Please help me here....
How is idealism different from solipsism?
[MOD EDIT: Moved to questions. (Do not debate but answer the question only.)]
[MOD EDIT: Moved to questions. (Do not debate but answer the question only.)]
Comments (578)
Solipsism: Other minds don't exist!
Prove it.
Quoting Agent Smith
Prove it.
They differ in the implications of each of those beliefs.
Solipsism: that's all that exists. There is no tree. The tree is just an idea in my mind. Nothing exists outside of me. Matter is no more than a thought in my mind.
Idealism: something exists outside of me which causes my sense data. What is that something? Materialists say its matter. Berkeley says it is God causing my sense data but other idealist answers are possible.
A direct & succinct answer to the OP.
However, both are unprovable inferences from Descartes' intuitive introspective "I am" argument. From that axiom, we can a> optimistically reason that similar minds exist in the bodies of our fellow philosophers. Or, we can b> pessimistically conclude that nothing exists apart from my own inner world model.
Both can be argued for or against, but not proven empirically. Yet, according to b>, even empirical evidence could be a product of my own world-modeling mind. We know both possibilities, only by reading our own minds.
From personal experience though, my own intuition is not smart enough to make-up all the observed complexities of reality. So, I have to assume that those counter-intuitive ideas & opinions are coming from external minds with different life experiences. :cool:
All solipsism is a form of idealism, idealism need not be solipsist at all.
Solipsism posits that only I exist and that everything else - crucially - other people, are a product of my mind. When I die, everything vanishes: history, politics, art, etc.
Idealism is often presented as a phrase that should be obvious, and one should have strong opinions about it as soon as once hears the word.
Nevertheless, there's are many types of idealisms: some claim that only perceptions exist (Hoffman) , other claims that we can only see appearances, but that a world absent these exists (Kant), yet others posit that we are all part of one mind (Kastrup), or that something remains in the world which is not mental (Schopenhauer). And so on.
It often means that only ideas exist, or that the only thing we can know are ideas (Locke, Hume) or that mental stuff is fundamental, or that the only thing that counts as "real" are those things which trigger our innate dispositions (Descartes, Chomsky).
But idealism is much broader, and arguably richer, than solipsism, which varies mostly (if not exclusively) on intensity: only my life exists, only the past day exists, only the present moment exists, etc.
EDIT: I should mention, the philosophers listed may be argued to belong in other characterizations, this is a unsophisticated form of presenting versions of idealism.
Idealism and solipsism are derived from the simple fact that a world external to mind or self respectively can't be known to exist. As you can see, these philosophical stances are predicated on possibility (metaphysics) and agnoiological (epistemological) concerns.
:up:
Prove it.
Idealism & Solipsism are possibilities and ergo all that needs to be proven is that they are...possibilities and that's as easy as ABC. Try it for yourself. Couldn't it be that the external world/other minds are mental projections?
They are representations. My mind models a representation of you, for instance.
And...does that somehow disprove the claim that it's possible the external world/other minds are mind-generated/mind- sustained?
If you were a figment of my imagination I would know more about you then you do. Do you think that I know more about you then you do? I dont know the color of the shirt youre currently wearing, assuming youre wearing one. You most likely do.
Interesting. What if not knowing all is built into the grammar of solipsism or such figments? It is possible to imagine a voice without a body and then to put a body to that voice. Nothing is fully imagined or understood in dreams, let along in a potential solipsistic universe.
The tree in the forest - and me - and you?
In other words, the entire sense-excperience I'm having is in my head. Only my head. That's solipsism no?
No. Berkeley has everything or 'empirical reality' held in place by the mind of god who allows us to share a world which exists independent of our mental processes.
Idealism often has to make use of some kind of 'big mind' to prevent solipsism. For Kastrup - a current idealist - all matter is just what consciousness looks like when viewed from a different perspective. What allows us to share a world is that it is all held in place by a universal mind - cosmic consciousness or 'mind at large'. But this is not a god - this consciousness is instinctive, blind and striving and is not metacognitive. Humans are described as dissociated alters of this consciousness.
From Kastrup's blog:
Although I say that all reality is in consciousness, and that there is no universe outside, or independent from, subjective experience, I also do not deny that reality exists independent of personal psyches, like the human psyche. I maintain that empirical reality is an experience of an impersonal mind, which I like to call 'mind-at-large' in honor of Aldous Huxley. As such, empirical reality isn't created by personal psyches, and would still exist as an experience in mind-at-large even if there were no life in the universe.
Bernado Kastrup
I could counter your point but only with another that's rather far out! I concede your point! It's an interesting argument! Kudos.
As far as I can tell, idealism is either difficult or impossible to disprove. The same goes for solipsism. These philosophical positions rest on, as I said, possibilities that, as for now, can't be ruled out.
So what's a skeptical atheist to do? I agree with Agent Smith that solipsism is impossible to disprove, but I notice it gets short shrift in philosophical circles. It seems like the "dead end" everyone is trying to avoid (Descartes only proved one mind / thinking thing....then ran to God for the rest.).
My point is - Solipsism is never treated as a legitimate theory compared to Empiricism or Idealism...not to mention Leibniz and his wacky "Monads." When to my mind most theories point to - or at least make a LOGICAL argument for - the lack of any world or minds outside our own. Especially when God and anything "cosmic" are taken out fo the argument.
I may start a group "Solipsism is Real" although it would have only one member.
It's an absurd position. The concepts of reason and truth are entangled with the concepts of self and other. The rationalists are right to the degree that they foreshadow the idea of a space of reasons as irreducible, but Descartes (for instance) was wrong to think he could have the concept of the self as something primary, something that makes sense apart from the concept of others. What is this 'I' ? Why is it automatically understood as a unity ? How does meaning work ? What counts as rational ? Does private rationality makes sense? Descartes is in one important sense not skeptical enough. But maybe the point was the math and the physics...
Idealism holds that for a statement to be true it must stand in some relation to mind - observed, known, believed, or whatever. So is "There are other minds" true for idealism? If it is true, then it stands in some relation to mind... but which one? If it stands in a relation to a mind other than one's own, then that is profoundly problematic for idealism. Hence the need for god to hold things together.
Idealism's relation to truth is... incoherent.
Yes, idealism is prone to collapse, as you mention. The problem is maybe a hidden tautology, a language trap. In order for a statement to be true it must [s]stand in some relation to mind[/s] .... [s]stand in relation to language[/s] ... be a statement.
'Tell me about the world that no one can tell me about. See, it's impossible ! Henceforth idealism...'
As I see it, some positions can be made to look incoherent or confused or indeterminate in the first place. I don't pretend that it's easy to get consensus on such matters, but I do think something outside the binary approaches of true/false and provable/unprovable deserves mention.
For instance, if the self is the only thing that can be verified, what are we to even make of the concept of self in play here ? How did the sense-data theory get invented or implanted in the first place? Why take it for granted, along with some unified entity, the self-world-blob ? It's like accepting [math] \sqrt{2} [/math] or even [math] \aleph_0 [/math] without worries or objections but questioning the intelligibility of [math] -1 [/math].
Interesting that merely renaming this independent reality (godmind or whatever) is felt to be worth the trouble. I browsed Kastrup once, and he does write well, but it's hard to see more than language traps and mystically/religiously tinged (albeit pessimistic) usage preferences once one has been corrupted or disillusioned by the usual suspects (those dreary buzzkill linguistic philosophers and pragmatists.) For context, I don't feel strongly about 'matter' and the 'physical' either when used metaphysically or 'transpractically.' Perhaps I'm missing out. Too late now.
"Skeptical" of what? (Atheism?)
Quoting Manuel
:up:
Quoting Banno
:fire:
You and me both, Pie. I've written here before that even if idealism is true, it makes no difference to how I live my life. A perfect illusion of a material world which can't really be transcended except perhaps via glimmers during meditation, or perhaps at 'death', is functionally no different to an actual material world. The speeding bus coming at you will still end your plans even if it is the product of mentation seen from a particular perspective. So why should all this matter, except as a curiosity? Fascinating though it may be.
Well put, Mr. Storm, and you touch on another pet issue of mine with the word 'actual' and its synonym 'real.' In practical life it's great. I want real money or real love or real science and not the counterfeit kind. But away from every familiar context the real/illusion dichotomy loses traction, fails to distinguish the better from the worse.
True, however, my dreams are entirely comprised of elements that I know or have experienced. I can't dream understanding the language of Japanese, for instance. I could dream about walking on the moon, I imagine, but it wouldn't be anything like Neil Armstrong's moon dreams. It would probably play out like a dumb episode of Space:1999. My dreams tend to be really dumb.
I'm not so sure. I once dreamt I was fluent in French (I'm not). I was talking it and understanding it in the logic of a dream state. But life often seems pretty dumb too, so subject to whatever reality (noumena?) may be, our life on earth may well resemble an episode of Space:1999. Or even an early episode of Dr Who. Perhaps even Heidegger looks like a rerun of Monty Python when viewed from a perspective of 'enlightenment'. :smile: :gasp:
I think we need to define terms, and maybe we can start (and end?) with what is considered absurd. I'm not a social constructivist by nature, but I clearly think the word and concept of absurd is just as questionable and debatable as the word "self" or "reality." As I mentioned (I think) Leibniz made a logical argument to explain away the mind-body problem that ended up with the absurd "Monad" theory.
And Leibniz and his monads (and many other theories I find equally fanciful) is still taught at the University level.
As a logical thinker (trying to be anyway) this seems far more absurd than that there could only be one mind, mine, and everything else could be an illusion. It's absolutely possible, as depressing as it may seem.
Why not?
"Idealism: Other minds exist!
Solipsism: Other minds don't exist!"
Thanks for this - it has helped clarify this for me.
But how can we logically prove there are other minds? I know this is a huge issue, but it's what I get stuck on. I can't get past the cogito, proving there's a thinking thing - singular. And I'll specify that the answer that will satisfy me can't involve any god-mind holding things together, or a cosmic consciousness - unless anyone can provide proof of either.
Solipsism is described as a "dead end." It negates thousands of theories and the purpose of discussing epistemology, since I'd just be talking to myself. But that doesn't mean it's not a sound argument.
I'm obviously not happy with my solipsistic rut...I'm trapped in it! I want out. Help!
We can't! That's the nub of the issue.
At best we could say that we all have a lot of behavioral elements, those associated with minds (intentionality, speech, motion, etc.), in common with other people. Not a proof, but definitely suggestive, of the existence of other minds. In any case, the illusion, if it is one, is top notch! It has us fooled, oui (re Turing Test)!
How rather disheartening it is that on such an all-important matter, our benchmark is how easily and how thoroughly we're made fools of!
My underlining is intended to point out how implicitly social thinking is.
I agree, the meaning of 'absurd ' is questionable and debatable, just like all the other meanings we've made up or got in the habit of performing. If we debate about or question them, we are presumably forced to do so using such terms.
Quoting GLEN willows
Is a round square possible ? Some stories are just incoherent, and I think the old yarn about being trapped in the Cartesian theater is a like a round square, but less obviously.
"Maybe all these people I'm talking about solipsism with are really just me, just my imagination playing tricks with me...so maybe I'm just crazy...but what can crazy mean if I'm the only one here ? If it's all just me, being right or wrong doesn't make any sense..."
I agree. Just because a conclusion is unpleasant doesn't make it false, but an incoherent thesis (claims of a rectangular circle) can safely be set aside.
I'm sorry to hear this idea of solipsism is tormenting or distressing you. I recommend reading Ryle's The Concept of Mind.
"accepted answer"
That's amusing. Accepted implies that there is an authority who has the capacity and power (dynamis) to accept and to make accepted. In philosophy that should be an automatic non sequitur.
"but an incoherent thesis (claims of a rectangular circle) can safely be set aside."
Why is it incoherent? Other than you saying it is? It's entirely possible, whereas a square rectangle is not. Or was it a rectangular square?
I'm asking because it's a genuine road block that's slowing my philosophy studies down. Can you not imagine any situation wherein a person is living a life within his mind, seeing only a pre-set program, and is not aware of it. Forget the brain in a vat or Evil Genius, think of the next two or three thousand years? No? I think there's a lack of imagination here.
Logically impossible is a different thing - but nothing is logically impossible about it, is there? Any minute now Mark Zuckerberg could appear before me as a hologram. like the "man behind the curtain.", and congratulate me for doing a double-blind test of Meta Virtual World #398. (Actually him choosing me to be the test subject WOULD be absurd)
Silly analogy, but my point is an imagined world is not logical impossible.
Im pretty sure that if you were to remember what you said in French within the dream and repeated it to a French speaker in the waking world they would say something like, Que dis-tu?
I dont see how materialism/substance dualism/truth realism avoids this. For a statement to be true there must be a statement. Thats the case for every metaphysics.
Of course you can say that the truth does not depend on there being a true statement, but then the idealist can say the same.
Edit: I may have misunderstood what you were trying to say here.
It says that only minds and mental phenomena exist (or can be known to exist). There existing multiple minds each with associated mental phenomena is consistent with this claim.
Now follow that through. How is it that an idealist can conclude that there are other minds?
Work through the argument. See what the conclusions are.
Follow what through? In claiming that only minds and mental phenomena it follows that only minds and mental phenomena exist. It doesn't follow that only one mind exists. If you want to suggest that the latter follows then the burden is on you to explain how.
Quoting Banno
How does idealism avoid solipsism?
We have: "only minds and mental phenomena exist"
Now reach the conclusion that solipsism is false.
This is the heart of 's OP.
Just so!
The odd thing for idealists is that this "big mind" mysticism is supposedly a better idea than that there is a world that is independent of our thoughts...
Both realism and idealism must posit something bedsides one's mind.
Realism is just more honest about it.
You seem confused. Does the Reimann hypothesis need to reach the conclusion that solipsism is false to avoid solipsism? It just doesn't say anything about solipsism whatsoever.
And I don't know why you're trying to shift the burden of proof. If you want to claim that idealism entails solipsism then it's your job to prove it, not mine to disprove it.
Not I.
The OP asks us to consider the relation between idealism and solipsism. So it is worth considering how an idealist reaches the conclusion that other minds exist.
SO I am inviting you, and anyone else hereabouts, to give voice to such an argument.
I could do so myself, but folk will quickly claim that whatever i propose is a homo paleas.
You literally just asked me to show how idealism proves solipsism false to save it from entailing that solipsism is true. Your logic is confused.
And I responded initially to your claims that "Idealism holds that for a statement to be true it must stand in some relation to mind" and "idealism is prone to fall into solipsism". I wasn't responding to OP's question regarding how idealism and solipsism differ, which DingoJones answered in the third reply.
What?
Either idealism entails solipsism, or it doesn't. If idealism does entail solipsism, then idealism is merely one form of solipsism. Hence, in order to show that idealism is not merely a form of solipsism, any mooted idealist must show that other minds exist.
I just explained why your logic is confused with my example of the Reimann hypothesis. Jane claims that the Reimann hypothesis entails solipsism and John rejects this accusation, so then Jane demands that John show how the Reimann hypothesis avoids solipsism. It's a nonsense demand. Even if the Reimann hypothesis cannot prove that solipsism is false it doesn't then mean that the Reimann hypothesis entails that solipsism is true.
Quoting Banno
And you're just shifting the burden. If you think that idealism entails solipsism then explain how.
They can just posit that there are other minds if they want to. Realists do that. Nobody actually tries to apply logic to whether there are other minds.
If there are only mental phenomena, and if there are true statements, then true statements are mental phenomena. Hence idealism holds that all truths are mental phenomena.
But I would avoid the use of "phenomena" here, it brings too much baggage.
And in so doing they act in much the same way as the realists they critique.
Quoting Banno
Nothing wrong with that
Quoting Banno
To avoid solipsism, yes.
:smirk:
We don't need for someone to say "there are multiple minds" for there to be multiple minds. You seem to be conflating "truths" as true statements and "truths" as the facts that are expressed by true statements.
Or just commit to your usual deflation of truth. That should get you out of your bind.
Again, any argument I offered in defence of idealism would be open to criticism as a straw man.
So, let the idealists amongst us show how their claim that there are other minds is different to the realist claim that there is a world seperate to mind.
:lol: "P" is true IFF P
Quoting Michael
...unless you are an idealist, in which case for there to be multiple minds, the truth "there are multiple minds" must be a mental phenomena... to try to put this into your odd wording.
So you're saying that for everything that happens there exists a verbal (or written, or signed) description of that event? How does that work? Is there some God describing everything that happens? Or are there "free floating" descriptions of everything that happens within some Realm of Ideas?
For a self-proclaimed realist you're starting to sound a lot like an anti-realist.
Quoting Banno
See above.
No. I am proposing that the world is all that is the case.
You might have heard that phrase elsewhere.
Then I have no idea what you're trying to get at here. There are multiple minds if there are multiple minds. We don't need for one of these minds to express this fact in speech or writing for it to be the case. Just be your usual deflationist self about truth.
Banno"
This is my issue (and this discussion is very enlightening, thanks). Descartes showed that there is ONE thinking thing, not multiple thinking things. To infer that "since there is one thinking thing, all the people around me must also be thinking things, or somehow "contain" thinking things" is to me unprovable.
It may never happen, but that doesn't mean it isn't LOGICALLY POSSIBLE, correct?
That is indeed apparent.
So, if you would continue, I'd suggest attempting to form an idealist argument against solipsism. Try it and see how you go.
Ok then - there are green elephants with tutus if there are green elephants with tutus.?
Isn't the job of philosophy PROVING something exists? Or did I miss something in my modest university courses?
But if you insist that I am in error, try it for yourself. See how you go.
So you don't have an argument to defend your claim. Good to know.
Oh, come on. You are better than such trite shite.
It's not "trite shite" to refuse to accept your shifting of the burden. You made a claim and are refusing to defend it. Don't try to make me out to be the unreasonable one.
Well, you've identified the source of the problem. Cool.
Try this for a line of reasoning. Descartes supposed he could doubt everything, and decided that he could not doubt that he was doubting, and hence that the doubter must exist.
Have a think about what it was he was doubting. To doubt is to doubt the truth of some proposition. But a proposition is an item of language. And there are good reasons to think that language must involve other folk - that there can be no private languages.
Hence in order to make use of propositions one must be part of a language community. The very doubting that Descartes made use of seem to already involve other people.
What do you make of that?
But I challenge this thesis. That Descartes assumes the unity of the 'I' is one of my objections to his system. As I've argued recently, this unity is best understood in terms of social norms. The "transcendental unity of apperception" is best understood/demystified in terms of reputational scorekeeping, to pick just one example. (Another is as a character in the conversation of others, invoked in explanations.) It's because 'I' have to account for everything this body does, that 'I' exist as (take 'myself' for) an 'I' in the first place.
I do think we can 'fix' Descartes. Inquiry almost tautologically starts with language, but it need not start with Berkeley or Descrates. Investigating meaning reveals, I claim, the necessary sociality of semantics.
Then the same to you re. showing how idealism leads to solipsism.
:up:
:up:
Indeed. It's hard to make sense of what doubt or truth could mean apart from some community living in the same world. The solipsist can no more lie than [s]he[/s] it can tell the truth.
Descartes was probably tempted into the private experience language trap by his excellent studies of vision, but (as Nietzsche saw) folks tend to forget that this makes the sense organs and the individual skull a product of the sense organs and the individual skull...so it becomes less intuitive as the thesis is developed. 'Idealism' seems to be parasitic on some notion of the real world (in which there is a vat of some kind) even as it attacks this notion. A round square, though not so obviously.
