# Disprove solipsism. Please. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 21, 2010, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disprove-solipsism-please/536825 "2010-04-21T03:40:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Dostoyevsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5a626/32.png) [@Dostoyevsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dostoyevsky)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disprove-solipsism-please/536825/1 "2010-04-21T03:40:02Z")
The earlier ideas of Wittgenstein’s career along with Sartre’s stuff has left me ponderin’ alot. Is there any irrefutable, undeniable evidence that anything other than one thing exists? (I’m really hoping there is. Solipsism seems likes utter nonsense but I can’t say why.) Also, why is it common for individuals to assume things outside themselves exist? And is the commonness of this assumption “evidence” against solipsism? Also, again, if solipsism can be logical why aren’t more people solipsists instead of normies? Many thanks, The Confused One. ---
**Author:** ![AClockworkMelon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aclockworkmelon/32/10803_2.png) [@AClockworkMelon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AClockworkMelon)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disprove-solipsism-please/536825/2 "2010-04-21T03:49:02Z")
There is no way to disprove solipsism. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disprove-solipsism-please/536825/3 "2010-04-21T03:51:25Z")
If it is true then you don’t exist so why should I disprove it to you? ---
**Author:** ![Dostoyevsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5a626/32.png) [@Dostoyevsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dostoyevsky)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disprove-solipsism-please/536825/4 "2010-04-21T03:52:02Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > If it is true then you don’t exist so why should I disprove it to you? Ha! 😛 ETA: **AClockworkMelon** , okay, maybe we can’t “disprove” it in the strict sense but what best evidence is there against it? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disprove-solipsism-please/536825/5 "2010-04-21T03:52:48Z")
> [@AClockworkMelon](#): > > There is no way to disprove solipsism. Jam a needle under your fingernail. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disprove-solipsism-please/536825/6 "2010-04-21T03:55:01Z")
It’s kind of pointless to try to convince people that solipsism is true, ain’t it? After all, who do you think you’re arguing with? If you really believed in solipsism you wouldn’t bring it up with all the imaginary people you pretend to talk to. I mean, just think about the sentence, “Why aren’t more people solipsists?” for a minute or two. See the contradiction there? It seems to me that if you have to ask someone else to disprove solipsism, then you’re no kind of solipsist. ---
**Author:** ![Trepa\_Mayfield](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/edb3f5/32.png) [@Trepa\_Mayfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trepa_Mayfield)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disprove-solipsism-please/536825/7 "2010-04-21T03:55:25Z")
1.) Here is a hand 2.) Here is another hand. 3.) Therefore, you are wrong. (This disproof works a lot better in person.) ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disprove-solipsism-please/536825/8 "2010-04-21T03:55:49Z")
> [@Dostoyevsky](#): > > Is there any irrefutable, undeniable evidence that anything other than one thing exists? (I’m really hoping there is. Solipsism seems likes utter nonsense but I can’t say why.) It is nonsense. It’s nothing better than mental masturbation. > [@](#): > > Also, why is it common for individuals to assume things outside themselves exist? Because we see evidence that things outside ourselves exist. If the solipsists want to claim that this evidence is just a figment of everybody’s imagination, it’s up to them to prove it or STFU. The default position is to assume something doesn’t exist, until you see evidence to the contrary. But once you see that evidence, assuming it does exist becomes the new default, until either the original evidence is proven false, or new evidence that it doesn’t exist shows up. They have done neither. > [@pedescribe](#): > > 1.) Here is a hand > 2.) Here is another hand. > 3.) Therefore, you are wrong. > > (This disproof works a lot better in person.) Shouldn’t that go: “Here is a hand.” _dopeslap_ “Now quit being a tosser.” ---
**Author:** ![Dostoyevsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5a626/32.png) [@Dostoyevsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dostoyevsky)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disprove-solipsism-please/536825/9 "2010-04-21T03:59:46Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > It’s kind of pointless to try to convince people that solipsism is true, ain’t it? Probably. But why do philosophers do it then? > [@](#): > > I mean, just think about the sentence, “Why aren’t more people solipsists?” for a minute or two. See the contradiction there? Yes, I do see the contradiction. That’s poor wording on my part. Here’s this: why aren’t more of my perceptions of people solipsists? Or, why don’t I perceive solipsism to be more common? FWIW, I’m not a solipsist. Looking to disprove it or at least try. ---
**Author:** ![AClockworkMelon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aclockworkmelon/32/10803_2.png) [@AClockworkMelon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AClockworkMelon)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disprove-solipsism-please/536825/10 "2010-04-21T04:01:43Z")
The closest you can get to disproving it is: When another person dies, you have disproved solipsism for _that_ person, I suppose. There is no way to disprove solipsism for yourself. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disprove-solipsism-please/536825/11 "2010-04-21T04:12:12Z")
