I am so tired of having this conversation with myself.
There’s no way to prove that it is not the case the solipsism is true, however you could argue that there are some good reasons for not believing it is true. One is that Solipsism doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense with pain. Two is that it isn’t really an explanation, so pragmatically speaking it’s not very useful.
Actually, Occam’s Razor (“entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity”) could be interpreted to support solipsism, since solipsism posits only one entity, not many.
In any case, Occam’s razor can’t be used to disprove or rule out anything. It’s just a rule of thumb.
My own opinion is that solipsism is one of those theories that is impossible to definitively disprove by logic or experience, but that no sane person consistently lives by. The belief that the entire universe (including our memories) was created yesterday is another such theory—and strict determinism may be also.
Who Wants to Know?
Disprove solipsism. Please.
HELLOOO! HELLLLOOOOOOOOOOO! Anyone in there?
In more seriousness, I’d say
(1) in terms of the real universe existing causing the perceptions of it you experience, I’d invoke occams razor and say you can’t prove it, but it’s sensible to act that way
(2) Note that people are inherently likely to behave AS IF the world exists regardless of how they justify it to themselves, because people are evolved (or created) to interact with the world and have all sorts of hard-wired impulses to do so.
(3) in terms of “do these other brains experience the same sensations I do?” I’d say something similar, that it’s the only reasonable assumption, but also that it’s likely you can’t point to any difference between the two states of affairs, and hence the question may not actually have any meaning
I got very interested in Solipsism when I first discovered it in Junior high school, and spent many hours discussing “deep” concepts with my friends about what if all reality was an illusion planted in our brains, or that i never existed until right this second and all my memories were an illusion,l that it was just happenstance that gravity seemed to work etc. Even now I haven’t entirely discarded it and toy with the idea of the non-existence of reality. That said, what really turned me around was the thought of, “well, now what?”. If all the world is an illusion and action and result have no relationship, then it really doesn’t matter what I do or believe. This being the case I may as well behave as though the reality I experience exists, because it’s easy, and it feels right, and it seems to work. So now for better or worse, I go along with life pretending there is a reality for lack of a better idea.
I believe in the opposite of solipsism. I believe that the external world and other persons are the whole of reality and that the individual self, I, is not part of reality.
Solipsism is a philosophically sterile idea, since it doesn’t really change anything either way. Maybe it’s true. Maybe it’s not.
The better question is why does it matter?
I think I’ll go find a hooker and jerk off.
Noel gets to the heart of it.
If all this is just an illusion, then what is providing the illusion? Your own mind? I almost said brain, but you have no more evidence that you have a brain than that you have a heart.
It could be you’re living in some sort of World of Warcraft simulation, but then where does the simulation come from? From yourself? Except, if there’s a part of you providing the simulation, but you have no access to that part of yourself, then how is it useful to call that “yourself”? Why isn’t it something else?
If you want to call whatever it is that is creating the illusion “yourself”, then it seems that the part of you that’s you is only a tiny fraction of yourself, and the part that creates the illusion is much more complex than the “you”. I mean, I can write stuff here on the Dope, but the part of me that creates all the other books and novels and games and music and movies and TV shows is much better at it than I am. So in what way is the illusion-creating entity myself, in any way that matters?
It seems if you think that way, the core of myself is really just a tiny snippet of the larger self. And if so, then why shouldn’t the other humans be similar tiny snippets? I mean, I know I’m conscious. And something is creating the illusion of consciousness in the other humans (or what I imagine are other humans). So what is that? What’s the difference between an actual consciousness and a simulated consciousness? I submit that there is no difference. An algorithm that simulates consciousness IS conscious. Therefore, there’s no difference between me and the simulated humans, is there?
So we could imagine that this world is an illusion, and there’s a higher world that is creating this world. But that doesn’t mean that this world is an illusion, exactly. Take World of Warcraft. Is World of Warcraft an illusion? In one sense, sure. But in another sense it really exists–you really can purchase WoW and pixels really will appear on your computer screen in certain predictable patterns. If we’re living in the equivilent of Wow, the simulation is real in the sense that it’s a real simulation. A dollhouse is a real dollhouse, a model airplane is a real model airplane.
So what we see with our eyes IS real, in the sense that something is providing us with the sensation of sight, just like when you look at a computer screen while playing WoW, you really see the pixels on the computer screen.
Addressing this part, the stunning and remarkable detail and consistency of that-which-we-mistakenly-think-of-as-objective-reality is why people don’t leap to solipsism. If it’s a dream, it’s amazingly consistent and has been for a very long time (or includes incredibly consistent false memories). This reliability leads a person to believe it’s got something other than the unreliable whims of imagination creating it.
On a separate point, even if you are a solipsist, the consistent nature of apparently-objective reality strongly discourages you from acting like everything’s a dream. You can’t fly, and you can get hurt. Yes, this might be all in your mind, imagining the pain and restriction of movement, but even if it is this is the dream we’re stuck with. Which makes solipsism functionally useless; you won’t change your behavior because of it. The closest you’ll get is it might make you act like an atheist, because the gods you are imagining the people you’re imagining exist imagine exist don’t seem to effect how the dream you’re imagining you’re in reacts to you, so there’s no reason to alter your behavior because of them. Unless of course you imagine that after you dream you die your dream will continue with the dream of an afterlife where you expect to dream that an imagined god will play a part of a dream where you’ll imagine you’re being punished for the things you imagine you did in the pre-dreamed-death part of your dream, in which case you’ll act just like any other theist might who imagines that the god you imagine will appear in your dream will appear.
No, it doesn’t. It posits only one entity, but that entity must have greater complexity than the whole world it is supposedly simulating, or it would be incapable of accurately simulating it.
Depends on how you read it. A straight read only requires you to limit number of entitities, not complexity thereof, though obviously there’s merit to considering complexity as well.
Oh, Bravo! Best GD post of the year, so far.
Quoth Noel Prosequi
Flattering, but also amusing, since I was going to use my own lack of knowledge as an argument against solipsism. Namely, the fact that others have told me things that I did not already know, and sometimes even corrected me on points on which I was wrong. If those other people were mere figments of my imagination, how did they know things I did not?
Well, obviously the first tenant of proper solipsism is that your own mind is creating the world you experience, which means that your mind is juggling and organizing a tremendous amount of information and only feeding your conscious mind the information your ‘senses’ happen to be ‘pointed at’ at any given moment. So every time you discover something new, every time you hear a knock at the door and don’t know who’s behind it, what’s actually happening is your unconscious mind already knows what’s going on and is only belatedly telling your conscious mind in on the secret.
This may be insanity (literally), but it’s not quite impossible. It’s more like having a very very active fantasy life. Which is your entire life.
To get publications? My Theory of Knowledge prof tried for an entire term, spurred on by a couple of solipist dopes, so I doubt anyone can convince anybody.
My best stab at it would be the observation that the non-solipist position has good predictive power, in that the world works just as it would as if it were real. Thus assuming it is real makes sense, or at least acting that way. And if the solipist doesn’t buy that, you can introduce him to your imaginary fried who can’t be seen or touched, and who speaks only to you.
And if all else fails, step on his bloody foot.
Maybe you just remember them telling you things, but your memory is wrong. Last-Thursdayism combined with solipsism.
Of course, it is weird for part of your brain to not know how to do calculus, and another part of your brain does, so your brain invents an illusionary calculus professor to teach itself the calculus it already knows.
And it sure would be nice if the part of my brain that makes up William Shakespeare would allow me to write like Shakespeare with the main part of my brain. Then I could pretend to be somebody instead of a bum, which is what I am. Let’s face it.
Your mind hates you and mocks you.