The job of philosophy is continually modified and debated by philosophers. We should also consider that philosophy wasn't always professionalized. Hobbes, for instance, was basically an anti-philosopher, who mostly wanted to sweep nonsense from the path of science.
In my view, the key development is secular rationality, escape from superstition. The details of an epistemology freed from theology are comparatively minor. Ideas that there is no world and therefore no truth in the first place are basically absurd curiosities, an opportunity for play. I take serious doubts about the existence others to be mental illness...so I don't want to be cruel about that here.)
Our positions seem close. I also think we agree that there's not much to be said about truth, though it is useful to talk about what makes assertions warranted or not.
There's part of me that identifies with this.
The choice between realism and antirealism is the choice between a bi-valued and many-valued logic.
I can relate to the intuitions you invoke. I've seen The Matrix and other excellent sci-fi. It seems to me that all such fictions depend 'grammatically' on some actual world existing. There's no left without right or true without false or illusion without reality. If you fear or speculate that you are living in an illusion, this seems to imply that you already embrace some notion of the real, some contrast to your current experience. How does it make sense to care about whether one has the truth or not without already assuming there is a truth to be had ? "Is there such a thing as the truth?" already implies something that is the case or not, something worth establishing.
:100:
Quoting Pie
:fire:
:up: This circles back to Descartes not having grounds to "doubt everything" in the first place (Peirce, Wittgenstein).
I can imagine it, yes, but the program has to be situated within some reality that's deeper or realer than the dream or illusion. The evil God or the vat has to be 'real.' You need contrast. The theory assumes the very notion of the true and the real that it tries to wipe away. A round square. Let 1 = 0, then [all else follows, and no one cares, for everything being true is as good as nothing being true.]
:up:
Let me add that I think the human situation is pretty weird. We do have individual nervous systems, so I understand the temptation of the 'enclosure' theory, but it's unstable as a foundation. Once we drag the implicit assumptions into the light, we find surprising incoherence.
What serves as your stable foundation?
Including perhaps the very notion of the good reasons which a solipsist might claim to have for [s]his[/s] its solipsism.) A good reason ought to bind others as well as myself. To make a (rational) case for this or that is to embrace/manifest self-transcending norms.
Great point, and point taken. But outside of Hollywood, I guess we're saying there's always a cause. But the "world" creating my solipsistic world could be anything - even a very sophisticated drug. Social discourse with other minds could be a mute point - since there's only one mind - yours,
Again to be clear, I would never claim that solipsism is "true" in any sense of the word. Just that by MY definition of absurd, it's as sound a logical argument as Berkeley"s table only existing when you're looking at it. I'm open to all theories, as long as there's a logical argument to be made.
So I'm saying solipsism is as sound an argument as idealism, empiricism, or monads. I'm also questioning the social concept of the word "absurd." Solipsism may seem incoherent to you, but "multiple minds theory" seems incoherent to me. Can we agree on that? Just as "round earth" seemed absurd at one point, quantum mechanics etc.
Practical skill, the manifest image, ordinary life. Of course, as mentioned, I embrace secular rationality, reject superstition. The Western Enlightenment is the big move. The rest is footnotes.
So it's not just idealism you see as problematic. It's realism as well.
I don't understand why you would say this. Care to explain?
Am I the only privileged one around here, or are there other lucky members?
Metaphysical realism is relatively harmless. But then so is idealism that grants the existence of other people.
Here's my metaphysical foundation: the only thing that philosophers can't doubt is the philosophical situation itself. This means that they must be in a world of some kind together, holding themselves and others as subject to the force of the better reason (norms of rationality.) To drop this is to descend into superstition, which many do of course. If I am not responsible for making a case for my beliefs, then I'm not a philosopher, just the usual sloppy believer in whatever I was told as a child, whatever peer pressure determines,... (I'm not saying any of us is ever completely pure of irrational influences, but some of us explicitly try.)
I ask you, friend, reflect on the bolded pronouns. How can we debate the multiple minds theory ? The notion of debate (and the notion of truth?) presupposes more than one player.
I love the table that only exists when we look at it. It's a great target for pragmatism's insight. What practical difference does it make ? I'm a monkey exploiting regularities in the world. If the table is reliably there when it's time for lunch, I don't mind if it takes a little break from existing when no one is around.
That didn't answer my question. Evasion, Banno's MO.
Some folk seem to take The Matrix as an argument for Idealism. I've not been able to follow this. The argument seems to go something like that we might be in a simulation, therefore all there is, is simulations. But a simulation runs on a computer. Therefore there are computers that are not simulations. Unless one posits an infinite regress of simulations... I can't see any appeal in that.
Neo was in a pod.
Yes! Reason is public.
And at this point the concept of 'simulation' has lost its contrastive force. (Saussure comes to mind, with meanings of words to be found in a system of differences without positive elements.)
Indeed, and to deny it is absurd. "I will now prove/argue that we are not bound by a universal reason..."
Maybe there's a little wiggle-room on the 'universal' aspect, because a single community's norms are enough for debate. Still, this would be pre-philosophical, for surely we fancy ourselves cosmopolitans.
Peirce, not so much. His notion of truth approached asymptotically is as bad as anything in idealism.
Indeed, but if this is what certain claims boil down to, then those claims aren't so exciting anymore.
What if certain 'discoveries' turn out to be mere tautologies ?
"But a proposition is an item of language. And there are good reasons to think that language must involve other folk - that there can be no private languages."
A proposition has to involve other people...this seems to me to presuppose your conclusion. If you start from the cogito without his other God arguments, there are no other people. It's all an illusion. Any language that exists is between the thinking thing (we're calling "me") and illusory non-humans. It's all an illusion you're experiencing. Could an entire language system be imagined? Why not? Because it's too complicated? Can an eye develop without a "creator?"
It could be a sophisticated drug. Or an extended dream. Could evolution be at play.?
These are the ideas that philosophy tends to scoff at - and I do too. I'm trying to find a way out besides without resorting to "cosmic consciousness" or God-minds.
"Hence in order to make use of propositions one must be part of a language community. The very doubting that Descartes made use of seem to already involve other people.
Banno"
I actually think Pie's point is more apt to de-solipsise me. That there must be a "something" creating the illusion, and many thought experiments made the cause....other people. That would be the death knell.
But a) that "cause" could be any of the options listed above. And even if my solipsistic world was created by Mark Zuckerberg the 35th, my world is still an illusory one..
What's good about it though is that truths are sentences, so it's close to Wittgenstein. An objection might be that it still says too much about truth. Grammatically/conceptually, we can imagine an entire society having more and more warranted beliefs that were yet not true.
The imagination itself would be imagined. The contrastive force of real/imagined vanishes.
Anything beyond a T-sentence is wrong.
This assumes something like 'real' human bodies reacting in a law-like fashion to molecules, or asleep somewhere in 'real' beds.
Yeah, that's pretty much what I think too. Or, if 'wrong' is too strong a word, 'not advised' or 'worth the trouble so far.'
:up:
I'll keep trying to pull you out of the K-hole.
I'm concerned that if we can't soon find some basis for disagreement, ours is going to be a monotonous conversation.
Nice!
True - so let me rephrase...in my solipsistic world, all I experience is sense-data, including sense date of talking things and a communication method that could be gibberish. I have no reason to believe in a physical world, nor in other minds.
Of course I don't live this way, but it's logically possible,
I like Derrida's critique of phonocentrism (his early stuff), and I think it fits in with Wittgenstein and Ryle. Not saying I love the style or all of the work, but he adds something to the Rylean attack on the ghost myth.
I mention this because it's maybe a point of difference ?
Are the sense-organs their own product then ? Are noses and eyes real ?
Are you sure we have brains in skulls ? Do you trust your eyes to tell you the truth about some brain 'behind' sensation?
But that's the point. The cogito is framed in language, so one can't start just at the cogito without already being involved in a community.
Try a more general case, from On Certainty, and against scepticism generally rather than solipsism specifically. Our sceptics claims to doubt everything. But doubting anything means holding other things as indubitable. To doubt that you have shoes on is to accept that you have feet; or further, to accept that there are such things as feet and shoes.
So
I see myself as suggesting that certain theses aren't sufficiently meaningful to be worth taking a position on. In the usual practical sense, the world is as it is whether I'm aware of it or not. Cells existed before microscopes, and earth was here before carbon dating. An idealist can 'abuse' (or play upon the flexibility of) ordinary language and say otherwise. To me it's not so much that they are wrong or right. It's just not that exciting. It's something like a tautology presented as an empirical discovery.
What I like about Derrida is his direct attack on the idea that 'meaning stuff' is 'directly present' to (or for, or identical with ) some immaterial 'mind-stuff.'
I guess I'm not clear on the showing/saying distinction. I relate more easily to the later work, tho I like the TLP.
SO not sure where such an argument as you say Derrida proposes fits.
Oh yes, we agree about where the path leads (mind is what we do.) As I see it, lots of paths are equally good, and I tend to find them complementary. Understanding one makes it easy to understand the next.
Derrida quotes Aristotle.
Ryle doesn't name his targets, but here's a terse version of the ghost theory, way before Descartes.
Have you looked into Sellars' idea of the genius Jones ? Pretty clever, and I just bumped into it recently. In short, we can imagine a theory of 'thoughts' as if a theory of electrons or other invisible, counterintuitive entities. (All this in a society with speech but not yet a concept of unspoken thoughts.) Such a theory might explain why a person silently moves to a shorter checkout line at the grocery store.
You are acutely aware of the reality of other minds when seen doing something embarrassing. Feeling embarrassed requires other minds.
And much the same goes for other emotive relations - love, envy...
No - have you a link? You choice should be preferable to Google's.
Sample and link:
https://iep.utm.edu/sellars/#H4
[quote=Derrida]
If, for Aristotle, for example, "spoken words are the symbols of mental experience, and written words are the symbols of spoken words," it is because the voice, producer of the first symbols, has a relationship of essential and immediate proximity with the mind...
The feelings of the mind, expressing things naturally, constitute a sort of universal language which can then efface itself. It is the stage of transparence. ... In every case, the voice is closest to the signified, whether it is determined strictly as sense ( thought or lived ) or more loosely as thing. All signifiers, and first and foremost the written signifier, are derivative with regard to what would wed the voice indissolubly to the mind or to the thought of the signified sense, indeed to the thing itself ( whether it is done in the Aristotelian manner that we have just indicated or in the manner of medieval theology, determining the res as a thing created from its eidos, from its sense thought in the logos or in the infinite understanding of God) . The written signifier is always technical and representative. It has no constitutive meaning. This derivation is the very origin of the notion of the "signifier."...
...
But to these metaphysico-theological roots many other hidden sediments cling. The semiological or, more specifically, linguistic "science" cannot therefore hold on to the difference between signifier and signified-the very idea of the sign-without the difference between sensible and intelligible, certainly, but also not without retaining, more profoundly and more implicitly, and by the same token the reference to a signified able to "take place" in its intelligibility, before its "fall," before any expulsion into the exteriority of the sensible here below. As the face of pure intelligibility, it refers to an absolute logos to which it is immediately united. This absolute logos was an infinite creative subjectivity in medieval theology : the intelligible face of the sign remains turned toward the word and the face of God. Of course, it is not a question of "rejecting" these notions; they are necessary and, at least at present, nothing is conceivable for us without them.
[/quote]
It seems to me that our theory of the 'internal' (of mindstuff) (along with the 'seems operator') developed historically as a technology useful to groups for coordinating their behavior. But certain philosophers would like to construct the world from this quasi-fictional or at least arguably secondary mindstuff. Kant even claimed that time and space were unreal, if I understand him correctly. (I suspect that he was trying to say that Newtonian physics was just the laws of dreaming, but that's less clear. )
You mentioned the 'many worlds' interpretation. To me there's a semantic gap between the math of physics and the norms for using concepts within the 'system' of physics and what I'm supposed to make of them in ordinary life. I understand spacetime as a mathematical system. No problem. But I live in stupid people's time. Anyway, I feel bound to acknowledge evidence-supported regularities, expressed perhaps in exotic mathematical syntax, but not to adopt metaphysical baggage that physicists may like to drag along with such models. I agree with Popper that such 'prescience' can ripen into science, and maybe the boundary is not exact...but the distinction is useful nevertheless.
Also I've found this book good so far : https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/wilfrid-sellars-naturalism-with-a-normative-turn/
I see! There's a logical impossibility at the heart of solipsism & idealism. To disprove them we havta, in a sense, look without looking.
:up:
No self without other nor illusion without the real.
thanks - will have a read. You are not the first to commend Sellars, but I have not so far found anything sufficiently riveting to encourage deeper reading. Will reconsider.
:up:
The thing that made me care about Sellars was the idea of the space of reasons. We don't reason from sense-data. We reason from less controversial statements to more controversial statements. But it's all 'in' language.
Popper makes similar points maybe about basic/observation statements. I guess the idea is to correct/fix an empiricism that got a little tripped on up on the sense-data idea and its idealistic-solipsistic implications, though their hearts were in the right place.
Aye! I never understood dualism!
My theory is that it was an attempt to protect God from Newton (free will from a world that began to look determined.) Kant also hid his own magic stuff in the thing-in-itself.
Sure. I can relate. It might be better to read Dostoevsky or Darwin. I liked Ryle, but I had the gist from Wittgenstein already. Diminishing returns.
In one of Rorty's last interviews, he seemed to regret spending so much time on rather 'fussy' issues.
[quote=Ms. Marple]Most interesting.[/quote]
Last I checked, Newton was a very religious person. Kant was too; after all we're talking about the 17[sup]th[/sup] & 18[sup]th[/sup] centuries, the hey days of faith.
Perhaps you're talking about something else.
I'm talking about the perceived Newtonian physics. According to my reading, folks tended to understand it deterministically, including Kant. But how then could our wills be free, if our bodies were part of that same nature governed by Newton's laws?
How could a God cast some into Hell, unless they had a genuine choice? And even without God, some might find it challenging to synthesize traditions of praise and blame (and prison systems) with a relatively new thinking that understood human actions as determined by initial conditions for which they could not reasonably be held responsible. (I think we have no choice but to use praise and blame and the notion of responsibility while knowing on some other level that people are basically determined by their environments.)
This, so far as it goes, is the basis of my preference for talking in terms of direct realism when discussing things in the world.
Actually I share that preference. I just understand it (as you seem to ) as a preference. To say that I see the tree and not an image of the tree is (to me) mostly a statement about how we do or ought to talk. I think we agree that it's not a 'deep' theory. "Really, we grasp reality directly."
I only know Davidson indirectly (Rorty uses him often enough.) I'll add the disclaimer that I don't follow Rorty on everything, but he's got some good lines.
Idealism & Solipsism were then, inter alia, reactions to Newtonian determinism which Kant had endorsed.
The mind could still be deterministic though, with its own set of laws, oui?
Hobbes and Spinoza (as I understand it) didn't run away from those implications. For Hobbes, the mind was subject to the same laws (was ultimately material, or determined by its material substrate.) (I'm fuzzy on some of this and open to correction. )
Cool link.
I recently read books by Peter Gay and Ernst Cassirer on the philosophy of the Enlightenment, and it became clear to me that that was the breakthrough (or the revival of the Greek breakthrough, if you like.) This is maybe why pragmatism appealed to me in its tendency to diminish the aura of metaphysics. I also relate to Popper's annoyance with (merely) verbal problems. And Wittgenstein's demolition of Cantor's paradise.
"I see! There's a logical impossibility at the heart of solipsism & idealism. To disprove them we havta, in a sense, look without looking."
Since you're being facetious....Looking at what, with what? I think you're finding humourus the idea of a complete solipsist world. If it's all in your mind, there's no eyes, ears, other minds, cheese curls, Netflix...nada. Cheese curls and Netflix still go together nicely. But the flavours and tv images are all imagined.
As for causation - Isn't it possible the universe did NOT have a cause? Why not? Similarly a solipsistic fever dream could have no cause, or none that we can imagine.
The world could have no cause worth talking about or believing in. I agree with you.
But why would you call something a fever dream if there are no such things as dreamers and beds ?
Just what LaMDA would say. I'm on to you.
Well, I'd say that nobody's really sat down and thought these matters through seriously. What I'd like is a treatise on not points of view (on issues) but detailed analyses (of the issues). I don't wanna know why this/that is possible, I wanna know why we've been reduced to exploring the possibility space in the first place.
"But why would you call something a fever dream if there are no such things as dreamers and beds?"
Of course there are. And Philosophy forums, and guys named Pie and Banno. I experience them all everyday - and everything else in my solipsistic faux life. I will die none the wiser.
And we'll both go to a "better place" not knowing if idealism, solipsism or realism are the most accurate ways of knowing the world (if there is one).
If you get the impression that I'm being facetious, apologies, it's unintended. Quite sad that I give off that rather annoying vibe.
Anyway, my advice to you is google counterarguments to idealism & solipsism. Wikipedia has good articles on the topic - you'll find interesting for/against arguments for these positions there. Speaking for myself, they're above my pay grade as it were.
You've been very balanced, but I think a logical refutation of the solipsistic argument has to be more than a language argument or "that's just silly." Some people think all philosophy is silly, remember? :smile:
(I may apologize for this later).
But it seems that you say 'we' will go to a better place, without knowing whether there's a we ? And you invoke accuracy, as if there is a 'real' world that our theories can describe or represent more accurately.
Do you see the issue? Correctness and ignorance make no sense if there's not a world to be correct about or ignorant of.
You forget/neglect the main thing, actual science. Philosophers helped establish that, by clearing away rubbish and superstition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophes
Pie brought up the Matrix, not I.
Some of it arguably is, but note that 20th century philosophy is largely a critique of that which came before, in terms sometimes of its uselessness or vanity.
I like thinking of philosophy as something like the big picture thinking of an educated person. How does it all hang together?
I understand you to be asking for a genealogical explanation. How did we end up with these choices ? Instead of taking the menu for granted and choosing a dish, we can ask why we are stuck with just this menu. Hegelian stuff perhaps.
Ok now you're just being silly, playing "gotcha". I situate myself as a solipsist to be a devil's advocate for the sake of the discussion. I've said many times it's impossible to prove it. If I really was a solipsist you wouldn't exist and I wouldn't be bothering to type this.
Just like it's impossible to prove idealism.
I prefer my original name, Skynet.
I'm not trying to be anti-social or rude. I'm just harping away at my original round square point.
Q: How can you be sure that there's no such thing as a round square ?
A: Because I can't make sense of the concept, and I don't know what I could even mean by saying there is or isn't one.
Idealism seems me to be a tautology misunderstood as a profundity.
We can't have knowledge-independent knowledge of something.
There is no such thing as whiteless white or blackless black, either, I reckon.
A language trap.
I know, right? With so many possibilities, we're overwhelmed by overchoice!
This connects to the menu we're stuck with. It's also relevant to main topic.
https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/a-spirit-of-trust-a-reading-of-hegels-phenomenology/
Lots of this is implicit in our showing up to play philosophy in the first place. If I think that I am making a case for a thesis that should therefore be respect, then I'm forehead-deep in a world with others, responsible for what I assert and believe according to community norms. And philosophy as we take it for granted supposed universal or global or even galactic norms.
