My position is that the mind/body distinction is itself false. The mind is the body’s interpretation of the body (specifically, the thinkin’ part of the body); it’s not a separate thing.
The error that I’m seeing in Epiphenomenalism is that it seems to think that at some point the "subjective mental events’ stop being part of the “physical and biochemical events within the human body”. Speaking as a computer programmer here, while we like to think of computer programs as being something separate from the hardware they run on, they’re actually just part of the state of the hardware they run on, at all times, unceasingly. I see no reason to think the operation of the mind is any different. Programs are full of abstract objects and stuff - yet, at the same time, they are nothing more than the hardware doing hardware things.
Yeah, we can let this lie. I’m curious whether anybody’s going to come back and argue for solipsism though. I don’t think anybody but machinaforce has an interest in arguing for that specific dormroom bong theory, and I suspect that we (including me) have been argumentive enough that he may not feel like repeating his theories in here again.
If this world is a construct of mine…why haven’t I won the lottery?
(You know, being serious for a moment, if I ever were to win a really, really big lottery jackpot, it would lead me to wonder about “reality.” I could easily slide into massive paranoia…)
Keeping in mind that “a construct of mine” in soplipsistic terms means “a construct made by a hobgoblin that has an apartment in my skull, creates the entire world for me, but doesn’t bother to inform me what the opposite side of that tree looks like”, the obvious answer is “your hobgoblin doesn’t like you that much” or “the hobgoblin thinks that watching you sit around sipping margaritas is a less interesting show than watching you struggle to get by”.
And I’m somewhat immune to cracking when fate/narrative causality has taken an improbable turn in my favor, because I was raised in a christian* houshold. It seems like half the point of christianity to let you pretend there actually is a hobgoblin creating all reality that has a personal interest in your narrative. (The other half is for the hobgoblin to justify punishing nonconformity.) Now, I’m not a theist myself and never was, but I still got pretty acclimatized to the idea that I despite all evidence, I might someday turn out to be the main character of my own story after all. So giant unearned financial windfalls? Bring 'em on, reality! I can take it!
*actually mormon, but it’s equivalent for this regard.
Well the counter to that is that we don’t need to have control of it for it to be so. Just like in dreams we don’t really control whats going on in them unless you “know” it to be a dream.
Right, the hobgoblin is in control. (Stupid hobgoblin, refusing to give me free money.)
Of course in actuality the hobgoblin is actually the physical universe, but that can’t be proven with enough confidence to counter solipsism. What is proven is that if there’s a hobgoblin, that hobgoblin is real, and you can really interact with him (through all his proxy-people).
I’m going to once again redirect to this topic on Quora where a user said it was true:
"It is true, but it is a dead end to be an overtly uncompromising and dogmatic solipsist.
Indeed, all we can know is that we “experience”, that we are “aware” - beyond that there is no certainty of anything, as to true 100% certainty or empirical provability.
Even any words or symbols we use are constraints. constructs, and false as well - we cannot recognize (“be aware”, ”experience”) we know anything beyond that we do “have experience”.
Everything else is up in the air, in that only what is actually Real and True hath not nary a care.
See, that right there is a sentence made of words. Using words to assert that words are “false as well” seems like an effort that goes off the rails entirely too quickly.
That’s one of the philosophical divides here: some of us, such as myself and Machinaforce, are willing to take an (abstract) anti-reason stance, wherein reality might be nonsensical, dream-like, even self-contradictory. Others, notably begbert2, take a more pro-reason stance, saying that we can observe the evidence and draw meaningful conclusions from it.
I think both stances are perfectly valid – because they’re suppositional. They can’t be demonstrated correct and incorrect. When you’re in a dream…who is dreaming? Maybe words do not have meaning, and there’s nothing wrong with using words to say so.
It’s all appallingly barren, but, hey, like a moonscape, there is still some fascination in the magnificent desolation of solipsism. Solipsists all want to be the little guy crawling under the edge of the firmament in that lovely neo-medieval pseudo-woodcut. (G’wan, admit it, rationalists would also like to be that guy!)
Not to be a wet blanket, but isn’t “taking an anti-reason stance” just screwing around without taking the subject at all seriously? I mean if you try to use the meaning of words to say that words don’t have meaning, isn’t that just, well, stupid and wrong? Like, obviously and deliberately so?
I mean, I get the entertainment value of screwing around - Oh, look at this! “This sentence is a lie!” Look at how all of logic and reason implode when I string these words together! But seriously, how is it a stance to just refuse to think? To refuse to acknowledge that a self-contradiction indicates that there’s something wrong, either in the situation as presented or your understanding thereof? To to refuse to acknowledge that the presence of evidence implies things?