In an old thread, Spiritus Mundi posted the following:
I found this a little odd. If there is no rigourous way around solipsism then why on earth do so many philosophies exist (which don’t include it)? This makes solipsism to be, it seems, downright axiomatic.
I have had my own ideas about why solipsism isn’t true, but they stem more from knowledge then from ontology and so are probably not “rigourous”. However, I did find this paper online which works to refute solipsism by refuting DesCarte’s dualism. Link. It was interesting enough, IMO.
Has anyone else any ideas on why we so strenuously refute solipsism?
Perhaps because solipsism negates all else. Once I accept it, there are no further arguments to be made, not further interrogation, no further development. It’s the thermonuclear bomb of philosophy, because it isn’t falsifiable or arguable.
Andros is right. In solipsism, there are no other consciousnesses but your own. It isn’t simply a matter that they are closed to one another, but that others, besides yours, do not exist. Therefore, when you debate a solipsist, from his reference frame, he is debating himself.
So we reject solipsism for no other reason than we can’t argue it? Or we reject it because it isn’t any fun? I am missing something here.
It isn’t refutable is a common notion: but in what way? The article I linked above surely seems to refute it in its own way. As well, we must all (likely) have personal reasons for believing that others exist.
Personally, I feel that others exist because there are things that they can do that I can’t, and I also cannot make them do it in a way that I could make myself do something. If they were truly a part of me, I think, I should be able to control them in some way similar(if not the same) to how I control myself. It might still be, for example, that I am the only consciousness; but to me, by all appearances, it seems that there are other consciousnesses. If I am the only consciousness and I believe there are other consciousnesses, did I not just find something independent of my own consciousness?
A friend of mine once posited that she knew everything; however, she also happened to “forget” most of it. It was still there in her memory, but merely “locked” away, awwaiting the proper trigger. I offered that something forgotten could be so forgotten (by even forgetting the triggers, say, or the triggers for triggers) that, in essence, to say that one knew everything but forgot is the same as saying one doesn’t know everything. Once one has admitted that there is something forgotten, it could be that there was actually only one ting forgotten: the fact that she didn’t know everything!
Along these lines, can we not refute solipsism by showing that there are things we cannot control in the same way we control ourselves? That is, the monitor in front of me could be a part of my consciousness. However, I cannot control it like I can control my consciousness or what my consciousness perceives as its container (my body); can we not simply say that this is the equivalent of existing independantly?
Okay, Eris. Let me give you a virtual romp with a Solipsist, and it will likely help you understand.
[Lib enters solipsism mode…]
“What it does not realize is that its television monitor is nothing real, but is merely the perceptions of its senses.”
“Oh, but I can see my monitor!” it will declare.
“No,” we will rejoin, “It does not see its monitor. It sees only a perception in its head.”
“But I can touch my monitor and feel it!”
“No, it feels only impulses that its brain tells it it feels.”
“Despite what you say, I can change the thoughts in my mind, but I cannot change the channel on my monitor without my remote control device.”
“We are amused. And exactly what does it imagine it is doing when it uses its remote control device? Its brain is telling it that a sequence of events has occured, beginning with reaching for its remote control device and ending with it pushing a button that miraculously changes the channel on its monitor. All it has done is to manufacture a sequence of thoughts that are only slightly more complex than the single thought that it has seen or touched its monitor.”
Yes. That is, in fact, just a rewording of the phrase quoted in your OP. Assuming, of course, that my reading (that you speak of the denial of solipsism, not solipsism itself, in the quoted passage) is correct.
I think this paper is seriously flawed. Setting aside any quibbles about the three presuppositions upon which the author has chosen to build his attack, the paper fails to apply rigorously the concepts taken from Wittgenstein. It is hard to imagine a modern philosopher whose writings suffer more from a casual approach.
A few examples:
Notice that to refute solipsisim through reductio ad absurdum the author has predicated both the existence of external objects and the reliability of his perceptions of external objects.
Notice that the author fails to recognize that the argument which he embraces upon Wittgenstein’s authority is a member of the arguments from analogy that he has just finished critiquing.
Here, the author frames the question to avoid the issue. Discriminating living human beings from persons is a red herring. Discriminating self from others is the issue. If that substitution is made clear, then the argument there is no conceptual difference between the two is lass likely to be accepted as inescapable, n’est pas?
The author fails to recognize that the public language classification from which he draws his conclusion contains within itself the explicit denial of solipsism. His conclusion is thus irrevocably circular.