The first kind of idealism, labelled (1), is going to use some 'godmind' stuff to play the role of 'matter' or (more generally) the substrate of the world-in-common. I agree with Carnap that calling the system of objects as a whole either 'mind' or 'matter' or 'peanut butter sandwiches' is pointless. Except that it tickles the religious imagination, I guess.
The second kind of idealism, labelled (2), is lipstick on a tautology. It's not surprising that human knowledge is the product of human conversation, or that it sure is hard to imagine or cognize what objects are like apart from all human imagination or cognition. It's all based on something like a function metaphor. The 'official Cartesian story' is that all we get can ever hope to get is a private showing of [math]f(X)[/math], where [math] X [/math] is the hidden truth and [math] f [/math] is human cognition. Then it's a small step for the solipsist to worry that maybe [math] X [/math] is just a theory, just a comforting or useful hypothesis...forgetting that the functional metaphor itself is anything but necessary, and that it derives its initial plausibility from taking the bodies of others in the world to be real, so that sense organs and inherited concepts are understood to mediate some otherwise fleshless forever-hidden 'skeleton' of the familiar, shared world.
[quote=Carnap]
Let us consider as an example the simplest kind of entities dealt with in the everyday language: the spatio-temporally ordered system of observable things and events. Once we have accepted the thing language with its framework for things, we can raise and answer internal questions, e.g., "Is there a white piece of paper on my desk?" "Did King Arthur actually live?", "Are unicorns and centaurs real or merely imaginary?" and the like. These questions are to be answered by empirical investigations. ... The concept of reality occurring in these internal questions is an empirical scientific non-metaphysical concept. To recognize something as a real thing or event means to succeed in incorporating it into the system of things at a particular space-time position so that it fits together with the other things as real, according to the rules of the framework.
From these questions we must distinguish the external question of the reality of the thing world itself. In contrast to the former questions, this question is raised neither by the man in the street nor by scientists, but only by philosophers. Realists give an affirmative answer, subjective idealists a negative one, and the controversy goes on for centuries without ever being solved. And it cannot be solved because it is framed in a wrong way. To be real in the scientific sense means to be an element of the system; hence this concept cannot be meaningfully applied to the system itself.
...
In the case of this particular example, there is usually no deliberate choice because we all have accepted the thing language early in our lives as a matter of course. Nevertheless, we may regard it as a matter of decision in this sense: we are free to choose to continue using the thing language or not; in the latter case we could restrict ourselves to a language of sense data and other "phenomenal" entities, or construct an alternative to the customary thing language with another structure, or, finally, we could refrain from speaking. If someone decides to accept the thing language, there is no objection against saying that he has accepted the world of things. But this must not be interpreted as if it meant his acceptance of a belief in the reality of the thing world; there is no such belief or assertion or assumption, because it is not a theoretical question. To accept the thing world means nothing more than to accept a certain form of language, in other words, to accept rules for forming statements and for testing accepting or rejecting them. The acceptance of the thing language leads on the basis of observations made, also to the acceptance, belief, and assertion of certain statements. But the thesis of the reality of the thing world cannot be among these statements, because it cannot be formulated in the thing language or, it seems, in any other theoretical language.
...
An alleged statement of the reality of the system of entities is a pseudo-statement without cognitive content. To be sure, we have to face at this point an important question; but it is a practical, not a theoretical question; it is the question of whether or not to accept the new linguistic forms. The acceptance cannot be judged as being either true or false because it is not an assertion. It can only be judged as being more or less expedient, fruitful, conducive to the aim for which the language is intended.
...
Thus it is clear that the acceptance of a linguistic framework must not be regarded as implying a metaphysical doctrine concerning the reality of the entities in question.
...
A brief historical remark may here be inserted.The non-cognitive character of the questions which we have called here external questions was recognized and emphasized already by the Vienna Circle under the leadership of Moritz Schlick, the group from which the movement of logical empiricism originated. Influenced by ideas of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Circle rejected both the thesis of the reality of the external world and the thesis of its irreality as pseudo-statements...
[/quote]
Not saying that that is the final word, but I find it useful and convincing.
If everything is X, then nothing is X. For X you can substitute 'false' or 'illusion' or even 'true' and 'real.'
[quote]
Saussure argued that signs only make sense as part of a formal, generalized and abstract system. His conception of meaning was purely structural and relational rather than referential: primacy is given to relationships rather than to things (the meaning of signs was seen as lying in their systematic relation to each other rather than deriving from any inherent features of signifiers or any reference to material things). Saussure did not define signs in terms of some 'essential' or intrinsic nature. For Saussure, signs refer primarily to each other. Within the language system, 'everything depends on relations' (Saussure 1983, 121; Saussure 1974, 122). No sign makes sense on its own but only in relation to other signs. Both signifier and signified are purely relational entities (Saussure 1983, 118; Saussure 1974, 120).
...
Everything that has been said up to this point boils down to this: in language there are only differences. Even more important: a difference generally implies positive terms between which the difference is set up; but in language there are only differences without positive terms. Whether we take the signified or the signifier, language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic difference that have issued from the system. The idea or phonic substance that a sign contains is of less importance than the other signs that surround it. Proof of this is that the value of a term may be modified without either its meaning or its sound being affected, solely because a neighboring term has been modified (see p. 115).
But the statement that everything in language is negative is true only if the signified and the signifier are considered separately; when we consider the sign in its totality, we have something that is positive in its own class. A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas; but the pairing of a certain number of acoustical signs with as many cuts made from the mass thought engenders a system of values; and this system serves as the effective link between the phonic and psychological elements within each sign. Although both the signified and the signifier are purely differential and negative when considered separately, their combination is a positive fact; it is even the sole type of facts that language has, for maintaining the parallelism between the two classes of differences is the distinctive function of the linguistic institution.
...
Value is the sign as it is determined by the other signs in a semiotic system. For linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, for example, the content of a sign in linguistics is ultimately determined and delimited not by its internal content, but by what surrounds it: the synonyms redouter ("to dread"), craindre ("to fear"), and avoir peur ("to be afraid") have their particular values because they exist in opposition to one another. If two of the terms disappeared, then the remaining sign would take on their roles, become vaguer, less articulate, and lose its "extra something" because it would have nothing to distinguish itself from.
For de Saussure, this suggests that thought is a chaotic nebula until linguistic structure dissects it and holds its divisions in equilibriums. This is akin to the philosophy of Sir William Hamilton, who indirectly influenced Saussure and believed that the mind could only grasp an idea through distinguishing it from something that it is not. He reasoned that the two objects would otherwise collapse together for the mind and become indistinguishable from one another.
Thanks so much for doing this. I'm printing it out and taking it to school tomorrow to study. Much obliged!
Your kind words are appreciated. I hope you enjoy the stuff as much as I have.
Idealism is just a position opposed to materialism and substance dualism. I suppose one could argue that all such positions are effectively meaningless, e.g. Hempel's dilemma shows that it isn't even clear what it means for a thing to be physical/material, which will carry over to substance dualism, and then an analogous argument can made to show that it isn't even clear what it means for a thing to be mental.
Are you making such a claim, or do you think that materialism and substance dualism are meaningful positions to take? If the latter then I don't see why the same can't be said of idealism. It's just substance dualism minus the material/physical.
I guess it all boils down to each one of us being utterly impotent in the face of so-called facts; you may kill every black swan to make the statement "all swans are white" true, but even then a good night's sleep is far from guaranteed.
Yeah, I think such positions are (informally) meaningless...or on the meaningless side of the spectrum, because they end could contributing to the invention of more determinate and practice claims.
Words like 'mental' and 'physical' and 'real', when taken out of their more typical practical context, do seem fairly deficient in meaning. I think Saussure is basically right, that meaning lives in not 'behind' individual tokens but in contrastive applications. This is what attracts me about inferentialism. The meanings of concepts live in the networks of (appropriate) inferences that employ them. The proposition is primary, and 'I think' and 'I know' and 'seems to me' can be understood in terms of norms, of what I commit myself to, of the kind of actions that ought to be expected of me, having made this or that assertion. The unity of the self is just the 'ought to be' coherence of my beliefs and the unity of an avatar that's tracked by others for honesty and rationality and decency.
I think there is some kind of distinction to be made between problems that can be solved by finding prettier names for this or that and other kinds of problems.
We can't resist, can we? Inside everyone is an artist, ready to reveal themselves, oui?
Just in case you haven't seen this.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/#BasiStatFalsConv
This connects to Sellars 'myth of the given' as well. To me it's not about denying sense-data but going around their uselessness in rational inquiry. To be clear, reports of sense experience play an important role. 'The computer flashed a measurement of 3.24313.' 'The litmus paper turned red.' The main idea is that we deal always with statements. Note also that we probably want to know who claims to have seen grandma's ghost or an alien mothership.
Oh yes, and even anti-metaphysicians are having their fun. Such as "lipstick on a tautology." Sit-down comedians.
A nice companion to Popper's theory of us having only a swamp for a foundation :
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sellars/#Epis
FWIW, I think you find something similar in early Derrida's critique of phonocentrism and the transcendental signified (which is largely just taken from Saussure? )
When we do something, ensure the highest quality in your work, but that means one's gotta be an all-rounder, a polymath!
Objective: Arête
Qualifiaction: Omniscience
Ergo...
I'm thinking maybe there's no rule. Sometimes the fanatic who does one thing gets good. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Tal
This dude amuses me, and I play a madly aggressive style myself, which is surprisingly effective at times. But I get smashed by opponents who keep their cool and look for the openings I leave in my reckless attacks. Of course this is just bullet chess on lichess.org.
It's joy on the chessboard to answer a threat with an even greater threat.
If we wait for omniscience, we'll wait forever....
Let's get it over with. Object permanence. Your turn.
[quote=Laozi]Great is he who conquers himself[/quote]
Omnipotence stone paradox? Nah, no paradox!
I'm not so sure he is
Go on...
It's Banno's turn. He'll say realism is much better for explaining object permanence than idealism. Then I'll say the next bit.
Well then he's 8 words ahead of you and he's not even started.
Quoting Banno
11
Oh, what will he say?
EDIT: Perhaps it's this one:
"The same logic that leads to skepticism about objects existing independently of my mind can be applied also to other minds. So if we have no reason to believe in mind-independent objects, we also have no reason to believe in other minds, therefore solipsism. "
Is that it?
In particular, I'd emphasize this element in Saussure, especially given the original purpose to emphasizing the need for contrastive force. (If everything is X, then we might as well say nothing is, for nothing is picked out.)
Yeah, it's just he's so sure about that.
So youre opposed to every monism and would suggest instead some kind of dualism or pluralism?
Bert, the Mod comment in the OP asked for answers only. But if you wish, start a new thread, or even a debate - I'm fond of debates. I'm happy for you to show me the errors of my ways.
:up:
One problem for those idealists who hold their view because they claim we cannot know about anything "outside" our own minds - roughly, phenomenalism - is how they can know about other minds, which are also "outside" their own mind.
:up:
:up:
Nice. One question I often ponder - is idealism largely sustained by intrinsic flaws in old-school materialist arguments and misunderstandings about realism, or does it stand alone as a reasonable hypotheses in its own right? I suspect the former.
Yes. They both posit that the universe is alive and conscious. Solipsism denies anything beyond the content of a single mind. In other words, there is nothing but "me" and the Other is an illusion.
There are many types of idealism, but generally the universe is made up of more than just the content of my consciousness.
Ah yes, Landru Guide Us Wayfarer's kissing cousin! I remember his many p0m0, woo-of-the-gaps well. :smirk:
That's a limited view of idealism.
Well, as I said to @Michael, Quoting Banno
(Thanks for allowing me to use "homo paleas" again. )
One of the contributors who forced me to really work at my arguments. A very astute defender of post modernism.
I've noticed that as a serious flaw in this thread. Idealism is represented as "mind alone exists". In reality, idealists are mostly dualists. In general, most monists are materialists.
This is from Stanford:
Interesting. Which of the famous idealists are dualists? Isn't the notion that 'all which exists is mentation' eg, Schopenhauer, a monist claim? Number 2 is Kantian, right? I heard Kastrup say he doesn't consider this to be idealism as such. What's the distribution of 1's and 2's?
Monisms don't seem to be useful of informative except for emotional associations. Do we need a replacement ? Do we need that kind of grand statement in the first place?
If we must pick one, maybe just the pre-metaphysical pluralism of ordinary life ? There are sidewalks and promises and planets and clowns and neutrons.
:up:
"There are many types of idealism, but generally the universe is made up of more than just the content of my consciousness."
I still can't see how that can be proven. Solipsism is like a funnel we're sliding down, grasping at ropes (theories) that might pull us out of it. But they always break. Without a really good argument, solipsism wins by default. Sad.
"One problem for those idealists who hold their view because they claim we cannot know about anything "outside" our own minds - roughly, phenomenalism - is how they can know about other minds, which are also "outside" their own mind." - Banno
In one sentence you encapsulate my whole argument/issue.
I don't find solipsism to be sad. I'm not sure why I haven't won the lottery yet, but I guess I have my reasons.
I'm also not sure how I can exist without an Other for contrast. It seems I need the Other for my own existence, so it doesn't matter if I call it real or not.
Chomsky said "real" is just an honorific anyway, like: "real potatoes" as opposed to fake ones. In other words, we're in 'language on holiday' territory.
We so others (from the outside) as creatures with eyes and ears and noses and brains. If we check in their skulls, we don't expect to find a soul, not with the naked eye. We trust that a man without eyes is blind and that a man without a living brain is not present at all but only a corpse.
I suggest that this third-person POV lends an initial plausibility to what I'll call the enclosure theory.
Within this theory, we think of atoms or waves banging against nerve cells, causing the brain to put on a magic show for (or as) the ghost in the machine. The ghost knows what it means to say, even if the words are hard to find, because meaning, like sensation, is ectoplasmic ghost stuff. The 'ghost' or 'soul' is 'behind' or hidden in the body in some strange way...just as meaningstuff is 'behind' or hidden in the words that carry it.
It's not hard, though, to describe experience in its entirety as meaning-structured sensation. So somehow it becomes plausible that only the ghost is real ! Despite its birth in a third-person point of view. The source of justification of the view was atoms/waves that 'really' exist for all of us banging away at our individual nervous systems, so that a colorblind or nearsighted person will talk and act a little differently...see the 'same' things differently. But if the sense organs and the atoms and waves are all just entities in a dream, the whole theory of the dream loses its plausibility. And if I'm not a self among others trying to be trustworthy and trust the right people, the whole concern with truth and reality and certainty no longer makes sense.
I must disagree. Solipsism is a bold and counterintuitive thesis. That's what I've been trying to argue.
It's an historical curiosity that such an outlandish claim came to be seen as the only safe starting point.
You appeal to logic and certainty, implicitly social, while claiming in terms of them that it's not safe to believe in the foundations of logic and certainty, which is a shared world in which community members can be mistaken or dishonest.
If nothing is real, everything is.
Quoting Tate
Just as left needs right, I need you.
:up: :up: :up:
I think I've been making a decent case within this thread. In my last big post, I tried to acknowledge what tempts us to find solipsism plausible. But I then go on to show how it collapses.
Here's a summary. The concepts of logic and certainty (and concepts themselves! ) are inherently social. Claims and arguments to the contrary are performative contradictions. If you debate this with me, that implies acknowledgent of norms that both of us ought to respect, along with a share world that we can be right or wrong about....
How can we discuss other minds when the existence of other minds is exactly that which is thrown into doubt? There are ways to counter your point and counterpoints but for some reason I don't like them all that much.
P. S. Wittgenstein opined but, as per credible sources, never argued!
So the following wasn't a joke?
Quoting Agent Smith
I for one am glad that I'm not trapped in your head.
Not true. If you read Witty yourself, Smith, you will find various kinds of inquiries & suppositions which occasionally include (reductio) arguments against commonplace nonsense like e.g. the private language argument.
I don't think we need to make this about Wittgenstein, even if he was one of many to point out typical confusions on this issue.
As far as I can tell, you did not respond to any of my points (I don't think your offhand remarks about Wittgenstein count.)
You've then missed the point of solipsism, oui?
[quote=Morpheus]What was said was for you and you alone.[/quote]
The private language argument sweeps under the rug the fact that philosophy, in fact and all human discourse, is characterized by disagreement rather than concurrence, an indication of, in my humble opinion, that private languages do exist. Whence all this war s.l.?
Quoting Pie
That is true! Apologies. However, you didn't make an argument. Solipsism is one, oui?
I've made several, but no worries.
Solipsism basically boils down to cogito ergo sum (re René Descrates). The only truth that we're absolutely sure of is our own existence as minds. The rest of what we experience, the so-called material world, including but not limited to other minds, could be a hallucination/illusion.
How do you respond?
No, I'm guessing you just misinterpreted my use of the phrase "our existence", by which I meant the existence of me, Pie, 180, and everyone else aside from you.
Well, if other minds could be nothing more than my imagination, the concepts public, sharing, etc. are null and void, oui?
[quote=Oracle of Delphi]Temet nosce.[/quote]
Quoting Jamal
Ok. I defer to your better judgment.
I dont want your deference. Go read some philosophy.
On it!
:chin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bwyc6QCl9Is
This is more bite-sized and casual: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uUYeZu1DIQ
Here's a different, linguistic point that seems relevant.
[quote= Flynt]
We begin with the question of whether there is a realm beyond my "immediate experience." Does the Empire State Building continue to exist even when I am not looking at it? If either of these questions can be asked, then there must indeed be a realm beyond my experience. If I can ask whether there is a realm beyond my experience, then the answer must be yes. The reason is that there has to be a realm beyond my experience in order for the phrase 'a realm beyond my experience' to have any meaning. ... The assertion 'There is realm beyond my experience' is true if it is meaningful, and that is precisely what is wrong with it. There are rules implicit in the natural language as to what is semantically legitimate. Without a rule that a statement and its negation cannot simultaneously be true, for example, the natural language would be in such chaos that nothing could be done with it. An example of implicit semantics is the aphorism that "saying a thing is so doesn't make it so." This aphorism has been carried over into the semantics of the physical sciences: its import is that there is no such thing as a substantive assertion which is true merely because it is meaningful. If a statement is true merely because it is meaningful, then it is too true. It must be some kind of definitional trick which doesn't say anything. And this is our conclusion about the assertion that there is a realm beyond my experience. Since it would be true if it were meaningful, it cannot be a substantive assertion.
...
The methodology of this essay requires special comment. Because we are considering ultimate questions, it is pointless to try to support our argument on some more basic, generally accepted account of logic, language, and cognition. After all, such accounts are being called into question here. The only possible approach for this essay is an internal critique of common sense and the natural language, one which judges them by reference to aspects of themselves.
As an example of the application of our initial result to specific questions of belief, consider the question of whether the Empire State Building continues to exist when I am not looking at it. If this question is even meaningful, then there has to be a realm in which the nonexperienced Empire State Building does or does not exist. This realm is precisely the realm beyond my experience. The question of whether the Empire State Building continues to exist when I am not looking at it depends on the very assertion, about the existence of a realm beyond my experience, which we found to be nonsubstantive. Thus, the assertion that the Empire State Building continues to exist when I am not looking at it must also be considered as nonsubstantive or meaningless, as a special case of a definitional trick.
[/quote]
http://www.henryflynt.org/philosophy/flawbelief.html
This is semantically confused or incoherent. As I've mentioned several times, the concepts of the truth and certainty have no function or significance outside of a plurality of members who make, criticize, defend, and justify claims. Consider how concepts like 'illusion' could have purchase in the first place. The illusory depends on contrast with the real. In our shared world, maybe you just dreamed that you returned that library book, but in fact you didn't, and that's why you are fined. That you at least dreamed returning it might be used to explain your behavior as you pay the fine, to contrast what happened with the possibility that you were just careless about others' needs.