From [_The WHYS of a Philosophical Scrivener,_](http://www.amazon.com/Whys-Philosophical-Scrivener-Martin-Gardner/dp/0312206828) by Martin Gardner, Chapter 1: “THE WORLD: Why I Am Not a Solipsist”: > [@](#): > > Although there has never been a sane solipsist, the doctrine often haunts young minds. G.K. Chesterton is a case in point. In his autobiography he writes about a period in his youth during which the notion that maybe nothing existed except himself and his own [phaneron](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaneron) caused him considerable anguish. He later became a realist, and there are many places in his writings where he warns against the psychic dangers of solipsistic speculation. The epigraph heading this chapter [Let me not look aloft and see my own / Feature and form upon the Judgment-throne] is a couplet from his poem “The Mirror of Madmen.” Another vivid defense of realism is “Wonder and the Wooden Post,” an essay in Chesterton’s posthumous book, _The Coloured Lands._ But nowhere did GK defend his realism with more passionate intensity than in a story called “The Crime of Gabriel Gale.” It can be found in _The Poet and the Lunatic,_ my favorite of GK’s many collections of mystery stories about detectives other than Father Brown. > > Since this book may be hard to come by, here is a brief summary of the story’s plot. Gabriel Gale, poet, artist and detective, is accused of a terrible crime. It seems that on a wild and stormy night Gale thrown a rope around the neck of a young man who was preparing for the Anglican ministry. After dragging the poor fellow into a wood, Gale pinned him for the night against a tree by forcing two prongs of a large pitchfork into the trunk on either side of the man’s neck. After Gale is arrested for attempted murder, he suggests to the police that they obtain the opinion of his victim. > > The surprising reply comes by telegraph: “Can never be sufficiently grateful to Gale for his great kindness which more than saved my life.” > > It turns out that the young man had been going through the same insane phase that had tormented GK in his youth. He was on the verge of believing that his phaneron did not depend on anything that was not entirely inside his head. Gabriel Gale, always sensitive to the psychoses of others (having felt most of them himself), had realized that the man’s mind was near the snapping point. Gale’s remedy was radical. By pinning the man to the tree he had convinced him, not by logic (no one is ever convinced by logic of anything important), but by an overpowering experience. He found himself firmly bound to something that his mind could in no way modify. > > “We are all tied to trees and pinned with pitchforks,” Gale tells the half-comprehending police. “And as long as these are solid we know the stars will stand and the hills will not melt at our word. Can’t you imagine the huge tide of healthy relief and thanks, like a hymn of praise from all nature, that went up from that captive nailed to the tree, when he had wrestled till the dawn and received at last the great and glorious news; the news that he was only a man?” > > The story ends when the man, now a curate, remarks casually to an atheist, “God wants you to play the game.” > > “How do you know what God wants?” asks the atheist. “You never were God were you?” > > “Yes,” says the clergyman in a queer voice. “I was God once for about fourteen hours. But I gave it up. I found it was too much of a strain.” Actually, BTW, **you** wrote all of that. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disprove-solipsism-please/536825/12 "2010-04-21T04:17:13Z")
> [@Dostoyevsky](#): > > Probably. But why do philosophers do it then? [shrug] Expecting philosophers to leave a disturbing idea alone is like expecting a show full of dogs to ignore a cat drenched in bacon grease. ---
**Author:** ![Dostoyevsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5a626/32.png) [@Dostoyevsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dostoyevsky)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disprove-solipsism-please/536825/13 "2010-04-21T04:21:57Z")
Related question: Is it fair to say that pantheism and solipsism are the same? If so, then there’s more solipsists then what I realized initially. ---
**Author:** ![hotflungwok](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/edb3f5/32.png) [@hotflungwok](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hotflungwok)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disprove-solipsism-please/536825/14 "2010-04-21T04:26:56Z")
Solipsism can argued against with Occam’s Razor. If everyone behaves as if they were all different, individual people, why try to assert that they aren’t? ---
