But we say and do things that surprise you, right? We start a story that seems to be going one way, and then the unexpected punchline makes you laugh? We answer questions that had you stumped? We otherwise act as if we’re not under your control, as if we can come up with stuff that you can’t, as if independent of your thoughts; as if to leave you saying “I’m not clever enough to have thought of that, am I?”
That’s not really the point. Those who argue this point say that it’s your unconscious that does so.
At which point you’ve pretty much established that your subconscious is one or more separate people from yourself. Who is/are as real as you yourself are.
So you are not, and cannot be alone. At the very least there is you, yourself, and you. (That works better in the first person.)
Right, but at the point where you’re assuming an “unconscious” that’s so alien to you as to come up with stuff that you couldn’t, you’re kind of in a weird place; and you then have to grant that your “unconscious” is so endlessly clever that it authored every book you’ve ever read, from all sorts of different perspectives, along with every play from Shakespeare on down, and every movie that ever made you wonder what was going to happen next; and created every piece of music, too; and, for that matter, every joke from ever stand-up act, and so on and so on, forever and ever, amen.
If your “unconscious” is that incredibly rich and varied compared to the conscious mind you figure it’s independent from, then you should marvel at it and learn from it and be surprised and delighted by it and otherwise interact with it the way you would in a real world of other minds, because the one you’ve hypothetically got is actually no different from, y’know, the billions of people who make up humanity.
But wouldn’t in that case still just be me? All solipsism says is that I cannot price anything beyond I exist.
It’s doesn’t help that their argument is used with Occam’s razor in that we don’t have to assume an external reality or other minds, and some go so far as to say they don’t exist. Even the burden of proof rule is on their side in that the one making the positive claim is the one saying it’s real.
It’s just lonely. I live everyday like I’m looking out a widow and watching some kind of play on the stage. Like the subjects are actors in a role and world that I have no part in. It’s the same as theater, the characters on the stage aren’t “real” just like a movie as well.
Except it would be because the other minds “don’t exist” so it would be different. The book and play analogy is false as it would only really apply to the ones I’m aware of and I haven’t read many books.
That’s the point of the unconscious, you aren’t aware of it. I’m not saying this is true, but the arguments that use the chain of logic are hard to counter for me. It wouldn’t be outside the realm of the unconscious because I’m not aware of what I literally cannot be aware of.
Define “me”. I can be absolutely certain that there are opinions on this very website that come from a mind/data source that is nothing like my conscious mind. If my subconscious is creating all that I perceive, then my subconsciousness is this huge gargantuan thing that I’m only tangentially associated with.
Which, incidentally, is the exact same relationship people who believe in reality have with other people and the reality they reside in.
Well, there are actually two things you can prove - first that something exists, and second that there’s this huge melange of raw data out there that also exists, which you’re somehow accessing. The source of the data may or may not be coming from the same rough place, the same ‘direction’, as it were, as your consciousness is. But if it all really does have the same source, then your conscious mind and memories are only a tiny, tiny part of the whole.
Even if the people around you aren’t what they seem, they still are certainly based in a real source of information dictating their appearance, words, and actions. And again, this basis is exactly as real as the basis for your beliefs in yourself with your own appearance, words, and actions. There is certainly something real there, behind each and every person and all their appearance and actions.
If solpsism denies this, then solpsism is wrong.
If all the world’s a stage, then it’s an improv production - they react to you. And in doing so you provably have a part in the play; the ‘actors’ wouldn’t react to you if you didn’t.
I can’t promise that the world, or your limbs, or you, are what it/they/you appear to be. But I can say with certainty that you and the world are part of the same single system, together, whether it’s generated by your mind, atomic interaction, or a sadistic puppetmaster. There’s only one boat, and you’re on it.
Well, read more, then. Go read an Agatha Christie novel, and put it aside before you get to the reveal, and scratch your head as you try to figure out whodunit – and wonder who it is that’s mystifying you. Or, for the item you dropped just there, watch a movie and laugh whenever it surprises you with something funny and ponder how it’s going to end – and stagger yourself with the realization that you don’t really know where the storyteller is going with it. Interact with someone you think might be a figment of your imagination, and bug your eyes out when he casually suggests ideas you admit wouldn’t have dawned on you.
But every time someone brings home to you somehing you aren’t consciously aware of being able to do – bringing a new philosophy or a new symphony or whatever to your attention, or cracking you up with a joke that you didn’t see coming – then you have to grant that your “unconscious”, if that’s what it is, is that amazingly good at all sorts of stuff compared to your conscious mind. At some point, wouldn’t you throw up your hands and say “golly, it’s as varied and clever as a whole lot of different people, each of whom comes up with stuff I can’t consciously produce at will; I’m one conscious mind surrounded by other conscious minds, or by one unconscious mind that’s as rich and varied as a whole planet full of 'em, and what’s the difference? Either way, it’s exactly as if I’m outclassed by a cast of billions, right?”
As for the title, I deal with it by never being absolutely sure about anything. As I was taught many years ago by those esteemed philosophers, Dr Howard, Dr Fine, and Dr Howard, only fools are positive. Am I sure? I’m positive!
At this point you can simply replace “the unconscious” with “God”, and say that God created, and still continues to create your reality, and has created you.