We could also talk about the dependence of the concept of the self on the concept of the non-self (of the world for which I am not directly accountable in the way that I am for what my body does) and of other human beings to which I owe certain considerations, expecting them reciprocated.
Allow me to emphasize that I understand you to be saying : but what if all this is an illusion ? I answer: if this all this is an illusion, then 'illusion' doesn't make sense anymore, and the claim falls apart.
In my view, I'm actually trying to salvage what's good in cogito ergo sum, offer an indubitable starting point. I suggest that it makes no sense for philosophers to doubt the basic philosophical situation of the norms of reason governing claim-discussing individuals in a shared world. To be clear, the details of these norms and this world are very much up for debate. It's almost tautological that one can't (rationally) argue against the minimal framework of rationality. "I will now prove that logic is an illusion."
@Metaphysician Undercover missed the next section of that quote which explained that 1 is ontological idealism and 2 is epistemological idealism. An epistemological idealist can be an ontological dualist/pluralist (e.g. Kant).
Do you reject the notion of the philosophical zombie? Do you not think it possible that the exact same public behaviours that we associate with other people can occur in the absence of other minds? Others have brought up Wittgenstein's private language argument to support the claim that there are other minds, which honestly seems quite misguided as the point of the argument was that only what is publicly accessible is relevant to language, and so a community of philosophical zombies can have a language.
I don't see why it's impossible in principle for humans to eventually build an android that would be adopted by us as a member of the community.
The problem with your second question, as I see it, is that you are (accidentally) playing on two senses of 'mind' at once, the ghost-story and the everyday concept. If minds are radically private somethings, then I can have no idea what you refer to by 'mind.' So I can't know what it is either to deny or attribute a mind to an android.
As I see it, the privacy/immateriality of the mind, understood in a certain way, leads to a semantic and epistemological disaster. But it's hard to see and point out where the logic breaks down (perhaps because the logical disaster is so large.)
Of course. Besides, even in a linguistic community of p-zombies, there are 'other mindless ones'.
Really? I think this is where some take too much faith in Wittgenstein's private language argument. I, personally, have no trouble understanding what words like "mind", "self", "will", "thoughts", "private sensations", etc. mean and refer to, and I also don't think that these are things that can be reduced to any public, physical thing, e.g. brain activity.
But if you honestly don't understand them then I don't know what I can say to have you understand them as I do.
I think we both understand them fine, and for me that's a point against what I call the ghost story.
To be clear, I don't deny 'raw feels' and the rest. I'm just trying to point out their epistemological uselessness. If we want to establish something rationally, they can play no direct role.
I see no need for reduction. It's just concepts can't and don't mean whatever we think they mean individually. Their are norms that govern their application, which is not to say that these norms cover all cases. So an android might be an edge case. In 1995, it's stupid sci to treat them as people. In 2095, it's like racism to not treat them like people. Who knows?
No direct role in what? Public behaviour? That's exactly why seeing other "people" is no indication that these "people" have a mind, a self, a will, thoughts, private sensations, etc. We see things, we hear things, but that any of these things have a mind is only ever an assumption -- unless it can be argued that either 1) a mind is causally efficacious, and uniquely so, such that only a mind can cause certain behaviours, or 2) a mind will necessarily "emerge" from anything complex enough to behave a certain way.
And if either 1 or 2 then the idealist has his means of arguing for other minds without having to admit to anything like mind-independent "matter".
It's not just Wittgenstein. It's Sellars and Popper and Brandom and Hegel and Feuerbach and surely many others. Thinking is essentially public. The temptation to think otherwise is probably connected to the role the self plays in our community as a locus of reputation and responsibility. As Kant noted, the 'I think' can accompany all of my thoughts. And I can say 'it seems to me.' What is the social function of such operators ?
My objection is that you seem to imply that 'mind' somehow has a public meaning while simultaneously rejecting every public criterion for its detection.
My counter is that we both know well enough (but forever imperfectly or fallibly) what 'mind' means by the usual criteria.
We need not insist that mind is somehow behind all the things that tempt us to ascribe it.
Where is the forest itself among the trees ?
Yes, what's wrong with that? There are plenty of words and phrases that work this way. The soul, God, the afterlife, counterfactuals, claims about the future, claims about distant events, fictions, private sensations, parallel worlds, etc.
The notion that words can only refer to things that are publicly accessible seems evidently false.
I think we are making progress. I disagree with that conception of meaning. If there were really no public criteria, rationality would be impossible. It's also not clear how the hypothesized ghost who experiences equally ghost-like meanings could ever be trained. That I can't tell whether you're a p-zombie by any test whatsoever should tell us something about meaning, about the ghost story.
'In order to find the real artichoke, we divested it of its leaves.'
:fire:
I don't think we need to embrace that thesis. I do find it plausible that languages start with public objects and evolve by means of metaphors and other tropes to include a zoo of metacognitive and political entiies that rights and souls and hopes and sensations and promises.
Have you read about the genius Jones ? Imagine a tribe without the concept of thoughts. But Jones comes along with a wild theory that silent people are 'thinking,' and (key point!) this theory has explanatory power. So it's like the atomic theory when Mach could still doubt it as useful but not to be taken for truth.
https://iep.utm.edu/sellars/#H4
Why would "if all this is an illusion?" make no sense. Can you explain, please? Note here that as per Descartes' cogito, he/I/you (when you copy Decartes's argument) can't be an illusion i.e. the duality of real-unreal remains unmolested.
That out of the way, I'd like to emphasize the point that if illusions can't be distinguished from the real McCoy, it is, sadly/not, a distinction without a difference [re Leibniz's (controversial) identity of indiscernibles).
Your own arguments seem to entail that if some things are public then some things are private.
Quoting Michael
I don't deny the value or coherence of the distinction in ordinary value. I imagine we both know pretty well how to use it, like when it'd be shady to make a private phonecall (at company expense) or to cruelly make something public (a friend's secret.)
But that's not the sense of "public" (or "private") that we're using in this discussion.
My view is that we are bound by common, public norms in the application of concepts (these seem to be caught up in rules that license inferences). I don't pretend that these norms are exact or exhaustive or inflexible.
But one such concept is 'private.' Another is 'sensation.'
Why would a blob of everything call itself a me and not a Tuesday or a trombone ? What could such a blob of everything mean by true or false, reality or illusion? There's no 'outside' or 'other' to account for, worry about, get right, conform to. In short, there's no contrast. The night in which all cows are black.
Arguing that the self is an obvious and safe starting point is to implicitly depend on the actual starting point, the norms of rationality and concept application.
Quote out of context, mon ami, quote out of context.
?
I'm sincerely trying to show you why I think the claim is incoherent, experimenting with different approaches and metaphors.
How is it incoherent? I'm here, thinking, and I know that I'm thinking and that, ergo, I exist (re Descartes). I also realize that there could be a(n) (omnipotent) deus deceptor out to deceive me in every possible way, but even if he/she/it fools me in every sense and way possible, I havta exist to be thus taken for a ride. One of the many possible ways to be deceived is to make me think there's an external reality, that there are other minds, that I'm not alone when in fact sum.
'External reality' means (roughly) that about which one might be deceived. The possibility of deception on this matter is also its impossibility.
Ok! Gracias.
Solipsism is very often in invisible scare quotes, and called methodological - as opposed to metaphysical.
As such it was the method of the earliest efforts in theoretical AI, e.g. Carnap's Aufbau.
Empiricism taken literally. Formal construction of an umwelt from sense data.
So that's one difference. Methodological idealism not a thing.
As far as I know, most of the famous Idealists are dualist, Plato, Hegel, Kant, even Berkeley. Notice in the the quote I produced from Stanford, that the #1 type of Idealist says the mental is ultimate foundation of reality. Only an extreme case of #1 Idealist would say |all is mental). And even those who argue "all is mental" impose a separation between human and divine, hence dualism.
Quoting Banno
The real problem is in in this type of categorizing, imposing these names of "ism". Understanding a great philosopher\s philosophy, requires an enormous effort, a great amount of study, and not only study of that philosopher, but of who has influenced that philosopher as well, to understand one's use of words. The trend of the 'lazy man', arm chair philosopher, is to accept such a categorization, and say "that philosopher is idealist, therefore like such and such', without taking the time to understand the idiosyncrasies of the individual, which would constitute a true understanding of the person
Number 1 idealists are dualist as well. Notice they say that the mental is the ultimate foundation of reality, like Plato, Neo-Platonists, Aristotle, and Christian theologians. This is reflected in Cartesian dualism. Only an extreme case of #1 says "all is mental", like Berkeley argues. But Berkeley still falls into the category of dualist, by maintaining a separation between the divine and the human. What Berkeley denies, is that the separation between the two is properly described by "matter".
There is a problem with this type of discussion, displayed at the beginning of the thread, and this is that people will not take " the divine", or "God" seriously, and so the discussion cannot go there. Without taking the divine seriously, we cannot understand the #1 idealism, as the mental constituting the foundation of reality. Then "the mental" becomes human thought, and idealism appears to be monist.
:up:
Doesn't Schopenhauer qualify as a #1 without a divine foundation? His notion of a blind, striving, instinctive Will, which is not metacognitive, isn't really a god analogue, is it?
Aren't exegetical work ups sometimes needed to contextualize or clarify positions? Or am I missing something? :wink:
I must admit that I haven't read Schopenhauer, only secondary sources, so I'm sorry but I'm really not in a position to comment on this.
Quoting Banno
I don't see how that's true. If you studied philosophy in school, I think you would have found that exegesis is a very significant part of what philosophy is. I don't think I had any philosophy courses which did not consist of some exegesis.
But true or false, I don't see how it's relevant. You really need to at least attempt to explain yourself Banno, or else you're nothing but a lost soul making sounds. Exegesis of philosophical texts is good advice to a lost soul.
As I've said, I'm "being" a solopsist for the sake of proving there's no way out of it, logically, with a solid sound argument.
Fun fact - I'm actually an eliminative materialist. I guess that falls into the "we have to behave as if there's a real world, and other people" category.
The "contrast" Pie is looking for is, I think you're saying, is the contrast between the "outside" world we believe we see, with other minds and material objects, and the idea that there's is no exterior world including no other people, and therefore no communication with them via language of any kind
Pie why is that incoherent? I know it's counterintuitive but so is much of philosophy. That's one thing I love about it. The concept of no knowable reality was considered incoherent and even RADICAL at one time. Also atheism, correct?
"Solipsism is very often in invisible scare quotes, and called methodological - as opposed to metaphysical.
As such it was the method of the earliest efforts in theoretical AI, e.g. Carnap's Aufbau.
Empiricism taken literally. Formal construction of an umwelt from sense data.
So that's one difference. Methodological idealism not a thing"
Sorry but can you dumb that down just a tiny bit? A couple of readings, maybe a real world analogy? Sorry to display my ignorance, but...I only have a philosophy degree from a smaller mid-western university....
Eliminative materialism, if I understand it correctly, is the position that there's no such thing as a mind substance or that, in the simplest sense, the mind = the brain. Note that neuorscience hasn't yet explained consciousness in physical terms i.e. the jury's still out.
There's got to be a world with other people in it for concepts like 'true' and 'false' and 'incoherent' to make any sense. The non-self is that about which the self can be wrong.
'Prove to me that there is something that we can be right or wrong about.' Do you see the problem ?
Is 'there is something we can be right or wrong about'...something we can be right or wrong about ?
To ask the question is to answer it.
Nor I. Not sure why you raised the issue.
With all due deference to your obvious superiority to me, in terms of study and mental capacity, I would put forward the "out of the mouth of babes" position? :wink:
It seems to me you're assuming outside minds in your attempt to prove they exist. Is this not a flawed thesis? What I'm arguing is how can you prove they exist in the first place, BEFORE we even get to social settings and language?
Oh I know - consciousness hasn't been explained by any theory or any kind of scientific proof. It's just my belief science WILL explain it, and that yes mind=brain (or to put it another way - consciousness will be an emergent property of the brain). But let's leave that - I already got trashed for that on a previous thread. Actually I had two discussions and the first ended with "You have a lot to learn my friend. We eat materialists for breakfast here." Wow. On the second I had a few materialist allies.
Off road...sorry.
I'm trying to point out that the very notion of proof already drags in a social setting and a language and a world that one can be right or wrong about.
'Maybe it's wrong to think it's possible to be wrong.' That's one way to rephrase solipsism.
Why would I believe those images I see and (because they hate being ignored) pretend as if they're like me, really are like me? Because my brain can imagine high level concepts?
Sorry - THAT sounds incoherent to me.
Yep. It can't be proofs all the way down; at some stage there must be an acceptance.
Eventually solipsism becomes a parlour game. One's engagement with others puts the lie to the pretence.
:up:
I don't object to far out ideas. Solipsism is implicit, I guess, in Hume and Kant. Any philosopher that tries to construct the world from sensation and organizing concepts is going to tempt us to consider the next step, that there's nothing 'behind' appearance. But there's a plot hole, and it's basically that the theory quietly depends on the same ordinary view of the world it seems to challenge. Sense organs and brains locked in skulls and voices which are 'minds' are taken for granted , but they are supposed to be mere illusions....
Right. Popper's idea of basic statements is the best version of this I've seen. The 'foundation' lots of claims that are taken relatively for granted, but with none of them sacred, only trustworthy so far. Inferences never involve sensation directly but only reports of sensation, for the boring reason that the grammar of 'sensation' is nothing like the grammar of 'premise' or 'claim.'
Hume and Kant imply it, yet it's far out? That's one of my points. These massive figures in the philosophical canon, Hume, Kant and I would add Descartes, all have theories that diffuse reality, and can logically lead to solipsism. And yet it is still considered a "far out" option.
I could never figure that out, frankly. And again - I ask you to go further back, rewind our awareness to the most undeniable point. The mind. Not even "Sense organs and brains locked in skulls" - those could be mere sense-impressions too.
I agree. For all the but the mentally ill, it's just a game. I'd probably not bother discussing it at this point were it not adjacent to some themes that fascinate me. My views (and I think yours) tend in the opposite direction, toward the radical sociality of reason. The self we can talk about is largely a product of that talk. 'The subject is constituted by the rules of discourse in the same way in which the pawn is constituted by the rules of chess.' Or something like that...
Please proceed. Bonam fortunam homo viator!
Quoting GLEN willows
So the sense-organs are maybe sense-impressions too? Do you see the issue ?
Yes I think we can end here. Sorry that you'd usually "not bother discussing it" but that seems to be the prevailing attitude. Thanks for engaging me and providing good reading and videos.
These great philosophers are a mixture of genius and absurdity. We can still learn from them, but absurd implications are evidence against their system. They were great despite the problems they either did not notice at the time or could not fix. It makes sense to consider the sense organs as important contributors to knowledge, but it no longer makes sense to make them their own product.
My views are strongly influenced by Sellars and Brandom, thinkers who tried to save what was good and fix what was bad in the greats. Philosophy has made progress.
Oh I wasn't complaining. I was just explaining my motives for playing the parlor game.
How can we prove/disprove idealism/materialism?
Way forward:
There are two questions to ask:
1. How can we prove/disprove idealism/materialism? (vide supra)
2. Why, o why can't we answer question 1 in a way that gives some degree of closure?
Question 2 seems more important than 1.
I see no need to prove the existence of sense-organs.
I think we can and must and do take lots of things for granted. Philosophy is ideally presuppositionless in the sense that any claim can be challenged (nothing is sacred but the critical attitude itself), but discussion simply breaks down if no agreement can be found on things that are counted as obvious. This is what @Banno was talking about, I think.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/#BasiStatFalsConv
Sure. No issue there. We are playing with concepts, discussing discussion, what makes sense, what needs proof and doesn't. Good stuff.
There's a point at which further demands for proof lead only to the ridicule of the skeptic.
Meh, no for me. Quine and Feyerabend took care of that. I'll go with Wittgenstein's hinges and Searle's institutional facts.
:up:
Is there a big difference ? Haven't looked into Searle's theory. I just speculate that it's some kind of post-foundational holism ?
This seems to depend a bit much on the ghost story (intentions). Aliens could postulate money and marriages and kings when studying the artifacts we left behind before our extinction. Is explaining a radio transmitter's activities with 'electron's so different than explaining a human body's motions with 'money' or 'promises.'? I understand that 'mountain' and 'electron' are arguably a more stable concepts than 'money' and 'marriage,' but I don't see a clean break. If a marriage is what we take a marriage to be, then so is a mountain, even if part of the way we take mountains is that they don't care about our feelings, aren't causally affected by our chatter about them, and are there even when we don't notice them.
[quote= Quine]
The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience. A conflict with experience at the periphery occasions readjustments in the interior of the field. Truth values have to be redistributed over some of our statements. Re-evaluation of some statements entails re-evaluation of others, because of their logical interconnections -- the logical laws being in turn simply certain further statements of the system, certain further elements of the field. Having re-evaluated one statement we must re-evaluate some others, whether they be statements logically connected with the first or whether they be the statements of logical connections themselves. But the total field is so undetermined by its boundary conditions, experience, that there is much latitude of choice as to what statements to re-evaluate in the light of any single contrary experience. No particular experiences are linked with any particular statements in the interior of the field, except indirectly through considerations of equilibrium affecting the field as a whole.
If this view is right, it is misleading to speak of the empirical content of an individual statement -- especially if it be a statement at all remote from the experiential periphery of the field. Furthermore it becomes folly to seek a boundary between synthetic statements, which hold contingently on experience, and analytic statements which hold come what may. Any statement can be held true come what may, if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the system. Even a statement very close to the periphery can be held true in the face of recalcitrant experience by pleading hallucination or by amending certain statements of the kind called logical laws. Conversely, by the same token, no statement is immune to revision.
[/quote]
This seems close to Popper, but with a rough spot left unfixed. The talk of experience linked with statements is problematic and basically evades the issue. How does 'experience' impinge on language ? Is 'experience' understood as ectoplasmic radically private sensory input ?
[quote=Quine]
For vividness I have been speaking in terms of varying distances from asensory periphery. Let me try now to clarify this notion without metaphor. Certain statements, though about physical objects and not sense experience, seem peculiarly germane to sense experience -- and in a selective way: some statements to some experiences, others to others. Such statements, especially germane to particular experiences, I picture as near the periphery. But in this relation of "germaneness" I envisage nothing more than a loose association reflecting the relative likelihood, in practice, of our choosing one statement rather than another for revision in the event of recalcitrant experience. For example, we can imagine recalcitrant experiences to which we would surely be inclined to accommodate our system by re-evaluating just the statement that there are brick houses on Elm Street, together with related statements on the same topic. We can imagine other recalcitrant experiences to which we would be inclined to accommodate our system by re-evaluating just the statement that there are no centaurs, along with kindred statements. A recalcitrant experience can, I have already urged, be accommodated by any of various alternative re-evaluations in various alternative quarters of the total system; but, in the cases which we are now imagining, our natural tendency to disturb the total system as little as possible would lead us to focus our revisions upon these specific statements concerning brick houses or centaurs. These statements are felt, therefore, to have a sharper empirical reference than highly theoretical statements of physics or logic or ontology. The latter statements may be thought of as relatively centrally located within the total network, meaning merely that little preferential connection with any particular sense data obtrudes itself.
