I’m afraid it’s far more serious than that.
Guy goes to a doctor and says, “Doc, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, my entire body hurts. I’ll show you…”. Takes his finger and pokes his leg, “Ow!”, then his hip, “Oh!”, then his stomach, “Ouch!”, his shoulder, "Ow!, finally his head, “OWW!”.
Doctor says, “Looks like your finger is broken.”.
Buddhism and many other philosophers have done exactly two things: jack and shit. If you wish to attempt to refute the observable fact that our experience not only exists but is also being experienced, which proves the existence of an experiencer, and the additional observable fact that our experiences are limited to our own experiences which precludes us being an artifice on the part of some other entity, then you’ll have to do better than drop the not-even-a-cite term “Buddhism and many other philosophers”. Cite specific counterarguments, at which point I can either blow them full of holes or point out that you don’t understand them, because either way they’re up against irrefutable facts.
Seriously man, woo people say a lot of stupid nonsensical bullshit. This doesn’t mean they’re deep. It means they’re off the deep end.
Yes, I saw it in your post. I also saw that you didn’t say what your beef with it is.
I mean, I can speculate as to what your beef with it is, but I don’t want to put words in your mouth.
If your problem is with the double-negative construction “hath not nary a care”, then I’m in agreement with you. That is flat-out bad writing, from a person who thinks they’re a lot smarter and more eloquent than they actually are.
There’s not much else to say other than your argument that the self exists is wrong. PLenty of neuroscience experiments show this to just be the “Experience” of a self but not the existence of one (like the rubber hand illusion or how drugs can temporarily remove this sense of self). All you have is a sensation which is just as much in question as anything else.
That you think the rubber hand illusion disproves existence of self then you have no idea what the rubber hand illusion shows. That you think that drugs altering your perceptions disproves that there is something perceiving the altered perceptions shows that you have no idea what’s even being discussed.
You have so far utterly failed to demonstrate or even imply that my argument is wrong. There is no neuroscience that disproves that our observations are being observed by something. The very idea that it could be disproved is incoherent.
If all you have is a sensation, then something is sensing the sensation. Because sensations literally cannot exist except as input into something that is receiving that input. To say otherwise is to be stringing words together in syntactically incoherent ways - which doesn’t make your position inscrutable. It makes it not even wrong.
Please don’t take this the wrong way, but if that’s the way you feel, then maybe its not the universe that’s the problem, maybe its you (and if you are right about solipsism then both come to the same thing.)
I really don’t think that your feeling of meaninglessness and loneliness are rooted in solipsism. I think that solipsism is a handle that you put on your feelings of meaninglessness, and loneliness. You feel these bad feelings and want them out of your head, and try to fight them with logic, only to find that feelings are not logical, and can’t be reasoned away with a mathematical proof. So you blame the proof rather than the feelings. I’m not a psychiatrist and I may be saying things that others have already told you, but in my lay opinion it sounds like you are suffering from clinical depression. If you haven’t already done so please consider seeking professional help. It may be that anti-depressants don’t actually exist and so won’t help your feelings of existential angst, but if everything is meaningless what have you got to lose.
I can’t prove that there isn’t a bubble of true vacuum approaching us at the speed of light. The world me and everything that I love could instantly wink out of existence without warning before I finish writing this post. But I don’t let that stop me, because I accept it as unlikely and not worth worrying about after all there isn’t anything I can do about it. As others have described above, the evidence against solipsism is much greater than that in favor of it. Spending your energy worrying about a remote possibility is a waste.
Not at all. Dreams for example are a case where there is sensation but it’s quite literally all in your head. None of it is “real”.
The fact that you don’t see how drugs or the rubber hand illusion disprove a self makes me question your logic. Those show how fragile the self is and reveals it for what it is, an illusion, a mere trick of our minds.
Except they are rooted in solipsism. That is the primary concern that I have. If solipsism were true the everything is meaningless and nothing matters and I’m cosmically alone. It’s that direct.