**Author:** ![Dostoyevsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5a626/32.png) [@Dostoyevsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dostoyevsky)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disprove-solipsism-please/536825/15 "2010-04-21T04:32:44Z")
> [@hotflungwok](#): > > Solipsism can argued against with Occam’s Razor. If everyone behaves as if they were all different, individual people, why try to assert that they aren’t? That’s a neat point. But isn’t it truer (?) that Occam’s Razor can be argued against the teaching/promoting of solipsism and not necessarily solipsism itself? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disprove-solipsism-please/536825/16 "2010-04-21T04:38:17Z")
From [_The Book of the SubGenius,_](http://www.subgenius.com/bigfist/classic/classics/X0003_botsg-intro.html) Chapter 3, “EARTH IS HELL”: > [@](#): > > The concept of Infinity is so hard to ‘get’ viscerally that when we look up at the night sky, we tend to actually think of the _stars_ merely as random, separated, inexplicably backlit holes punched in some huge backdrop about a mile away from us. > > Yet ever now and then we can actually get a ‘feel’ for the distances and _times_ involved . . . and glimpsing that fact of eternity becomes REAL SCARY if you truly get a solid _grip_ on that insolidity, that abject Nothingness of God’s Brain . . . > > What scares you is that _you might be ‘God’_ and you _might wake up,_ and all those fragile physical laws might come crashing down; the spiderweb network of all reality, even your friends’ thoughts, might be erased like some precious but stupidly-unlabeled cassette tape, never to be recaptured again. > > The idea is _so_ scary that the goal of _most religions_ is to preserve and elaborate on that concept of the stars as a big painted backdrop. They make Infinity a ‘prop’ so you don’t have to think about the scary part. > > **This religion is about the scary part.** > > It can’t be ‘thought about;’ it is grasped only through _direct knowledge_ – **“seeing,”** one might say, the nature of Slack. Without Slack, there can be no Infinity, and vice versa. “Good Lord,” it exists only _inside_ our _heads,_ after all. This Vale of Illusion isn’t _real,_ “for God’s Sake.” At least, not until somebody slams the _outside_ of the head with a truncheon. Then, you could probably call it fairly real. > > And here comes **the answer.** Someone _is_ slamming _both_ sides of _all_ our heads with a truncheon. It sure as hell isn’t _God,_ either. _God couldn’t care less._ That’s right, _God couldn’t care less._ “God” gives everyone equal time, the truncheons as well as the heads. “He” got the whole mess started, then sat back to run itself into the ground or the sky, whichever way the universe ends up. [You are intrigued by my ideas and wish to subscribe to my newsletter.](http://www.subgenius.com/) ---
**Author:** ![Noel\_Prosequi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b19c9b/32.png) [@Noel\_Prosequi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Noel_Prosequi)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disprove-solipsism-please/536825/17 "2010-04-21T07:07:27Z")
There is no “proof” in a syllogistic, mathematical sense. Like conspiracy theories, one can always extend the claim of solipsism to embrace any apparent disproof. But syllogistic reasoning is not the only basis on which propositions can be excluded from rational consideration. At an empirical level, extreme solipsism is enormously expensive in an Occam’s Razor sense. _You_ clearly exist (on the cogito ergo sum principle), therefore the universe is not empty. Whether you are corporeal or incorporeal is a question that then emerges. If you are corporeal, even if your real body is nothing like the illusory body you imagine you see, then the universe has gone to an awful lot of trouble to create one copy of you. This by an inscrutable process that is capable of creating one but no more copies of something necessarily sufficiently complex to house your mind. It is very difficult to see how this could occur. Believing this robustly challenges the principle of parsimony. No process of evolution can explain this - evolution requires large populations which change over time. If you are incorporeal, then the universe need not contain any matter, just your mind. But your mind persists in operating as though it is bound by the same rules as bind the minds of the corporeal folk you imagine to exist. Why should it do that? Why are you not God in the imaginary world your mind has created? Your mind is subject to the same sensory illusions born of brain architecture, for example, as are the minds of the virtual people who populate your illusory world. It gets drunk when you drink illusory alcohol according to exactly the same principles that apply to the other virtual minds in your universe. In other words, your mind behaves exactly as though it were corporeal, even though it is not. Why should it be so limited? What sensible process could result in your mind coming into existence with limitations that happen to coincide with its being corporeal, without actually being corporeal? Believing this, too, is a robust challenge to parsimony. Your solipsistic mind also has some other extremely odd limitations which are otherwise inexplicable. It is capable of creating an apparently consistent non-existent world which operates without error. Yet this is a world that operates according to rules which the mind which created it cannot understand. You have imagined into existence a world