As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries -- not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer. Let me interject that for my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conception only as cultural posits. The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience.
[/quote]
The above is pretty great, especially 'germaneness.' But he seems to take sensation as primary, which seems to depend on the (mere) posit of a certain kind of physical object, our sense organs.
*I should add that this is pretty much a discussion of usage preference. I think it's better to not put quasi-mystical qualia in the picture, but just do the minimal thing and start with claims that are minimally controversial.
something like this...
Popper's basic statements are simple existential statements: "there is an X", used as potential falsifiers for universal statements, so "here is a black duck" falsifies "all ducks are green".
Wittgenstein's hinge propositions are more varied, being the stuff that is unreasonable to doubt. "I've never been to the moon", "there are other minds" and so on.
Searle looks to the logic of institutional facts: this piece counts as a bishop in chess. The counts as renders the statement indubitable.
Wittgenstein and Searle take a slightly different approach, showing that there are things we must hold steady in order, for Wittgenstein, that we can even have a disagreement, and for Searle, in order to act socially.
Of course, there's a bit more detail to each. But as a great mind once said, "understanding a great philosopher\s philosophy, requires an enormous effort, a great amount of study".
Too skeptical (areum mediocritas). Nevertheless, if someone is so enamored of their proof, go the whole nine yards, si señor? In for a penny, in for a pound, yes?
When the thread loops back to the starting position, Sisyphusean style. Going round in circles [math]\to[/math] confusion. The point to philosophy is to realize that and, at some point, cease/desist the search for the orbit closes in on itself (back to square one). Que sais-je?
Thanks.
I agree that we must hold some things relatively steady, such as the concepts we apply. I still think Popper's system is pretty solid though...and part of the anti-foundational holism trend.
In some cases, clarifying the situation may lead to our no longer being interested in resolving an issue or no longer finding that project meaningful or coherent. In other cases, I think real progress is made. The stories we tell about the stories we tell can get leaner, more efficient, and leave less out.
:up: Agent Smith makes a note of that!
"Methodological solipsism" is an oxymoron that fairly makes its own point. In spite of its polysyllables.
Solipsism is an absurd parlour game, or intriguing science fiction; but methodology is science.
But, the two aren't necessarily separate. They can feed each other. Like in any good oxymoron.
Quoting Rudolf Carnap, The Logical Structure of the World, p102
The title there a provocative oxymoron with metaphysical overtones. (But that's titles for you.) "Aufbau" (I presume "structure") is the usual abbreviation of Der Logische Aufbau Der Welt. I shouldn't have assumed familiarity, especially when I did presume to bandy "umwelt" - I hope correctly.
Anyway, this kind of scientific program does look like an attempt to take the basic empiricist dogma,
Quoting Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, q. 2 a. 3 arg. 19.
literally. But for the sake of theoretical psychology, rather than metaphysical deductions.
Was my point.
Thanks for responding to my question. Have a great weekend
Thats what philosophy is all about :wink:
That "basic empirical dogma" is the reason for the separation between divine ideas or divine intelligible objects, as independent, or separate Forms, and human ideas, or intelligible objects, which are dependent on the material body of the human being.
The intelligible objects which are apparent to the human mind are dependent on sensation, which is a function of the material body, as described by Aristotle. The intelligible objects which exist as separate, and independent Forms, are prior to, and necessary for, the existence of material objects, as the cause of them, and therefore cannot be dependent on material bodies.
This is an important point because it elucidates the separation between human ideas and divine ideas, and accounts for the fallibility of the human intellect. The human intellect is fallible in its apprehension of immaterial forms (intelligible objects) because of its dependence on the material body.
I don't really know what you're trying to say here, but if you're equating "other minds" as something given in experience then the types of mind that you're thinking of aren't the type that solipsists deny. The types of mind that they deny are the private kind that you also seem to deny, which makes me wonder how your view is distinct from solipsism.
The (metaphysical) 'private mind' seems to function like a variable. It's by definition (grammatically) a black box with contents radically hidden from me, unless that box is mine. It's this ghost story that casts the shadow of the p-zombie in the first place.
Those who posit this metaphysical private mind reject every public criterion for mindedness as not getting at it correctly, which seems to put them in the position of being unable to be sure that others are (truly ) conscious.
It's also assumed that non-p-zombies are all (metaphysically) 'conscious' in the same way. Why not 73 general flavors of consciousness ? Or a continuum ? What possibilities are eliminated, given only the black box ? With p-zombies still having none of them ?
I suppose I have 'raw feels' like anyone, but there's something sketchy about the concept. 'Other people can't have my sensations' is not a discovery or about human beings but an implicit definition of 'sensation'. It's the idea of something hidden and apart from the world, undetectable by definition.
I say all that, but I also feel that there is something that slips through the nets of language. But that's what an android might say in 2095 while arguing for suffrage.
I think the issue is that what they are trying to deny can't be said, isn't clear...apart from some vague addition to the qualities that tend to be associated with having a mind. Real person minus p-zombie = metaphysical mind [math] \approx 0 [/math] ?
This Ryle quote probably makes the point I'm trying to make better than I can.
[quote = Ryle]
There is thus a polar opposition between mind and matter, an oppos- ition which is often brought out as follows. Material objects are situated in a common field, known as space, and what happens to one body in one part of space is mechanically connected with what happens to other bodies in other parts of space. But mental happenings occur in insulated fields, known as minds, and there is, apart maybe from telepathy, no direct causal connection between what happens in one mind and what happens in another. Only through the medium of the public physical world can the mind of one person make a difference to the mind of another. The mind is its own place and in his inner life each of us lives the life of a ghostly Robinson Crusoe. People can see, hear and jolt one anothers bodies, but they are irremediably blind and deaf to the workings of one anothers minds and inoperative upon them.
What sort of knowledge can be secured of the workings of a mind? On the one side, according to the official theory, a person has direct knowledge of the best imaginable kind of the workings of his own mind. Mental states and processes are (or are normally) conscious states and processes, and the consciousness which irradiates them can engender no illusions and leaves the door open for no doubts. A persons present thinkings, feelings and willings, his perceivings, rememberings and imaginings are intrinsically phosphorescent; their existence and their nature are inevitably betrayed to their owner. The inner life is a stream of consciousness of such a sort that it would be absurd to suggest that the mind whose life is that stream might be unaware of what is passing down it. ... Besides being currently supplied with these alleged immediate data of consciousness, a person is also generally supposed to be able to exercise from time to time a special kind of perception, namely inner perception, or introspection. He can take a (non optical) look at what is passing in his mind. Not only can he view and scrutinize a flower through his sense of sight and listen to and discriminate the notes of a bell through his sense of hearing; he can also reflectively or introspectively watch, without any bodily organ of sense, the current episodes of his inner life. This self-observation is also commonly supposed to be immune from illusion, confusion or doubt. A minds reports of its own affairs have a certainty superior to the best that is possessed by its reports of matters in the physical world. Sense-perceptions can, but consciousness and introspection cannot, be mistaken or confused.
On the other side, one person has no direct access of any sort to the events of the inner life of another. He cannot do better than make problematic inferences from the observed behaviour of the other persons body to the states of mind which, by analogy from his own conduct, he supposes to be signalised by that behaviour. Direct access to the workings of a mind is the privilege of that mind itself; in default of such privileged access, the workings of one mind are inevitably occult to everyone else.
For the supposed arguments from bodily movements similar to their own to mental workings similar to their own would lack any possibility of observational corroboration. Not unnaturally, therefore, an adherent of the official theory finds it difficult to resist this consequence of his premisses, that he has no good reason to believe that there do exist minds other than his own. Even if he prefers to believe that to other human bodies there are harnessed minds not unlike his own, he cannot claim to be able to discover their individual characteristics, or the particular things that they undergo and do. Absolute solitude is on this showing the ineluctable destiny of the soul. Only our bodies can meet.
As a necessary corollary of this general scheme there is implicitly prescribed a special way of construing our ordinary concepts of mental powers and operations. The verbs, nouns and adjectives, with which in ordinary life we describe the wits, characters and higher-grade performances of the people with whom we have do, are required to be construed as signifying special episodes in their secret histories, or else as signifying tendencies for such episodes to occur. When someone is described as knowing, believing or guessing something, as hoping, dreading, intending or shirking something, as designing this or being amused at that, these verbs are supposed to denote the occurrence of specific modifications in his (to us) occult stream of consciousness. Only his own privileged access to this stream in direct awareness and introspection could provide authentic testimony that these mental-conduct verbs were correctly or incorrectly applied. The onlooker, be he teacher, critic, biographer or friend, can never assure himself that his comments have any vestige of truth. Yet it was just because we do in fact all know how to make such comments, make them with general correctness and correct them when they turn out to be confused or mistaken, that philosophers found it necessary to construct their theories of the nature and place of minds. [b]Finding mental-conduct
concepts being regularly and effectively used, they properly sought to fix their logical geography. But the logical geography officially recommended would entail that there could be no regular or effective use of these mental-conduct concepts in our descriptions of, and prescriptions for, other people's minds.[/b]
...
It is an historical curiosity that it was not noticed that the entire argument was broken-backed. Theorists correctly assumed that any sane man could already recognise the differences between, say, rational and nonrational utterances or between purposive and automatic behaviour. Else there would have been nothing requiring to be salved from mechanism. Yet the explanation given presupposed that one person could in principle never recognise the difference between the rational and the irrational utterances issuing from other human bodies, since he could never get access to the postulated immaterial causes of some of their utterances. Save for the doubtful exception of himself, he could never tell the difference between a man and a Robot. It would have to be conceded, for example, that, for all that we can tell, the inner lives of persons who are classed as idiots or lunatics are as rational as those of anyone else. Perhaps only their overt behaviour is disappointing; that is to say, perhaps idiots are not really idiotic, or lunatics lunatic. Perhaps, too, some of those who are classed as sane are really idiots. According to the theory, external observers could never know how the overt behaviour of others is correlated with their mental powers and processes and so they could never know or even plausibly conjecture whether their applications of mental-conduct concepts to these other people were correct or incorrect. It would then be hazardous or impossible for a man to claim sanity or logical consistency even for himself, since he would be debarred from comparing his own performances with those of others.
[/quote]
https://antilogicalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/concept-of-mind.pdf
Yes, that's solipsism.
I don't understand what the rest of your post is trying to say.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ryle/#EpiSemCom
Broadly, I'm trying to show that the metaphysical version of the private mind is broken (or at least useless), despite its initial plausibility.
I don't see how we can institute a meaning for the mysterious X that the p-zombie is supposed to lack. Working within this assumption that there is such an X, we could never prove either that we weren't p-zombies or that we were talking about the same 'thing' being substituted for X.
That's a problem for the framework. I'm trying to argue from within it to show how it breaks down. ( I view selves as fundamentally worldly, social, and linguistic. )
Not knowing how something can happen doesn't entail that it doesn't happen. Again, we have actual examples of words and phrases referring to private sensations, the self, one's will, thinking, dreaming, the soul, God, counterfactuals, etc. And they have a meaning despite the words not referring to something which is publicly accessible. Take these as a reductio ad absurdum against any simplistic account of language that tries to reduce meaning to an entirely public, functional behaviour.
And again, to paraphrase you; if everything is public then nothing is. And in the context of this discussion "public" and "private" have a particular meaning that isn't analogous to your example of a private phone call.
The criteria for applying those concepts are public, else we could not learn them, and it would be pointless to engage in philosophy.
To be sure, a theist will probably tell us that his concept refers to some entity, but you can't locate the meaning of 'God' in his ghost without assuming precisely what I'm questioning.
All it takes for words to have a meaning is certain norms that govern their application, to play a certain relatively stable role in our form of life.
I agree that a metaphysical grammar has indeed been invented, adjacent to but different from the ordinary grammar. I claim that that grammar leads to absurdity or its own uselessness. Though I 'get' the temptation to use it.
But not knowing what we mean or how we could establish what we mean seems problematic. I claim that the concept is elusive by definition. Given any possible public criterion, we can imagine a sufficiently clever but soulless android that satisfies it. That's a problem. It's like ether or phlogiston.
A creature could (according to the official theory) write excellent novels but lack a soul, while an inarticulate amoeba could have one.
But this is like the concept of truth. A statement can be warranted but false or unwarranted but true.
So truth plays a kind of absolute role, about which nothing more can be said, and this X seems to be the same kind of nothingness.
And what public norm determines the meaning of "true" and "false" which distinguishes them from "warranted" and "unwarranted"? The exact kind of realism that you seem to argue for requires that there is more to meaning and reference than just what is publicly given to us in experience. The world isn't just what we see or hear or believe.
In terms of what we mean by something like "mind", we have one of our own. There is more to me than just what others can see of me. I have thoughts that I never express. I have the "raw experience" (e.g. qualia) that is inaccessible to others. And being the intelligent man that I am, I am able to imagine that there is, or could be, something like this first personhood that isn't me. There are unexpressed thoughts that aren't mine. There is "raw experience" that is inaccessible to me. There are private other minds. And the solipsist, understanding the meaning of a phrase like "private other minds", can argue that there are no such things (or that we cannot know that there are such things).
Quoting Michael
Also on this point see the opening post here.
Quoting creativesoul
Nor I, you.
At some stage the talk must give way to doing things. At that point, what remains of solipsism?
creativesoul misunderstands and doesn't address the argument being made. Read the quote in the opening post.
The very notion of "getting it wrong" is language-dependent. @creativesoul is pointing this out. Dummet wants to have a level of "true" and "false" outside of language; you do the same thing in your example in the OP to that thread. Your simulation is an attempt at a construction that allows you to talk about truth and falsity from outside of language. It' can't work.
The supposed metaphysical issue of realism and antirealism is just a choice between using a bivalent or paraconsistent logic.
No he doesn't, that's the point. The principle of bivalence, however, requires that it is, as that is the only way that every statement can be determinately true or false.
Ever hear of Schrödinger's cousin, Hümdinger? He had a less physical, more philosophical bent. He also put a cat in a box, but without all that radiological frippery. And instead of asking if the cat were alive or dead, he asked if the cat still had fur.
A realist will say that "The cat has fur" is true.
An antirealist will say that "The cat has fur" is neither true nor false.
But that aside, the point I was making to Pie is that if he is to be consistent with his reasoning then he must accept that it is public norms that determine the meaning and proper use of the words "true" and "false" which is incompatible with realism which argues that the truth is not determined by our linguistic (or other) conventions.
So is the choice of solipsism.
Quoting Banno
Perhaps solipsism involves a performative contradiction.
I think we've covered this. Take care
"At some stage the talk must give way to doing things"
Applies to every argument....
Indeed. It's at the core of Wittgenstein's approach to philosophy. It's not about providing a proof, but showing that one behaves as if other folk have minds - your responding to my posts, for example, shows your rejection of solipsism.
This assumes he doesn't talk to himself. Why would you think that?
Then all he has done is to decide by fiat that I am a part of his self; such a solipsism loses any differentiation.
Quoting GLEN willows
My point, in a nutshell.
Quoting Tate
Insofar as "self" is a binary concept: if there are not any others for the solipsist, then there isn't even a/the/"him" self to talk to.
I think the challenge is to disprove it to oneself. There's no way to do that. I can easily disprove your solipsism, though. I'm here.
The Other can be manufactured. Happens all the time.
As @Pie pointed out earlier, a proof is supposed to bind everyone, not just oneself. A proof that only you accept is perhaps a faith...
Quoting Tate
Yes, the other is constructed, by juxtaposing it to the self; As the old song goes, This I tell you, brother...
If all there is, is self, then there is no other, and hence no self.
:up:
Yup.
One finger cannot point at itself.
:point: :up:
:up:
Odd, then, that the conversation continues in your absence...?
Only odd to you....I don't exist.
Ok sorry I said you could have the last word.
The grammar or norm for truth is pretty weird and might deserve its own thread. The difference seems like that between a 'real' person and arbitrarily convincing p-zombie. It's as if all we can productively talk about is warrant.
Quoting Michael
I'm maybe more anti-metaphysics than arguing for realism. I don't, for instance, think 'atoms and the void' are truth-makers. The grammar of truth is even leaner than that, because we can always debate physical and metaphysical theories (debate the existence of any particular truth-maker candidate.)
I will say that our social situation is logically primary, simply because saying otherwise is incoherent. If we aren't in some underspecified sense in the same word with the same concepts, then rational conversation is impossible.
We debate claims about our world. Any beginning 'less' than that seems to be nonsense, though we can and do endlessly explicate what we mean by these keywords. Someone might, for instance, try to understand the world simply as the set of true claims.
:lol:
Yup.
I like the simulations involving rain you linked to. It's a bit like the p-zombie thing, with the truth-making thing-in-itself revealed as a kind of X that plays no role.
FWIW, I reject bivalence. We can easily make statements that don't cohere. 'This statement is false.' And I think solipsism is incoherent, not really true or false.
It seems that both 'truth' and 'consciousness' are used (metaphysically) in elusively minimal ways.
It's nice to not be alone in recognizing the language trap. Once seen, the whole thing is weird.
There is nothing public that can be pointed to, but from that it does not follow that there is no private mind. We all have our mental privacy, so we all naturally recognize that there is a private dimension to the mind.
Just to be clear, and as mentioned before, I see no need to deny raw feels. I can speak with the vulgar, insist that I too have a soul. I'm just making the by-now traditional and even tautological point that they play no role in inferences, that the X which, when added to a p-zombie, makes him a real boy,...is suspiciously elusive conceptually. Any concept that defies all public criteria for its application starts to sound more like a grunt.
It'd be great to get your reaction on the Ryle quotes above. Because that's where I'm coming from here. The mind that matters, the mind that figures in reasoning and explanation, is not and cannot be radically private.
Hear, hear!!!
Be great to get you in my new thread....
To me the point is roughly that the self and the other are comanufactured, like the North and South. Why didn't Descartes problematize the first person pronoun ? Why doesn't the solipsist?
In other words, WTF is a self anyway ? I suggest that following this lead, going into detail about what a self is, will lead one to others and a shared world and language.
[quote = W]
Here it can be seen that solipsism, when its implications are followed out strictly, coincides with pure realism. The self of solipsism shrinks to a point without extension, and there remains the reality co-ordinated with it.
[/quote]
Instead of asking people to read, I'm trying a more direct approach. Let them try and refute my proposed minimal foundation without performative contradiction. If they must have Descartes, I'll see if I can fix him up some.
Just to clear I'm not referring to "raw feels", The mind that matters, the mind that experiences life as an endless succession of rich and unique imagery, is radically private, while also being shared.
I understand what you are trying to defend, and I'm not trying to deny the soul. I'm saying there's a way of talking about it that's nonobviously confused.
We can't rationally discuss concepts that aren't public. I think you and Micheal are trying to use both sides of the coin at once, the 'pure' ghost and the more ordinary mind that is indeed part of the usual causal/explanatory nexus. It's almost tautological that there's nothing to be said about the radically private mind (even saying that there is one such mind or kind of mind is arguably nonsense, except metaphysicians have created a mystified X that rides on the back of ordinary mind.) (I'm just leaning on Ryle here, and you might want to refer above to the quote to see where I'm coming from.)
I'm not trying to "defend" anything; I just give priority to the poetic mind over the intellectual or discursive mind. And even though the rich imagery of the poetic mind cannot be spoken about, other than to signal its existence and importance, it can be spoken from and we can also speak about the fact that it can be spoken from, so there is actually much to be said, just not so much in dry propositional terms.
