactly the point: it could be true. That is the only useful lesson (that I am aware of) that such speculations offer. There are some things we simply can't know, and can't be sure of. The world, as we experience it, is uncertain. Much more uncertain than we admit to. 

Isn't it insane the way to experience a reality is with fives senses to pretty much know a universe actually exist. The five sense are pretty translating to the mind what it thinks reality looks like and then the mind makes logic out of it for your human understanding. Reality is stuck in the mind and since it's in the mind it may not even exist, the mind just thinks it does, which can mean that the people who you come in contact with are stuck in your mind, so the mind can be pretty much be communicating with itself, these are mental problems, seems to me the mind is stuck in a world of illusions that itself has made up for no apparent reason. The very essence of insanity. "Reality is not reality, there may be no reality but certainly this is not it." 

 

[Mason Riggle]

@LastThursday sure.. it's sloppy language.  'Self' and 'the experience of being a self' are not two separate things.  There isn't really 'A self' AND 'the experience that self is having'.  Dualistic language creates the illusion of separation. 

Edited February 28, 2022 by Mason Riggle