which obeys physical laws about which you have no comprehension. I am willing to bet you do not have **Chronos** ’s understanding of physics, but even if you did, the understanding of physics held by the finest minds in the world you have invented is not yet complete or sufficient to explain all the details of the operation of the world you have invented. In other words, your mind is capable of creating a universe out of nothing, yet is arbitraily limited so as not to have access to the process by which that is occurring, and is further arbitrarily and very specifically limited to behave in such a way that shares the limitations of others with whom you have populated this imaginary world. Why should you be subject to such limitations if you are, essentially, Og? Where does this world-making skill come from, since it is not coming from your conscious mind? While we might speak of the unconscious mind, no sensible model of that phenomenon allows it to be as powerful as it is required to be to do what is demanded of it by solipsism. Indeed, so isolated from consciousness is this part of you that is creating the world out of whole cloth that it is difficult to even conceive of it as genuinely part of “you” at all. It is a process utterly foreign to your conscious mind, and utterly inaccessible to it. It is, in essence, “other”. And if it is, then the universe now has two objects in it - “you” and this uncontactable “other” process that is running the show for you. And part of the world the “other” is running is the illusion of people. “You” have no idea what your friends or family are going to do next. You do not have a sense that you are controlling them, puppeteer fashion. They operate according to rules that are of a quite different order from the rules of physics. They are essentially unpredictable, yet at a certain level of abstraction can be seen to operate according to metarules relating to motivations, drives and desires that mirror your motivations, drives and desires. All without you being able to access the process by which “you” are creating this. “You” have desires and urges for things that do not exist. Sex and food do not exist, yet you wish them. Why and how, would or could, such desires emerge in the only mind in the universe? Why are you not capable of overriding the need for food, the fear of pain and death, given that you are omnipotent? These limitations are simultaneously hopelessly arbitrary and capricious yet at the same time absolutely rigid and unavoidable if extreme solipsism is true. Once again, all of this robustly challenges parsimony. It _is_ possible, in a very limited way, to create a world in your head. When you dream, you are not able to predict the movements and behaviours of other people in the dream, yet this is a product of your mind. Yet it is vastly imperfect. Why should your mind have _two_ levels of capacity to world-build - the full scale one that works when you are awake, and the limited imperfect version that operates when you dream? Why aren’t your dreams as perfectly rendered as the real world is, given that you make both? How could this come to pass? What sensible, Occam-friendly explanation for all this is there? I now go to mock solipsism by kicking a stone and saying “I refute it thus”. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disprove-solipsism-please/536825/18 "2010-04-21T11:52:28Z")
> [@AClockworkMelon](#): > > The closest you can get to disproving it is: When another person dies, you have disproved solipsism for _that_ person, I suppose. There is no way to disprove solipsism for yourself. The 13-year-old younger brother of a college friend punctured one of the great metaphysical bull sessions of all tme, by simply noting that the world appears to have objective reality outside ourselves. Even if we’re systematically being deluded as to the nature of reality, that very systematization implies a reality, in principle knowable, beyond ourselves. _Cogito ergo sunt._ ---
**Author:** ![AClockworkMelon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aclockworkmelon/32/10803_2.png) [@AClockworkMelon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AClockworkMelon)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disprove-solipsism-please/536825/19 "2010-04-21T11:55:52Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > The 13-year-old younger brother of a college friend punctured one of the great metaphysical bull sessions of all tme, by simply noting that the world appears to have objective reality outside ourselves. Even if we’re systematically being deluded as to the nature of reality, that very systematization implies a reality, in principle knowable, beyond ourselves. _Cogito ergo sunt._ Subjective relativism and solipsism can be very similar. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disprove-solipsism-please/536825/20 "2010-04-21T12:17:29Z")
Solipsism is false because I take the position that “I” am my thoughts and memories. If there is something outside that is supplying an illusion of an outside world, it is, by definition, not “me”, because I do not have access to its information. By a similar token I do not believe in reincarnation because even if there is some intangible “soul”, the new animal will still not be “me” because I do not remember being in another body millenia ago. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disprove-solipsism-please/536825.md?page=2)