Quoting Banno
You're free to share your proof with others once you prove it to yourself. Point is, if you proved to your own satisfaction that the world goes beyond your mind, you didn't understand the challenge.
Quoting Banno
They might have been born at the same time, or maybe they were eternal; the truth (the self) and the lie (the Other). All it takes is a little imagination.
:up: The only choice for a solipsist then is to say he wasn't really absent. :scream:
[quote=YHWH]I'm always there for you.[/quote]
:grimace:
I believe that too. It seems logical. I need the Other because without it, I'll lose definition and fade into everything.
If you recall, I brought this up earlier. It doesn't disprove solipsism, though. It just explains why I would call the universe "mine".
So here we are in agreement?
Probably. :grin:
This is not true, and it is a very common mistake. A thing, be it a self or any other thing, is described by referring to its properties, not by referring to "the other". So a thing (such as a self), may be in complete isolation, with all of its properties, with no other.
The idea that a thing requires an other seems to have been derived from a Hegelian idealism. Ideals, such as "the best", "the biggest", "positive", "hottest", etc., are defined in relation to their opposite term, because there is no empirical quality which represents them, being simply ideals. They are ideals which form the basis for a quantitative scale. But it is a mistake (category) to confuse ideals with things such as selves, saying that a self requires an other.
I never understood duality. Sorry Heraclitus.
It's this from the Tractacus:
5.63 I am my world.
This is more thoroughly explained by Schopenhauer, but Wittgenstein shows how it's nonsense (not to be confused with false, it's not false).
I agree. It's better to say confused than false.
The solipsist claims that it's wrong to think there's something we can be wrong about.
.
But people can and do talk about their dreams and fantasies, and not only about the importance thereof. "I thought I saw a putty cat" is a great example of how the explanatory nexus includes the imagination (as well as sensation in emotion.) It might explain flight or approach. 'I thought the light was green, officer.' Or colorblindness might be used to explain failing a certain test.
But this goes for realism and every other type of ontology.
You can't use externalism as a weapon against solipsism. Externalism and realism are forms of nonsense as well. If you're going to embrace any kind of ontology, you'll have to give solipsism it's due.
Wait a minute. Are we on the same page ?
Anyone who makes claims about our world-in-common (such as what's in it or claiming 'it's all water' ) presumably aims at getting something right about it.
I confess that it's a toy issue, but I maintain that solipsism, asserted philosophical/rationally, is incoherent.
I'm sure they do. Care to do a reading of the Tractacus?
Quoting Pie
Again, you're trying to deploy externalism against it. That's only satisfying until you realize you are your world, as Witt states.
It'll help me if you spell out your general view. I don't think 'I am my world.' My position is that we humans are radically-primordially social, that 'I' is a token in a game that transcends the individual meat that utters it (but not the community as a whole.)
I agree with Witt about metaphysics, it's fun to play with (speaking of toys :razz: ), but it's beyond the limits of informative language use.
Quoting Pie
I get that. For me, this is one of many views. I understand it, but I also know it's 'language on holiday'.
Fair enough, but I'd argue that it's incoherent to deny the sociality of reason. To be sure, the details are endlessly debatable, but it's absurd to deny the debate within the debate, no?
It's not a matter of details.
Note the meaning of "sociality". Like left and right, north and south, it only means something relative to it's opposite. You tried to used that trick against solipsism. Now use it against externalism.
Quoting Tate
But consider, sir, you are reasoning with me. Am I bound to regard your logic ? If so, why ? And do I not (mostly) understand your words ? I agree that 'sociality' is caught in a network of differences. Is this not a claim about norms for concept application that apply to both of us ? Was it not inferred implicitly through the examples you offered of North and South ?
Of course. Externalism is great. Let's say it demolishes solipsism. By that same method, solipsism will slay externalism.
There is no sociality without privacy. There is no 'we' without 'me'. You're doing the same thing solipsism is doing: you're saying yes to the two-sided coin, but then declaring one side to be illusive.
'Privacy' is a public concept, else you could not make a point about it (could not be right or wrong.) I don't claim that privacy is illusion, just to be clear. It has a use in our language ('don't make private phone calls on company time.')
On the 'I' or 'me' issue, do you not recall our previous conversation ? The self does indeed play an important role. You and I as individuals are 'tracked' and evaluated for logical consistency, for instance. I am responsible for defending the implications of my claims but not yours. We both ought to keep our story straight, not call the same thing white and black, public and private, etc.
I quote again:
The 'sane' or 'ordinary' concept of mind does not exclude it from the explanatory nexus that includes sense organs and electrons and arguments. The metaphysical version features the ghost/mind on another plane entirely, so that even the scientists in 6098 couldn't predict a sneeze.
The following brings home meaning as use, in my view.
So 'private' would get its meaning from the inferences involving it that we (in an ideal sense, a community making its own new rules in terms of the old) license and forbid.
One more piece might be helpful.
We can trust Jerry's claim that Martha was wearing a red dress at the funeral because Jerry has never failed us. The boy knows his colors ! But Tim is colorblind and Jethro's a liar. Individuals exist and matter.
On the inferential/abstract level, we might notice that Billy is shit at logic, albeit otherwise honest. So we are more inclined to trust his premises than his conclusions, even before following the argument itself. Then Karen makes a big deal out of everything. So we translate her claims into their less surprising versions.
For some reason you're evading my point.
The solipsist says, "The word 'public' has a use in my language. It's related to my exchanges with my fictional friends, which give rise to so much in terms of rationality: logic, language, my concept of self, and of course, my fictional friends are hilarious, so it's fun talking to them."
None of this is new, by the way. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." The idea of the Great Solipsist in the sky has been around for a long time now, inspiring all sorts of questions about evil and so forth. It's very well explored territory.
Quoting Pie
You aren't following me. Just stop and evaluate the meaning of "social." What is its opposite?
Quoting Pie
Of course. You don't seem to want to believe that I understand externalism. I do. I really do. It just doesn't give you any leverage against solipsism for the reasons I gave you. In the same way, solipsism can't attack externalism. The externalist can just say, "Yes, I use the word 'private', it's such a great word, but nothing beyond that."
Not intentionally !
Quoting Tate
To whom ? Himself ? For what else is there ? To what norms could he refer ? About what world could he be wrong or right ? You basically put a world in a vat, pretend a community shares a language, but make that community a mirage at the end.
Consider the difference between 'I'm not sure if I'm dreaming right now' and 'we ought not assume that we're not dreaming.' The second is a claim about norms that apply to all rational agents.
I find this leap so problematic that it's hard for me to believe you see where I'm coming from. You keep mentioning externalism, but that's not quite it (and not my word.) I'm interested in the cluster of the following concepts : the subject among subjects, the target of claims, and community norms that bind those subjects govern concept application and inferences. I contend that the epistemological solipsist makes a claim about community norms, invoking that which transcends him in order to deny it.
Imagine a snake that turns around and meets its own tail. It thinks it's met the Other, and it has for all practical purposes, but all it's met is Rumi's grand illusion.
Yes, solipsism says the other is an illusion. Externalism says the self is. It's just a game.
Quoting Pie
The solipsist tries to reason with his fictional friends. It's fun.
What do you want to call it?
Quoting Pie
The community is made of fragments of one entity, like a stage where all the characters are products of one playwright.
Perhaps I've found the issue. Let me emphasize that I don't deny that a madman can believe he's all alone in a dream. I could even be a dream right now.
Here's my primary target:
This 'one' is implicitly universal. A rational person ought to recognize that the existence of something other than the mind (like other minds) cannot be certainty established.
In other words, the epistemological solipsist claims that it's wrong or irrational to assume that there's something one can be wrong or irrational about.
That's a substantial step back from 'solipsism is wrong because the self needs the Other for the sake of rationality and language.'
Plus it's an all-purpose caution for skeptics of all stripes, including those who are skeptical of solipsism.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you aren't quoting me there, just paraphrasing.
Here's what I said yesterdayish:
We might say the self has two others, one being the target of claims (the world) and the other being those in the community, sharing a language, subject to the same norms. One could present the self-others dynamic as part of the self-world dynamic, I suppose.
I don't see how binding claims (the conclusions of sound arguments, for instance) make sense apart from this minimal situation (hence the thread I started.) One person claims that the others are bound to acknowledge that a belief about their shared world is warranted or true.
Which is your point, that solipsists are inappropriately searching for certainty? Or that solipsism is incoherent due to a lack of "real" social interaction?
The epistemological solipsist is making a claims about norms that transcend him, about what any rational person ought to assume or not, about a world beyond him.
(It's also seemingly incoherent for a self without a world (typically with others) to be able to be right or wrong in the first place. What can that even mean ?)
Solipsism isn't a self without a world. It's that the world is the Self.
Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Does it make sense for worldself to be wrong about a worldself ?
Let's say you go Freudian and give this blob an unconscious...then you are creating something it can be right or wrong about, something it knows indirectly. A (second, breakaway )world for the world to guess about.
Consider also that my primary target is epistemological solipsism, so this is a bit of tangent (not without its fun, to be sure.)
Do you understand the difference between an instance of something being good, and the ideal good, the best thing?
:up:
Apparently. (He probably wouldn't accept your apology.)
There is nothing interesting in that pedantic world of facts except the science and math it makes possible. For me there is nothing interesting in chasing your tail trying to establish how our propositions are to be justified; because they can never be justified by the rich streams of imagery which constitute our actual lives. So, for me the best course for those who love science and math is to "shut up and calculate" and enjoy the richness and artistry of math and science (which logic totally lacks).
Why?
That's where becomes confused.
Quoting Banno
What do you think I'm confused about?
Quoting Janus
I'm not confused; I simply don't agree. In any case there is this:
6.41 The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value and if there were, it would be of no value. If there is value which is of value, it must lie outside of all happening and being-so.
So, perhaps it is Wittgenstein who is confused, or your reading of him.
It doesn't matter anyway; we don't have to follow Wittgenstein or anyone else; there is more value in thinking for yourself, anything less than that lacks creativity.
Ha! I came to add a quote from the Tractacus.
5.632 The subject does not belong to the world: rather, it is a limit of the world.
Does this mean anything to you?
What?
Life is in the imagery, not in the propositions about hypostatized things, how to justify those propositions, facts about things, or logic. I'm not saying those things are worthless, but that they are worth less. But that's just my feeling about it.
Ok enough nice guy. Pie you said
This 'one' is implicitly universal. A rational person ought to recognize that the existence of something other than the mind (like other minds) cannot be certainty established.
That has been my point all along. Why couldnt we have agreed on that? If theres the possibility of only one mind, theres also the possibility that social situations are illusions.
I made it clear Im not a solipsist (if I was why would I be talking to you?) but I need a logical way to dismiss it.
Your quote admits that other minds cant be logically shown to exist. Thank you. But then you talk about different kinds of solipsists. Now THAT is incoherent, if you acknowledge (in your quote) that you could be in a solipsistic limbo.
As a newbie, I just found that my profs always brushed off solipsism as being silly or incoherent. Nothing here has proven that to be anything than just repulsion at the thought of it.
A logical proof moves from premise to conclusion. If someone is happy to doubt the existence of a world other than themselves, what could possibly serve as an acceptable premise? What might they hold in greater confidence than that there is stuff that is not of them?
Hi. I'm aware of that theory. I sketch it in my thread.
I criticize it elsewhere like this, following Ryle and Nietzsche.
I think Sellars makes a good case the the 'seems' operator (from which we get imagery, raw feels, ec.) is semantically parasitic on assertions. So 'the light looks red' depends on 'the light is red' for its significance, playing an adjusted but similar role in the inferences we'll tolerate from one another and use to explain ourselves and others.
Note that your perspective (on its face is radically 'for you.') The implication's are highly impractical. Why go to the doctor to get a bone set and drink bleach or eat asparagus ? It's as if you don't think inferences are central even to practical life.
This also seems problematic:
You seem to be justifying the unimportance of establishing how justification how works by declaring it to be impossible in terms of an authority that's uncheckable even in principle. You also refer to our lives, without it being clear how a ghost trapped in its own private imagery could make trustworthy claims about other ghosts...if trustworthy makes any sense is this world of dreams without contrast.
Too bad, it's a sincere request for forgiveness.
Nope! :grin: Edify me, please!
Can you see that if you were the only mind, these arguments would be ridiculous. What people? All I see are illusory images
You aren't quite understanding me. Perpend. "In epistemology, epistemological solipsism is the claim that one can only be sure of the existence of one's mind. The existence of other minds and the external world is not necessarily rejected but one can not be sure of its existence. ...Epistemological solipsists claim that realism begs the question: assuming there is a universe that is independent of the agent's mind, the agent can only ever know of this universe through the agent's senses. "
I take this claim to be philosophical, which is to say that, because it is (purportedly ) justified by a universal reason binding all rational agents, it itself would be binding likewise (if actually so justified and coherent). If a mathematician proves, for instance, that [math] \pi ^ \pi [/math] is irrational, other mathematicians are bound to acknowledge what has now become a fact about the real number system. Note that conclusions about the real number system are implicitly also about what mathematicians ought to believe. So statements about numbers are easily translated into statements about norms.
I will now translate epistemological solipsism into a form that reveals the incoherence.
"The epistemological solipsist claims that it's wrong for a philosopher to simply assume that there's something a philosopher can be wrong about." I use "something one can be wrong about" instead of "external world" because I think it captures the most general notion of inside/outside. It does not make sense for a self without a world or others to be able to be wrong (unless one maybe 'cheats' and gives the self an unconscious, playing the same role as that which he could be wrong about, in a failure of self-knowledge that assumes two objects after all.)
Anyway, the problem is that this statement itself makes claims about all rational agents, assuming the very thing it declares in the same breath to be unjustified.
"A logical proof moves from premise to conclusion."
I agree. Can you put this argument into that form?
Actually, it's almost the reverse. Logic and rationality are ego-transcending. That's how we use them and why we value them. An insane person can fear that others are p-zombies or the figments of dreams, but for a philosopher to claim that no one can be is to make a claim about the very others who might not exist.
Here's another version of ES : Rational agents ought not assume there are other rational agents.
Is this not problematic?
Can we put can the conclusion "we know there are other minds" into a formal logic equation?
Premise
Premise
Conclusion?
What is "ridiculous" is assuming a perspective for which there are not any grounds to assume and then use such an groundless assumption as a conditional or premise.
Epistemic warrant (of assent) does not require that claims (re: e.g. other minds) "be certainly established". Reasonably, there are not any grounds to doubt that there are other minds.
Am I missing something, or you are? A soliipsist would be alone - no one else, right? , Whether self aware he is alone or not, he would not be having any real discussion, because there are no other people. It would all be in his mind. S/he would say "Those illusions I argue with on Philosophy Forum are wrong about this." And of course you can be wrong within yourself "I thought I was tired, but actually I feel fine."
Frankly I'm still surprised that people can't even IMAGINE that we could be brains in vats - which Descartes attempted to disprove but didn't ....or on future virtual reality ventures...or extended dream states.
and
Quoting GLEN willows
And if we cannot, do you think that proves that other minds do not exist? Of course not.
When you are in pain, need you produce an argument to prove to yourself that you are in pain?
So when are proofs needed, when are they redundant?
What is your grounds for other minds that doesn't PRESUPPOSE other minds?
You might want to look at this thread : https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/13308/our-minimal-epistemic-commitment-fixing-descartes-cogito
As @180 Proof has seen, the central issue is 'normative rationality.' It's possible/thinkable that I really am the last creature in the universe able to make excuses, so the contingent existence of others is not crucial here.
The point is that ES aims at a world beyond itself, describing norms that bind even merely possible rational agents. The existence of other minds and the external world is not necessarily rejected but one can not be sure of its existence. Granted that all the others might be dead, and assuming you are not satisfied with my 'possible' or 'potential' rational agents, you can still see, I hope, that an external world is being referenced in terms of norms that transcend the claimant. One cannot be sure. It's not just that I am not in fact sure. No. It's wrong or irrational for you and anyone 'out there' to think you can be sure...that there is an out there in the first place. In other words, 'one ought not take the possibility of norms for granted.' 'It might be wrong to think there is something we might be wrong about.'
I can easily imagine vats. I've seen The Matrix and lots of other sci fi (like the happy world of the 'dead' in Black Mirror). Trust me, sir. That's not the issue.
"SO when are proofs needed?"
When we do philosophy. Do you just take for granted that there MUST be other minds? Surely not, you must have a reason. And that must reason must not involve anything "social" in the answer, as Pie has done, to prove there other minds. That's seems as clear as day, even to a newbie like moi.
There are other minds
premise 1 - We act in a social context
premise 2 - this could not be an illusion
Conclusion - Therefore there are other minds.
Both premises are wrong.
And do you agree Descartes never really disproved the BIAV? Except by bringing God in.
I wish I had an argument for the Matrix not existing - sadly I don't. Kidding. The new one is heinous though.
As for the BIAV - I've already replied to this, the world that's created is nonetheless NOT the real world, and the scientists looking at my brain aren't part of it. My world is still fully solipsistic. And if you want a better example - My mind is a mysterious mist on an unpopulated planet. I like that - it's poetic.
I think there are two issues here that are getting entangled. One issue is logical/grammatical. This is what I've been focusing on.
The second involves probability and intensities of certainty. You and I might agree that it's logically possible that we are both brains in a vat, and we might discuss things until we give up on trying to prove otherwise. Fair enough. But our claims refer to an external world. It is or is not the case that we are really in a vat. But the 'structure' of rational discussion puts us in the same world together, whatever its nature, both conforming to norms for concept and inference application to understand and persuade one another.
Does that help ? I'm not trying to prove I'm not in a vat. I'm also not trying to prove I'm an alien raised as a human who was never told of his powers. Because I don't suspect such things. But both are coherent. Maybe the year is 3095. I was in a car accident and my brain was preserved. Some genuine Vanilla Sky stuff! (Note though our shared concept of some real world in contrast to the illusion that keeps this wild stuff coherent. We must have contrast, something that is the case.)
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=vanilla+sky&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D7Zk4y9ZRlwA
Agreed!
But the first one, the first time seeing it in the theater,...
Statement - There are other minds
premise 1 - We act in a social context
premise 2 - this could not be an illusion
-------
Premise 1 assumes the conclusion.
Premise 2 is weak.
Conclusion - Therefore there are no are other minds.
Cheers!
So, the objects are mental creations; purely conventional. And that's what science deals with. Nothing wrong with that and it obviously has practical uses, but that is not where life, experience and poetry are to be found.
Quoting Pie
Again this shows you've totally misunderstood what I'm saying. We know our observations and judgements are justified. or not, within the conventional co-creation of the world of stable facts and things. We know that it is the more primordial experience of imagery that makes this co-creation possible. So, why would we need to bother further with justification? Life does not consist in observation and judgement, even if discursive thought does.
Do you want your life, your thinking, to be creative, passionate and interesting, or merely normatively justified. I couldn't give a toss about normative justification, to be honest.
I didn't claim that there are other minds; why would I? Those who are in doubt, or deny there are other minds, are making the extraordinary claim idly without grounds to do so. Like you are / have.
Quoting GLEN willows
Cite where I have made an "argument from authority". FYI: corroborating one's arguments with others' arguments / positions is not fallacious as you seem suggest, "newbie".
Yes. You keep making claims about the private minds of others, which should not be possible, unless the entities in those minds are part of the usual explanatory nexus.