I’m sorry to say that this (you having trouble with the world being meaningless) is purely an emotional issue, it has no rrational solution. You shouldn’t expect that reality obeys what you want. You can’t prove that you are all alone or that you are not: that is reality. So you’d better confront your emotional response head-on, instead of fleeing to muddled philosophical thoughts.
Or go read the existentialists if you prefer, Camus for example.
I’m not sure what you’re saying “not at all” to, since “it’s all in your head” is a straight-up admission that you have a head.
That’s what I’m saying here: if sensations are being experienced, that proves that they’re being sensed by something, that there’s an objectively real thing experiencing the sensations. Assertions to the contrary are gibberish that ignore the fact that that a sensation that isn’t sensed isn’t a sensation.
It’s impossible for them to be tricks of our minds if our minds don’t exist. Your own words betray the fact that your position is gibberish.
The various drugs and illusions show that our senses and cognitive states can be manipulated and confused and deceived. And, since you can’t manipulate, deceive, or confuse something that doesn’t exist, they also are proof that the conscious exists in some objective form. Your examples disprove your position.
Suffice to say, it is indeed possible to logically doubt all the input of your senses and presume that you may be failing to be receiving accurate information about the world around you. But the two things that one cannot logically doubt is that you are receiving some form of information, and that you are receiving that information. Thus, inarguably, both the infomation and yourself must exist in some form.
(By “inarguably” I mean “inarguably without devolving into illogical counterfactual nonsense”.)
Oh, and it should also be noted that once one accepts the inarguable fact that one’s self exists - you’re back to talking about actual solipsism! Because at that point the sensations you experience (that must have a real source) could in theory be using your own mind as the real source generating them, and if you go that route then bam! You’re a true solipsist.
Disproving this requires you to take a step beyond cogito ergo sum and start questing your subconscious mind’s organizational capacity. My mind can barely keep track of what’s in my refrigerator; there’s no way it’s tracking object permanence across all of reality.
Camus I feel just runs from the issue of meaninglessness rather than face it head on and reckon with it’s full implications.
Also this was about a quote I saw regarding solipsism, that’s the problem:
""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.
Simply as solipsistical as that."
That’s my main problem. The meaninglessness is also tied to solipsism in the same way that me knowing something is a dream makes my actions in it pointless as well as any relationships within it. It’s nothing to do with emotion but the consequence of Solipsism being true and having to reckon with the cosmic loneliness that follows.
Well the rebuttal to that is that it doesn’t have to, similar to how a simulation does not have to render everything just what is around you (similar to a video game).
Also the self existing is not an inarguable fact, it is still just an assumption not a belief. Descartes tried that with Cogito Ergo Sum, but that has been thoroughly destroyed in recent years. All that can be sure is thought not a thinker.
Here, of course, we fall down the rabbit hole of noting that everything you know about your mind comes from your experiences. What objective evidence do you have that “your mind” is not capable of creating a highly detailed illusion for itself?
It reminds me of the objection to the notion, in The Matrix, that human bodies are being used to generate electrical power. We say, “That’s silly, electricity doesn’t work that way.” Right: in the illusion created by the Matrix, it doesn’t. But in “reality,” where the Matrix is a thing? Who knows? Maybe it does.
That’s the nasty thing about solipsism: you can’t “reason” with it, because what we know as “reason” might be just a by-product of the all-enveloping illusion.
The only approach is to ignore it. There ain’t any “red pill.”
You can assert all you like but I have never heard or heard of an argument for the utter nonexistence of the self that withstands scrutiny. And no, mere assertions don’t cut it.
But anyway, let’s look at the supposed meaningless of life. What makes a dream meaningless? No, seriously, what is it about a dream that makes forming a relationship within the dream meaningless, and what would have to be changed about a dream to make the relationships meaningful?