Beyond these (and other) examples of loose reasoning, the author presented no argument that the three Cartesian presuppositions upon which he focused are both necessary and sufficient to develop solipsism, so even if his arguments were tight his attack upon “hidden” Cartesian assumptions is not a direct refutation of solipsism.
Beyond that, the author’s arguments rely heavily (almost entirely) upon quotations from Wittgenstein. Now, Wittgenstein was a heavy-hitter, no doubt about it, but he had to develop his epistemology from unsupported assertions just like everybody else. For myself, I find statements like: To say “I have pain” is no more a statement about a particular person than moaning isandI don’t learn of [my pains] at all - I have them.
to be quite illuminating. The first seems irefutable, but double-edged. The second nicely illustrates that Wittgenstein’s words do not always have the “obvious” meaning. Just for fun, let’s throw out a few more Wittgensteinianisms:
The standard refutation of solipsism: If you believe in solipsism, why are you explaining to “people” why you believe in solipsism?
It’s just like using logic. Unless someone accepts logic and reason, you can’t give them reasons to accept reason. Since they reject logic, they can simply ignore any arguments you make, all with perfect consistency.
It comes down to the fact that epistemologies that accept solipsism and reject logic are sterile. You can’t refute them, but they’re no fun, and there is literally no reason for a person to advance them, whether they are true or not.
I didn’t even notice. It seems someone had an identity crisis while I was off reproducing.[sup]1[/sup] (Well, Mrs. Mundi did the hard part, but I supplied some of the materials.)
[sup]1[/sup][sub]The names in this thread have been changed to obscure the innocent.[/sub]
I would imagine that a solipsist proselytizer would be something like Beavis as the Great Cornholio, “THE STREETS WILL FLOW WITH THE BLOOD OF THE NON-BELIEVERS!!!” When you’re off in some altered state of consciousness, nonsense might seem to make sense.
However, as we are well aware, neither she nor you exist outside of my own fantasies.
I pride myself, naturally, on my rich fantasy life.
Congrats on the acquisition of your (I mean, my) own little particle of the Sacred Chao! Gives the philosphy of Discordianism a whole new – depth, don’t you think?
I don’t think solipsism is a defendable position in the way you present it, lib. You still seem to be posing that something exists outside of the solipsist’s consciousness. I’ve always thought that solipsism entailed pure consciousness contained in nothing.
I suppose my question is, if a solipsist admits that s/he doesn’t know everything, then it seems (to me) that solipsism falls apart due to the arguement I made above (either through memory or through non-controllable things). And given our technological age, it seems easy enough to find something someone does not know.
Spiritus The boards have missed you, as have I. Congratulations on the reproduction.
Yes, quite an identity crisis after two posters “already knew” how I was going to treat them based on my old name. So I sez: “Fine. See what you can do with this.” arl has shifted to erl. I think it works. I even managed to not be a strawman-producing fiend in a recent argument on Libertarianism.
At any rate, I’m glad you made it back in time for this one. I agree that the argument presented wasn’t very strong (but it is the only one I’ve seen); I wondered myself why he glanced over the part where other things existed at all. My question here is, if solipsism is such a solid case why is it so rejected? I once commented that solipsism was a “default” position, and you disagreed. I am not clear as to why.
Svinlesha
JM: “…more sophomore solipsism, then?”
HC: “No, the solipsist thinks the tripper is real.” OM lives on. Do you believe that?
erl
I take “unmitigated doubt” as the dfault position. No assertion is inherently reliable. No conclusion is self-evidently valid. And nothing interesting can be said.
I could also accept some versions of nihilism as default positions: “we have no reason to assume that anything exists or to rely upon the accuracy of perceptions”.
Solipsism makes the positive assertion of ego.
As to your refutation of solipsism through imperfect knowledge, it seems to depend entirely upon the proposition that any consciousness must necessarily have perfect knowledge of itself. That does not seem a trivial axiom.
That’s why the solipsist referred to you as an “it”. You were merely another part of his own consciousness. His position is unassailable because in order to assail his position, an assailant must first exist. He posits that none does.
Just because you cannot disprove something does not mean it must be true. As far as I know there is no argument refuting a specifically worded form of solipsism (if only I exist, what maintains me, etc). That does not mean it must be true. It only means it is not a scientific theory; that is, one that can be refuted.
OM lives on. Do you believe that?