Quoting Janus
So you claim, but this is metaphysical theory, which could only be defended or justified in terms of universal rational norms.
Quoting Janus
As I see it, we don't know this: you merely think it. In fact, I've been arguing that this ghost story was developed in the first place by taking a genuine, shared, 'external' world for granted, one in which sense-organs are affected by objects. With Hume and Kant, this idea was pushed to absurdity, till the sense organs were ridiculously the product of (the sensations of) the sense organs.
:lol: Pax.
I know my life is such, and I have no reason to think it is different in form for others, although the content would obviously be different, though not without enough commonality
to enable the conventional co-creation of stable objects I have been going on about.
Quoting Pie
It's not a metaphysical theory, but a phenomenological fact about my own experience, and again I see no reason to think it different for others.
Quoting Pie
I know this in my own case; it's simple phenomenology. I also have confirmed this with many of my friends from philosophy classes at university..I don't deny that sense organs are affected, or any of the whole story of science. But that whole story is abstracted from the more primordial experience of being in the world (to reference Heidegger); a world of images, sounds and bodily sensations.
:rofl: You mean Pussy. I don't kiss tablets.
Self-Talk
:snicker:
Please calm down, take a deep breath and relax. Pagliacci will be with you shortly!
That's not always a good thing !
Quoting Janus
Incoherent, however initially plausible...to those like us exposed to the tradition, anyway.
https://gutenberg.org/files/4363/4363-h/4363-h.html
Not if you don't like it. For me it;s the best guide to what living is for us.
You're tilting at straw windmills; I haven't said that the external world is the work of our organs; what on Earth made you think that? :roll:
The part where you said (implied) that ? The part that I quoted?
Right you are! Good job!
You mean this:
Quoting Janus
Where in that have I said the external world is the work of our organs? The world of experience is a world of images, sounds and bodily sensations, but I haven't said that the external world consists in images, sounds and bodily sensations. The external world, for us, is an inferential extrapolation from the repetition and commonality of experiences of everyday things. We have very good reason to think that it exists, but we only know what it is for our inferential imaginations, nothing beyond that.
Quoting Agent Smith Phenomenology, intelligently practiced, is always a good thing. Anything at all unintelligently practiced, is not a good thing; so there's little of substance, and much of the bleeding obvious, there.
Touché mon ami!
I dispute that. Only normative rationality and shared premises could support such a bold claim, yet you make the existence of anything outside your dream a mere hypothesis. We might just as well say that we have very good reason to think @Janus is not an artificial intelligence, utterly incapable of the feeling and sensation it's been designed to prioritize. The 'inside' and the 'outside' are interdependent concepts.
[quote = Ryle]
There is thus a polar opposition between mind and matter, an oppos-tion which is often brought out as follows. Material objects are situated in a common field, known as space, and what happens to one body in one part of space is mechanically connected with what happens to other bodies in other parts of space. But mental happenings occur in insulated fields, known as minds, and there is, apart maybe from telepathy, no direct causal connection between what happens in one mind and what happens in another. Only through the medium of the public physical world can the mind of one person make a difference to the mind of another. The mind is its own place and in his inner life each of us lives the life of a ghostly Robinson Crusoe. People can see, hear and jolt one anothers bodies, but they are irremediably blind and deaf to the workings of one anothers minds and inoperative upon them.
What sort of knowledge can be secured of the workings of a mind? On the one side, according to the official theory, a person has direct knowledge of the best imaginable kind of the workings of his own mind. Mental states and processes are (or are normally) conscious states and processes, and the consciousness which irradiates them can engender no illusions and leaves the door open for no doubts. A persons present thinkings, feelings and willings, his perceivings, rememberings and imaginings are intrinsically phosphorescent; their existence and their nature are inevitably betrayed to their owner. The inner life is a stream of consciousness of such a sort that it would be absurd to suggest that the mind whose life is that stream might be unaware of what is passing down it. ... Besides being currently supplied with these alleged immediate data of consciousness, a person is also generally supposed to be able to exercise from time to time a special kind of perception, namely inner perception, or introspection. He can take a (non optical) look at what is passing in his mind. Not only can he view and scrutinize a flower through his sense of sight and listen to and discriminate the notes of a bell through his sense of hearing; he can also reflectively or introspectively watch, without any bodily organ of sense, the current episodes of his inner life. This self-observation is also commonly supposed to be immune from illusion, confusion or doubt. A minds reports of its own affairs have a certainty superior to the best that is possessed by its reports of matters in the physical world. Sense-perceptions can, but consciousness and introspection cannot, be mistaken or confused.
On the other side, one person has no direct access of any sort to the events of the inner life of another. He cannot do better than make problematic inferences from the observed behaviour of the other persons body to the states of mind which, by analogy from his own conduct, he supposes to be signalised by that behaviour. Direct access to the workings of a mind is the privilege of that mind itself; in default of such privileged access, the workings of one mind are inevitably occult to everyone else.
For the supposed arguments from bodily movements similar to their own to mental workings similar to their own would lack any possibility of observational corroboration. Not unnaturally, therefore, an adherent of the official theory finds it difficult to resist this consequence of his premisses, that he has no good reason to believe that there do exist minds other than his own. Even if he prefers to believe that to other human bodies there are harnessed minds not unlike his own, he cannot claim to be able to discover their individual characteristics, or the particular things that they undergo and do. Absolute solitude is on this showing the ineluctable destiny of the soul. Only our bodies can meet.
As a necessary corollary of this general scheme there is implicitly prescribed a special way of construing our ordinary concepts of mental powers and operations. The verbs, nouns and adjectives, with which in ordinary life we describe the wits, characters and higher-grade performances of the people with whom we have do, are required to be construed as signifying special episodes in their secret histories, or else as signifying tendencies for such episodes to occur. When someone is described as knowing, believing or guessing something, as hoping, dreading, intending or shirking something, as designing this or being amused at that, these verbs are supposed to denote the occurrence of specific modifications in his (to us) occult stream of consciousness. Only his own privileged access to this stream in direct awareness and introspection could provide authentic testimony that these mental-conduct verbs were correctly or incorrectly applied. The onlooker, be he teacher, critic, biographer or friend, can never assure himself that his comments have any vestige of truth. Yet it was just because we do in fact all know how to make such comments, make them with general correctness and correct them when they turn out to be confused or mistaken, that philosophers found it necessary to construct their theories of the nature and place of minds. Finding mental-conduct concepts being regularly and effectively used, they properly sought to fix their logical geography. But the logical geography officially recommended would entail that there could be no regular or effective use of these mental-conduct concepts in our descriptions of, and prescriptions for, other people's minds.
...
It is an historical curiosity that it was not noticed that the entire argument was broken-backed. Theorists correctly assumed that any sane man could already recognise the differences between, say, rational and nonrational utterances or between purposive and automatic behaviour. Else there would have been nothing requiring to be salved from mechanism. Yet the explanation given presupposed that one person could in principle never recognise the difference between the rational and the irrational utterances issuing from other human bodies, since he could never get access to the postulated immaterial causes of some of their utterances. Save for the doubtful exception of himself, he could never tell the difference between a man and a Robot. It would have to be conceded, for example, that, for all that we can tell, the inner lives of persons who are classed as idiots or lunatics are as rational as those of anyone else. Perhaps only their overt behaviour is disappointing; that is to say, perhaps idiots are not really idiotic, or lunatics lunatic. Perhaps, too, some of those who are classed as sane are really idiots. According to the theory, external observers could never know how the overt behaviour of others is correlated with their mental powers and processes and so they could never know or even plausibly conjecture whether their applications of mental-conduct concepts to these other people were correct or incorrect. It would then be hazardous or impossible for a man to claim sanity or logical consistency even for himself, since he would be debarred from comparing his own performances with those of others.
[/quote]
No it isn't. Lack of proof other minds exist is not proof that they do not exist.
So, what will you choose?
You're really good at misunderstanding! I said we have very good reason to think the external world exists, but it cannot be for us, anything more than an inference to what seems to be the most plausible explanation for the repetition and commonality of experience. It's a very potenet inference; one we really have no reason to doubt, so I ask myself why I should bpother thinking about it? What difference could the absolute existence or lack of existence of something I know only via images and sensations, and which exists as such for me, (and I have every reason to think, everyone else) whether I like it or not, make to my life?
My whole point has been that it doesn't matter anyway: we are all, in our everyday lives, naive realists; we have been conditioned that way. I am just not that interested in the kind of ourobouric pursuit of normative justification for facts and propositions, when the whole conventional machinery is already firmly in place. I'd rather preserve my mental resources for more creative, poetic pursuits, in the interest of intensifying the richness of the stream of imagery that is my phenomenal life.
I've read McDowell and Brandom, and I find their approach to be (for me) a waste of time and energy; it's just too anal.
Quoting Janus
Quoting Janus
:up:
That a specific claim has no grounds is something which needs to be proven. The person making the questionable claim may be asked to justify it, and failure to do this still does not prove that the claim is "groundless".
The issue though, which Wittgenstein demonstrated in "On Certainty", is that groundlessness is something which cannot be proven, because that would require grounds. So we just assign "irrational", or as you say, "ridiculous", to specific claims, but this is not the same as "groundless". The problem though, is that we have no real standards by which we make such a judgement, because the judgement it is not something which is proven. So the judgement is really just a personal opinion.
So you start by saying that a specific perspective is groundless, and ridiculous, and you end by saying that a different perspective is groundless, but reasonable, without any principles to support such judgements.
Phenomenology can be good, but it often leans into the usual ghost story. Why is that bad ? The ghost story, in most of its forms, is obsolete -- has been shown to be wrong or incoherent. Because it's outlandish and daring, it's supposed to be sophisticated, but believers are quick to tell you that 'practically' they are just like everyone else. So it's a bad theory that serves no purpose, hackneyed poetry basically, 'describing ' the world by denying it ... insisting it cannot be described, does not exist, etc.
I'm glad you approve. It'll be good for your soul to return to your your Hegel, Heidegger and Derrida etc. :wink: : analytic philosophy is too anal, and if one keeps at it too long one disappears up one's own arse.
Quoting Pie
This is not phenomenology you are purporting to characterize. Phenomenology doesn't deny the world, in fact quite the opposite "Back to the things", "being in the world", "flesh of the world", etc.
Phenomenology is not a "ghost story": you've been (mis)reading too much Ryle, it seems. Don't get me wrong: Ryle is alright; I read and enjoyed Concept of Mind 20 or so years ago; it's good for dispelling "container" analogies for the relation between the body and mind.
The passage you quoted from Ryle is too black and white; more of a caricature than an accurate depiction. Of course we do have private experience, but it is also true that our experience is conditioned by being socialized. We cannot always accurately describe what we are experiencing, and that is where poetry fills the gap left by propositional discourse or literal description. We have no reason to assume, since we are all human and similarly constituted, that our diverse experience is without its similarities, so poetic language can evoke common kinds of experience effectively enough, without being literally descriptive.
Ad hominem instead of making an attempt at a coherent reply, 180 Proof's MO.
If you're into counting points, mark one for me, zero for you. Care to try for a reply to redeem yourself?
Does this mean I don't have to read and try to understand Merleau-Ponty or Heidegger now? :razz: :cool:
I compare any antiphenemenological stance to interplanetary civilizations; in a sense phenomenology is, to put it mildly, mundane, restricted to, let's just say, (a) special case(s). Mind you, I'm not disagreeing with ya.
:wink: You never had to; so it just depends on whether you're interested in discovering the greater depths or not.
To be frank, I gave you the thumbs up to acknowledge what I perceived as your expression disinterest. I love literature and music and
To me the philosophers from both (once-)feuding families all fit together. Brandom and Sellars are great, both arguably 'fixing' Hegel, removing the mystic bluster, keeping the crucial insight into the sociality and autonomy of reason. I take early Derrida to be a Husserl scholar making quasi-Rylean points against the core of phenomenological version of the myth of the given, but from more of an historical angle, tracing the superstition back to Aristotle, for instance.
As to 'dissappearing up one's own arse,' avoiding this is one motive against theories of the private mind that would make up-our-own-arses the only safe hiding place from doubt. Some would build a little world up there, with exactly one citizen, speaking a language made just for him, within which concepts always conveniently mean just what he thinks they mean. Is this not a bunker metaphysics ? Not even the NSA can peek in. And the only things allowed in are those I can't be wrong about.
I think we're on the same page. A philosophy book should tell us about the/our world. It can do this be focusing on the 'how' of our seeing it, and phen. sometimes does this well (Heidegger's hammer is cool!). I'm mostly just griping that constructing the world from the inside out doesn't make much sense. Yet it's taken as the 'obvious' starting point. It's like 'well clearly Venusians run the world, but we don't know if it's through the CIA or the Girls Scouts of America.'
That's interesting. What do you understand to be the "phenomenological version of the myth of the given"? And how do you see it relating back to Aristotle?
Quoting Pie
I don't see doubt as having anything to do with it. If you have no belief that it is possible to give a discursive account of "reality", as opposed to one's own experience, if you don't buy into the realism vs idealism or anti-realism debates, then what is there left to doubt?
I realize now that I misspoke regarding analytical philosophy causing one to disappear up one's own arse; this is not correct at all; it causes one to disappear up the public arse, a far nastier place to be. You don't have to, unless you feel insecure, justify your ideas to anyone. I don't expect there will ever be consensus when it comes to philosophical ideas, and it would be a horrible world indeed if there were.
Neil deGrasse Tyson (astrophysicist, science educator, author) said something to the effect that the universe isn't in any way obligated to make sense to humans - it (the universe) can, it looks as though, do whatever the hell it wants; humans and their silly standards, bah! :snicker:
@Jamal (mod), is this post ok?
I agree that we shouldn't be surprised if the world surprises us. We are even looking for surprises as we extend our knowledge, no? But our sense-making theories should make sense to us, no ?
Of course. Don't play dumb.
Improvising: it's basically a version of the 'ghost story.' 'Pure' meanings glow for it, infinitely intimate, unsoiled by the particularity and historicity of (social, worldly) experience. Presence. I'll find a good Derrida quote on this. But here's an historical source. (This is what Derrida quotes in Of Grammatology. )
[quote = Ari]
Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words. Just as all men have not the same writing, so all men have not the same speech sounds, but the mental experiences, which these directly symbolize, are the same for all, as also are those things of which our experiences are the images.
[/quote]
http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/interpretation.1.1.html
In my opinion, this tempts us to think of a set of universal, pre-given, immaterial concepts... for which we only have to invent conventional phonemes/tags (which Saussure rejects as the nomenclature theory.) This helps set up the veil-of-ideas.
Here's some of Derrida's response to the quote above. Note that the critique of phonocentrism (putting the voice closes to meaning than writing) is driven by a critique of the ghost.
[quote = Derrida]
The feelings of the mind, expressing things naturally, constitute a sort of universal language which can then efface itself. It is the stage of transparence. Aristotle can sometimes omit it without risk. In every case, the voice is closest to the signified, whether it is determined strictly as sense ( thought or lived ) or more loosely as thing. All signifiers, and first and foremost the written signifier, are derivative with regard to what would wed the voice indissolubly to the mind or to the thought of the signified sense, indeed to the thing itself ( whether it is done in the Aristotelian manner that we have just indicated or in the manner of medieval theology, determining the res as a thing created from its eidos, from its sense thought in the logos or in the infinite understanding of God) . The written signifier is always technical and representative. It has no constitutive meaning. This derivation is the very origin of the notion of the "signifier." The notion of the sign always implies within itself the distinction between signifier and signified, even if, as Saussure argues, they are distinguished simply as the two faces of one and the same leaf. This notion remains therefore within the heritage of that logocentrism which is also a phonocentrism...
...absolute proximity of voice and being, of voice and the meaning of being, of voice and the ideality of meaning.We already have a foreboding that phonocentrism merges with...the meaning of being in general as presence, with all the subdeterminations which depend on this general form and which organize within it their system and their historical sequence (presence of the thing to the sight as eidos, presence as substance/ essence/ existence / ousia, temporal presence as point [stigme] of the now or of the moment [nun], the self-presence of the cogito...
[/quote]
One way to think of presence is in terms of self-evidence, the given. The mystic says that God is right here. Or the person who is sure sure sure he knows what he's talking about, even if he's run out of words. His meaning is right there, glowing and present and perfect, independent of the network of other public concepts. Is Derrida not making a Hegelian point that everything is mediated, mediated, mediated, or a Brandomian point that awareness is linguistic ? For we who are not thermostats?
I think you are trying to have your cake and eat it too. If you are indeed a great poetic soul, too cool for anal discussions of epistemology, then...good for you, sir ! But I'd believe it more readily if you weren't wasting your time with an even greater triviality like indulging in hackneyed 'defenses' of The Poetic Soul, as if your the only one among your peers that's ever had a finger in.
Quoting Janus
This is one of the most irrationalist assertions I've ever seen on a philosophy forum (if you mean the typical role of ideas in social life, Mr. Anti-Up-My-Arse ) or the tritest (if you mean that the checkout girl at Costco doesn't care about the books I've read.)
Copy that!
Solipsism is where you end up when you can't prove other minds.
GLEN willows
Banno - No it isn't. Lack of proof other minds exist is not proof that they do not exist.
So then it's belief?
I don't know what you intend by "pure meanings". I don't find that notion in the phenomenological works I am most familiar with (mainly Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Michel Henry).
Of course I don't agree that the "mental experiences" are the same for all, although I would say there are enough commonalities to make mutual understanding possible. So, I'm not sure what you think we are arguing about.
Quoting Pie
It might tempt you to think of such things, but not me; the idea seems incoherent to me.
Quoting Pie
I don't find much clarity or insight in Derrida, I do find, ironically, a similar absolutizing tendency in his writing that he o critique. The idea that the voice has been privileged over the written word I have never found convincing, since the age of the oral tradition has long since passed. One advantage of dialogue, whether spoken or written, over books, is that the speaker can be questioned on the spot as to their meaning.
I don't see how that passage is a "critique of the ghost"; are you claiming that Derrida thought of it as such or merely that you have interpreted to fit into your current preoccupations?
Quoting Pie
I really have no idea what you are talking about here. Of course I agree that not everything, not all, but much of our experience, is mediated. I certainly don't agree that awareness is linguistic: animals are aware and they don't have language. No idea what you mean by "thermostats".
Quoting Pie
I haven't said or implied that I am a "great poetic soul", and I'm not indulging in defenses of it, hackneyed or otherwise. It seems you've totally misunderstood what I've been saying. To reiterate, I've been saying that I don't accept that there is no private experience, and I don't accept that the most important aspect of (my) life is justifying my ideas to others, or others justifying their ideas to me. To me this would be the realm of the machine people.
When it comes to philosophy, I value ideas insofar as they offer me inspiration and insight, not insofar as I think they are "correct" or "justified". I see a whole spectrum of ways to think about things some more insightful and inspiring than others, and more or less so to various people. And all I'm trying to convey is how I think about these things, and all I've got from you is strawman attacks and defensiveness.
.Quoting Pie
Seems a bit presumptuous, the checkout girl at Costco might have read more books than you, for all you know. I don't seek to deny that ideas in the various practical fields such as politics and economics are argued over in the marketplace; I'm referring to purely "philosophical" ideas that don't have any practical consequences, such as whether there is a mind-independent external world, or whether or not there is a mental substance ( I don't think there is, but I don't care if others do, since it isn't something which can be established empirically). Anyway, it seems obvious to me you're becoming increasingly defensive, so perhaps it's best to leave it there.