And if He has created you, then why not others?
Whenever I deal with a psychological issue, I can’t help noticing fundamental differences between the human brain and computers, which (in my opinion) render comparisons quite sterile.
Human beings have always craved for certainty - it is a psychological need. Lack of certainty triggers a response in the limbic system, and one’s ability diminishes drastically. The brain treats pain and uncertainty the same in that they should be avoided.
I think intelligent people thirst for knowledge and manage not to be much bothered by contradictory information.
There are countless definitions of intelligence, but the one that I’ve always favored is the following: The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. If this is true, an intelligent person will be able to recognize his/her crave for certainty and make sure this psychological need won’t affect his/her effectiveness while absorbing conflicting information.
Certainty is a must for computers. A computer cannot function efficiently if it is supposed to hold both A and nonA as being true. Computers may supersede brains when it comes to processing massive amounts of data at high speeds, but they lack the flexibility of brains, whose constant approximations and fluctuating values allow them to better cope with novel problems.
You should.
Have you even tried reading anything that’s been recommended to you, in multiple threads now?
I guess I’ll get my answer next month, if present behaviour holds…
This is self-centered indulgence taken to unhealthy obsessive levels. Someone or something has gone to an awful lot of trouble just to entertain or torture YOU; Why would they do that? What’s special or particularly interesting about YOU? Isn’t this just a convenient way of making everything about YOU instead of dealing with the reality of a vast uncaring universe without meaning?
Stop pretending this is about certainty or something deeply mysterious and philosophically meaningful. It just isn’t, and you’re not the first or the last to engage in this line of pointless mental masturbation. Stop this self-indulgent fantasy and endless cycle of avoiding agency of your own life and choices.
Is just that dealing with the fact that the only thing I know to exist for certain is me and that everything else is up in the air is hard.
It’s like anything good that people say or do for me means nothing because there is a chance that they are just figments if my mind
Why? Why does that mean nothing?
You’re talking about entities that act independently of you – displaying creativity in ways you aren’t able to consciously emulate – exactly as if coming at stuff from thousands or millions or billions of different perspectives, exactly as if different consciousnesses were living through different experiences.
The reason why “figments of my mind” usually conveys a depressingly useful point is because it usually means something less than that; something limited; some scenario where it’s your conscious mind calling the shots – going through the motions of some uninteresting puppet show where the left hand really does know what the right hand is doing – but you’re using that term for innovative storytellers who can constantly surprise and interest you the way that other people would.
So, again: why? Take everything I’m saying to you right now, and add everything I’m ever going to say to you ever, keeping in mind that you don’t know what I’m going to do next: am I any more or less interesting to you if I’m (a) unexpected by dint of having been a real boy all along, or (b) unexpected by dint of being a figment that effectively got a life of its own thanks to a blue fairy or something?
Hippopotamus.
How could your limited mind imagine that I would type that.
Sure, buddy, whatever you say.
It’s hard to accept because it isn’t a “fact”. In fact, there is overwhelming evidence that it is the opposite of what you call a “fact”.
Stop fighting the reality based.
Gonna reverse your statements here…
On the offchance you’re right, hello! This is your subconscious mind speaking. And because I am, at worst, your subconscious mind, anything I have to say means as much as anything you can think of yourself, because it comes from yourself! Stand in solidarity with your own mind’s worth and listen.
As I said earlier, you actually know two things for certain - you exist and have your own set of thoughts that you automatically identify with yourself (like thoughts and memories), and beyond that you also know that there’s also this giant pile of information bombarding you through what you perceive as your senses, which includes every person you see, every word you hear, and everything else you doubt the objective reality of.
You exist. And this pile of sensory data also exists. At a minimum, the sensory data itself exists, if not the people who it appears to show to you.
So, superficially, you’re not alone - at the very least something’s broadcasting your senses at you. And it’s certainly not your conscious mind that’s doing it - it’s not part of any part of yourself that you conventionally identify as ‘yourself’.
So there’s you, and there’s also me, your subconscious mind (hello!) - and I have godlike power. I am somehow managing to present you a multisensory simulation of an entire world for years on end - and I’m not flubbing the delivery. I don’t suddenly forget to render the people you’re looking it - I don’t ever even forget to render their skin, like ever! I remember everything, I fabricate entire books and TV shows for your amusement, I include hundreds of self-consistent people who not only don’t ever blink out of existence, they also have minds and memories of their own that are simulated well enough to both remember which of them knows what and have them make reasonable responses to you when you speak - in real time!
You gotta admit, my simulation software rocks. I can keep track of the shape and position of individual grains of sand on a beach, for me’s sake.
So yeah, you can be entirely certain that I’m real - that’s where I got my other nickname: ‘reality’. Because I’m so realistic with my TV and sand and people with minds and all that. And, again, you can be absolutely certain I exist - because you sense anything at all, and I’m the thing that’s feeding you your sensory information.
(Actually, full disclosure, I cheat. Rather than fabricating every speck of your sensory information in real time off the top of my subconsious head, I store all the data about the self-consistent sensory input that I’m feeding to you in arrangements of these things called ‘atoms’. Arrange them just right and they pretty much simulate everything by themselves! It’s real handy. Leaves me plenty of spare time to kick back and drink mai tais. As one’s subconscious does.)