We’ll take “but it’s not real!!” off the table, because we clearly don’t even have agreement about what “real” means.
From what I can see, what makes dream relationships actually meaningless is their transience. Dreams are inconsistent and unstable; you can’t build meaningful relationships in them because the things you do in dreams don’t have lasting effect and don’t have consequences that follow from events, at least not consistently. This makes any kind of endeavor in a dream fruitless; it will all vanish by morn, in the unlikely event things remain stable even that long.
Now consider if dreams weren’t unstable, and things in it had persistent existence that even can predate and postdate the ‘dreamer’. If that was the case, then you could make real friends in dreams, who would be there to greet you and talk to you and grow with you and grow close to you. The relationships would be real - even if the reality was a “dream”.
Actual reality, even if you perceive it through distorted and artificial perceptions (which I do - I’m nearsighted and wear glasses) is as persistent and consistent as it gets. So, what about it isn’t real enough for you? Keeping in mind, of course, that “but it’s not real!!” is not an answer.
Well, if we were having a serious discussion about solipsism, the response would be to note that the reality we observe is way too organized to be a fleeting dream - something is tracking everything in it. In reality it’s tracked by the positions and velocities of umpteen particles, and by whatever byzantine physical rules govern the behavior of sub-particles. But in solipsism, it’s a mind - and reality is way too complicated for it to be doing this by accident. It would have to be DM’ing reality, and any mind that is DM’ing reality is consciously aware of the things it’s simulating and where they are and how they should interact. It is by any measure intelligent. (And the notion that it only renders what’s close to you only makes it worse - that means the DM is not only keeping track of reality; it’s also aware of you and keeping track of where you are personally.)
“Okay, so my subconscious mind is a super-smart DM,” you might say. Except of course the thing we actually call “subconscious mind” definitely ain’t that. You’re talking about something separate, a godlike entity that you are claiming is hiding somewhere in your mind - but not interacting with your mind at all except via the scenes and scenarios that it is constructing and feeding to you via the roundabout route of your senses. You and the DM are occupying completely different mental spaces with no overlap of knowledge and no direct interaction at all.
You and the DM are different people. Maybe roommates, but definitely different people. Even in solipsism, it ain’t you who is imagining this up, because whoever is imagining this up knows quite literally everything, which don’t describe you.
It’s easy to answer. Since the person is not “real” in that they don’t exist and don’t have a mind and are just a figment then nothing they have is genuine. It would be like trying to form a relationship with a rock.
Also the nonexistence of the self is pretty much a known fact in philosophy and psychology. Buddhism long ago showed it doesn’t exist and contemporary psychology and neuroscience backs it up.
WE don’t know what ACTUAL reality is though, only what our senses pick up and even those are flawed.
??? Philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience have most certainly NOT shown the “nonexistence of the self.” I don’t know where you get garbage like that.
Even solipsism concedes the existence of one self. You.
The conventional consensus is that there are several billion selves, all doing human stuff: sleeping, eating, reproducing, and discussing nonsense on the internet.
As far as I can tell, you’re saying that the reason you don’t try to form a relationship with a rock is because the rock is mindless; and that a real person, who has a mind, could be worth forming a relationship with; and that you believe a figment is like unto the mindless rock, and not like unto a person who has a mind.
Help me out, here: why do you believe it’d be worth forming a relationship with someone who has a mind? Really go into detail on that point.
No there are several billion bodies but not selves.
Psychology has shown the self to be an illusion and the same with neuroscience (with several experiments of which the rubber hand illusion is just one). The self is just something we believe to exist as something that endures when really it’s just a trick of our minds. We ascribe some sort of continuity to behaviors and experiences and cling to others to try and maintain some stable structure we call a “self”. But there isn’t a self. Anything ascribed to such a thing is already done by the brain so even if such a thing did exist there would be nothing for it to do.
Solipsism does not concede the existence of a self so much as it assumes it exists when it has no evidence to believe so.