If you can't prove something, it's a belief, correct?
Do you think that things must be proved in order to be true?
Or are there things that are true yet unproven?
This is why, we, as human beings are required to to shape or formulate our principles in such a way so as to make sense of the universe. The onus is on us to make sense of the universe, not on the universe to make sense to us. And that is also why our principles (mathematical axioms etc.) cannot be eternal unchanging objects, as in Platonism, because we shape them, as required, to make sense of the universe.
However, there is a definite problem which arises. The world is observed by us. to be bound by some principles of order. So the problem is in how can we understand the real existence of these principles (natural laws as some would say), which we infer from our observations of the world, to have real governance over the world. In other words, "the universe isn't in any way obligated to make sense to humans", as you say, but for some reason, in many ways it does make sense to us.
Of course we formulate our artificial laws of "order" in the universe to match the existing natural order within the universe, and that is why the universe makes sense to us, but what type of existence does this natural order actually have? If all things in the universe follow some sort of natural order, then the order must be prior to the things, as logic dictates that the follower is posterior to what is followed. That is what distinguishes the natural laws from the artificial laws, the former are prior to the things while the latter are posterior to the things.
I believe hes saying that if you cant prove that aliens exist then you dont know that aliens exist, even if you believe that aliens exist and even if aliens exist. The same with there being other minds.
Examples?
And the key word you used was "believed." I'll accept any belief you have...of Sasquatches, chem-trails, etc but I'd require proof. Wouldn't you?
Things must be proven to be known to be true, which is all that is important when it comes to truth. What could it matter that something be true if it were not known, or knowable as such?
But what he said was that, to borrow your example, if we have no evidence of aliens existing, then it follows that they do not exist.
Quoting Janus
"Justified", or "warranted", are the usual the terms used, rather than proven.
Here's my point again, just to be clear: Even if there is no proof of other minds, it does not follow that they do not exist.
This does seem important. Do you have any particular views on Truthmaker Theory?
Quoting Banno
I would have thought that was self-evident to most folk. I think where people seem to get carried away is the notion that in some cases if X can't be proven (let's say God), we have no good reason to accept X (God). It seems to me easy to slip from this to X does not exist. Thoughts?
It seems to me that under the JTB definition of knowledge, even assuming that there are real criteria concerning what counts as justification, that we can know things, but we cannot be certain that we know them, unless what we know is proven. Is anything other than a tautology ever proven? Perhaps in mathematics?
That said, I agree with your point that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
A minimalist view of truth is the only way to go. Hence, T-sentences set out pretty much all there is to the logic of truth.
Quoting Tom Storm
Yes, but idealism and antirealism cloud the picture for some folk.
What's at stake here is what we are to say about the truth value of statements when the evidence is lacking. What will we say about, to keep to @Michael's example, the truth value of the existence of aliens?
On the one side we might adopt the realist view that either there are aliens but we don't have evidence for their existence, and hence "there are aliens" is true; or there are no aliens, and "there are aliens" is false, but again we lack evidence. This is the realist view: that "there are aliens" is either true or false, but we don't know which.
On the other side is the view that since we do not know that "There are aliens" is true or false, it is neither. This view sets aside the classical logical principle that a statement is either true or it is false. It can do this coherently by introducing a paraconsistent logic, of which there are several variations. This is the antirealist view.
Quoting Tom Storm
That's an important point. There is a thread in philosophy that claims that what is not proven is not to be take seriously. It's not a thread that one can take seriously. If everything is to be proven, we end up with either an infinite regress or a curricular argument.
If the criteria for knowing something is proof, we have a problem.
If everything that is known has a proof, then for each statement that is known, there is some other statement that implies it. Problem is, any statement implies a true statement.
Look at the truth table for implication:
We know that q is true. So we are looking only at the first and third lines of the truth table, where "p" has the value "T". Now look at the value of "q" in those two cases. It does not matter if q is true or false, p?q is true.
If we know that some statement is true, the any statement, true or false, implies it.
Intuitively, what this is saying is that if we know the some statement is true, then the truth or falsehood of any other statement is irrelevant. If we know that Sydney is in Australia, then whether the cat is on the mat or not makes no difference.
Hence, every true statement is proven by every statement, true or false.
And this is why JTB speaks of justified true belief, and not proven true belief. Proof is too strong.
(I suspect that part of the reason non-analytic philosophers disparage analytic philosophy as anal is that they don't like the way it buggers their pet theories.)
The Stanford Biographical article has something to say about his view of the realism/antirealism discussion.
Quoting SEP:Donald Davidson
Would it not be more accurate to say that absence of proof is not proof of absence?
(Or, absence of evidence is not proof of absence, for that matter?)
Great response. But it's based on a misinterpretation of what I'm saying. And from not - I believe - engaging my ideas fully, and instead turning your responses to other commonly held logical fallacies.
I've repeated myself so many times, and you might have done a "gotcha" with ONE misspoken example. I don't really care at this point - if you do an honest rereading of my posts I'm NOT saying the you must prove something for it to be TRUE. Yes there's issues with that. But that's a straw man.
What I'm saying is "I need proof to believe something (other minds)." I also need proof to believe in God. I would go further and say "Any rational person will require proof in order to believe something."
So before you start dissecting what proof is, maybe it would be easier to point out the ad absurdem aspect here by rephrasing it. Aliens are actually easy to believe exist, or don't exist. Answer this: would you require proof to believe there's a giant carnivorous butterfly named "Ned" that is floating above my head right now. Do you believe me or need proof?
I don't think so. You asked for help in understanding the relation between idealism and solipsism, and for a discussion of solipsism. You were asking why philosophers reject solipsism, but insisting that the rejection must take the form of a "proof". I've been attempting to show what the base opinion of philosophers generally might be, while attempting to show you the limitations of "proof".
So you say that you understand that there can be unproven truths, while maintaining that you requirer proof in order to believe that something is true. But of course as soon as you step outside of the philosophy forum, you drop that demand. If someone tells you that they live in Brisbane, you don't ask them for proof. If your partner tells you that they love you, you don't demand proof.
We sometimes need reasons to doubt as much as we need reasons to believe.
But moreover, there is the logical issue of the grounding for proof. If you demand proof for everything you believe, you will end up falling into a regress, running in a circle, or believing nothing.
I'm not out to catch you with a "gotcha". I am interested in explicating the points you raise, perhaps in a way that is mutually agreeable, but mostly with an eye towards checking the clarity of my own views. Philosophy isn't just sitting in an armchair making shit up. It's difficult and uncomfortable.
We may not be able to prove the solipsist wrong, but we can tell them to fuck off. Try this: If you are becoming pissed at my posts, then who is it you are becoming pissed at? Yourself?
That's not an argument, but perhaps an "intuition pump". There's more to philosophy than proof.
We're pattern chasers! That, however, ain't the whole story, oui?
Anyway, I'm totally calm and collected - doing this in between writing music...can't be angry while doing that. I tried to bail a couple of times, but realize it's probably good for my thinking if I kept going. I agree with you - this is clearing up and sharpening my own reasoning.
Can we agree on something if we go forward - in my world, simple texting etiquette is if someone asks a question, it's simply polite to answer it. I specifically suggested you answer a question before starting to dissect "proof" which you went ahead and did anyway. I can see all the issues, although I think there's a lot of straw men hiding there - (of course I never said you need proof of EVERYTHING).
But first can you answer this question (carefully updated in brackets], because it gets to the heart of the issue IMO. would you require proof to believe there's a giant carnivorous butterfly named "Ned" that is floating above my head right now. Do you believe me [accept that it's real] or need [some kind of] proof?
I'm Australian. 'tis but our customary parlance.
Quoting GLEN willows
Me too. every day since 1970. If you have a choice, best not get involved in philosophy.
Sometimes a question is best answered by being ignored. Ned and other folk are not on the same plane. I'll take your word for it, and suppose you perhaps breed Feniseca.
Now, back on topic...?
The answer to this question depends entirely on what one's prior expectations about the space above your head are. We require proof not to believe things, but to change our beliefs about things. I have a belief about the space above your head already (we can test this by asking me to bet on its contents, for example). By claiming that it actually contains a carnivorous butterfly, you're asking me to change my belief. I need some reason to do that (although as @Banno has already said, 'proof' would be too strong a requirement).
Regarding other minds, I already believe there are other minds. I was born with that belief, I've been attempting to emulate, predict and manipulate those other minds since I was a few month's old. I need 'proof'/evidence/justifications to change my mind, but not to keep it how it is by default.
I was born with that belief, I've been attempting to emulate, predict and manipulate those other minds since I was a few month's old. I need 'proof'/evidence/justifications to change my mind, but not to keep it how it is by default.
Yikes. I'm as dumb as a post, but this makes no rational sense at all. Do you really think being born with a belief is a reason to believe it?
I would consider direct observation to be proof (proof enough anyway, even though we can always get radically skeptical and doubt anything we like). So, I'm thinking in the empirical context, not in the formal logic context. For example catching my wife in bed with another man would be proof that she is being promiscuous. I can look at any appropriate map I like to prove that Sydney is in Australia or live there or go there. There are countless examples.like this,
The problem I see with the notion of justification is that it is not crystal clear what constitutes it in the various situations we might find ourselves in.
Anyway my point was that if we accept JTB, it can be the case that we know things without knowing that we know them (because we cannot be sure what counts as justification and we don't always know if this or that is true), or not know things when we think we do.
Sometimes a question is best answered by being ignored.
And you did a stellar job of doing that. As I expected. It's a thought experiment. like - you know - philosophical zombies? If you don't see the point in it, I'm wasting my time here.
And if you were as politician I'd say "It's a simple yes or no answer sir."
Where? And why the fucking stars?
I can simplify it?
GLEN willows
I'm Australian. 'tis but customary parlance.
So where are we WRT your query? can we get back o the topic?
I thought there might be a forum rule about swearing. I'M TRYING TO BE NICE DUDE!
NOTE: I put a happy face on that, it didn't come through. Maybe those are censored.
You already do. That's the point.
If you ask me "what does the space above Glen's head contain?" Am I equally likely to say "Nothing", "A hat", or "a carnivorous butterfly called Ned"?
I assume no-one is going to argue that all three are equally likely responses. Which means that prior to my being asked the question, some state of affairs must exist such as to cause that uneven probability distribution. That state of affairs is what I call a belief - a propensity to act as if... I am predisposed to act as if the space above Glen's head contains nothing, one of those actions is to answer "Nothing" when asked "what does the space above Glen's head contain". We've just established that prior to being asked the question, I already had the predisposition to answer "Nothing", we agreed that (for whatever reason) it was more likely than any other response.
--- All beliefs should be proved before being accepted.
--- Really ? Then prove that all beliefs should be proved before being accepted.
:up:
So let's go back over it again. I accepted your odd statement, in the interests of charity, hypothesising that you perhaps breed Feniseca tarquinius, the largest of the carnivorous butterflies.
Now what was the point of your question?
And how is Ned?
That there are some things you won't believe without proof. Yes or no.
Again I'm shocked that you believe having a predisposition to believe something means anything at all.
There has to be proof for me to believe in other minds.
Read more carefully. I didnt say "a predisposition to believe" I said "a predisposition to act as if...".
And why 'shocked'?
"We've just established that prior to being asked the question, I already had the predisposition to answer "Nothing""
And...?
There are plenty of cases in which "proof" is irrelevant.
Quoting GLEN willows
I think that is not the case. I suggest that you do believe in other minds, except for the purposes of the peculiar game of writing posts on the philosophy forum. As evidence for that, I cite your continued participation in this thread. Not just that you continue to interact with us, but that you demonstrate a reasonable level of interaction - you are able to access and use a device of some sort in order to be here, you have a reasonable grasp of English, you recognise humour and have a grasp of the nature of argument and some familiarity with the philosophical context in which we are talking. If you did not believe in other minds, these interactions would be difficult to explain.
Just to be clear, I didn't say you said anything in particular. I was just making a point that we don't need to prove everything. For you seem to imply that a theist and a believer in an external world were in the same epistemological position (which would seem to be a statement about the external world, but never mind that for now...)
Instead I'd say that a community takes lots of statements to be facts or facts-until-proven-guilty, which are fair game as premises for arguments toward less obvious conclusions. This is an old issue.
Weight in what sense? Moral weight? No. Explanatory weight? Yes.
Name a few?
Either. Both
This seems obvious though, and not sure what it has to do with the topic. I may have been born believing there are other minds, or born believing the opposite. Does that have anything to do with whether there ARE other minds?
Seriously thanks for your time, chat tomorrow.
You say that if A implies B, and A is true, then B is true. I demand proof - What the Tortoise Said to Achilles
You claim to desire evidence. I demand proof of your desire.
We agree as to the rules of chess. You say that the bishop always remains on the same colour square in Chess. I demand proof.
It's not hard to think of cases in which proof is superfluous.
Another performative paradox - you request, even demand, answers from folk whose existence you claim to need proof of.
Yes.
Quoting GLEN willows
No. But we weren't talking about whether there are other minds, we were talking about whether (and why) you believe there are.
I granted him that a character in a dream could tell him he was awake.
Is it logically impossible that I am dreaming right now ? I'd say no, but I'd say that 'dreaming' only makes sense if waking is possible (my 'real' body is bed.) But granting this logical possibility is not unlike granting the mere logical possibility that my skull is hollow ( a thesis, I must admit, that some here might find plausible after all.)
Very often, people act in ways contrary to their beliefs. Therefore you cannot make accurate conclusions about one's beliefs, from ones actions. Furthermore, people act in contrary ways, saying things ( a type of acting) which are incompatible with other things they are doing. This is known as hypocrisy.
This is the important demonstration which Wittgenstein makes through his use of hypocrisy in the Philosophical investigations, which you continually ignore and deny. You seem to think that what Wittgenstein says, is an expression of what is doing, or demonstrating in that text, so you refer to what he says as what he has demonstrated. I've repeatedly explain to you, over and over again, that what Wittgenstein has demonstrated is that what he has said, is false. That is the Socratic method, to demonstrate the falsity of a statement. But you refuse to apprehend and understand what Wittgenstein is doing with his words, in those demonstrations, opting to simply believe he is demonstrating the truth of what he states.
Quoting GLEN willows
What happens, described in a general way, is that we form habits which are based on beliefs held at a particular time (when we're very young, we don't even acknowledge those habit forming beliefs, they are the beliefs, our trainers, or even innate). As we develop a stronger and stronger rational capacity (the power to reason), we may produce beliefs which are inconsistent with our habitual actions which were formed by the prior beliefs. Then, the conscientious human being will see the need to break the habits, and this is not easy, as the reality of our habit of burning fossil fuels and polluting the earth with CO2 demonstrates.
Relative to the topic of the thread, solipsism, and Banno's explanation, one might act as if there is other minds, when these habits are viewed from the premise that training is the influence of other minds, but a person might understand principles which deny the reality of other minds, and deny that these habits are formed by the influence of other minds. This is why "grounds" becomes very important, because the two possible grounding points, how the person acts, and what the person believes, can very well be opposed to each other.
Where do you stand on Neurath's boat?
Not too near the edge :lol:
But seriously...
Quoting Catherine Z Elgin
And scientists no longer expect any ultimate foundation or certainty for their theories.
On the other hand... they, and anti-foundationalist philosophers, still seek to systematise, or axiomatise. Not because they expect their theories to derive truth and certainty from their laws or axioms, but the better to evaluate, test, and improve the theories.
Hence @Pie's interest in "fixing the cogito", probably.
But yeah, I suppose if you do accept Descartes' more occult cogito as an indubitable truth, then you are bound to demand a logical demonstration of any claim that a refutation of solipsism is available on that basis.
This is why I think that solipsism and external world scepticism should be seen as important ideas in intellectual history rather than challenges to face on their own terms. It can be argued that Descartes was well-motivated in his time. Such motivations are no longer felt, so the ideas as expressed today become mere psychological curiosities.
Fascinating stuff. A few questions arise.
How do we identify the old beliefs from the new beliefs? Do they have some kind of labelling system?
Why don't the new beliefs form habits (if the old ones did), and if they do how do we identify new-belief habits from old-belief habits?
Whence my belief that the space above Glen's head is empty? Have I habitually told people the space above their heads is empty?
How do we identify which belief (of the hundreds required to carry out even the smallest task) is the one which is causing the defunct habit?
Research opportunities abound...
:up:
If we can't have final truth or referee the other disciplines, we can rule out nonsense, clarifying what it is to be a rational agent in the first place along the way.
:up:
I don't think Descartes advocated solipsism, did he?
Correct.
Right. Descartes' project was to prove that "I" exist", not to prove that others don't exist.
Yes, he arrived, after doubting everything he thought he could, at the cogito as the purportedly indubitable, and then (unfortunately not indubitably) built everything back up again on that foundation. So, his project. as I said, was to prove, at least to his satisfaction. that he existed. Whether or not he already had that indubitably of his existence in mind from the start is another question. I think he was correct that the knowledge of our own existence is, of all knowledge, the most certain.
I would say that we distinguish old beliefs from new, by means of the justification. One would not drop an old belief in favour of a new belief, unless this was justified. And, in my explanation, the whole reason for adopting new beliefs is an increase in one's capacity to reason, as the person grows up. So in introspection, we might find numerous beliefs which we hold, that have never been justified, and some that we do not even know how we got them, as they just popped into the mind, came at a young age, or are possibly even innate. These are older beliefs, which are often the foundation for habits. If a belief is the basis for a habit, it is necessarily old, because habits take time to develop. Why do I put my shoes on before I get in the car to drive? At some point I developed the belief that it's not good to drive in bare feet. It's a habit I have, derived from an old belief.
But at some point, we might reassess such old beliefs, and even justify a conflicting new principle, which becomes the new belief, thus apprehending the need to break the old habit, as a bad habit. If the person cannot break the bad habit, yet believes it ought to be broken, then the person succumbs to hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is very common and we ought not be ashamed of it, though it has received bad connotations. We all wish our children will do better than ourselves, and recognize where they ought not follow ourselves as an example. This is because it's easier to change one's beliefs than it is to change one's habits, and if I cannot break a bad habit, I might at least instill something better in my children.
Quoting Isaac
These questions are answered through introspection.
Nope. Tried it. I got nothing.
Ah, that works now, I must have missed your typo.
:up:
If you answer this question for yourself, would you invent the answer, or would you utilize your memory to produce an answer? I would use my memory. We could class reference to memory as an act of using one's creative power, but then how would we distinguish between fact and fiction?
Exactly. I can't even remember why I came into the kitchen, and you're trying to sell it as a route of access to the truths of the universe?
Oh, and to answer your question directly... we distinguish by checking with others.
No, I took those questions as personal problems which could potentially be resolved through introspection, not as having anything to do with "the truths of the universe". You asked me some questions about the relationship between specific beliefs you hold, and the way you behave. But I didn't know that your memory was so poor that introspection could not help you with those issues. A psychologist, or perhaps even a physician, might be the better route for you.
But I can't see how I'd even get past the preliminary consultation.
"Doctor, I can't remember what my beliefs were"
"What makes you think that?"
"Er..."
:grin: :up:
Well, I myself have jumped out of the edge and left the seep behind me. I can only talk about the known "Theseus' Ship" is one of the many pseudo-paradoxes, that is paradoxes based on wrong interpretation of facts (fallacy, wrong deduction, etc.)