I see someone pick up a glass. I can:
A) Assume the person picked up the glass on the orders of an invisible entitiy.
B) Assume the person picked up the glass of their own volition.
C) Assume I was mistaken, and something else happened, but whatever happened was still taking place in a reality external to me.
D) Assume I am imagining the whole thing.
E) Assume I’m imagining something else, and only think I’m imagining this event.
The difference between “invisible entity” and “no invisible entity” can not be percieved at all. Therefore, from your perspective, they’re the same thing. That is, the difference between “invisible entity” and “own volition” isn’t relevant to the evidence of your senses, as it’s external to them. It’s a question of motivation, not fact.
The difference between “Person picked up glass” and “I thought I saw person pick up glass, but was wrong” is a continium, verging from near certainty at point blank range to near uncertainty at the opposite end of a football field full of partiers, but they’re both observational facts, not motivational issues.
Solipism and Angelina Jolie: The simplest rebuttal to that is, perhaps the ‘you’ is controlled by someone playing Sims 4D, and that guy’s an asshole who likes to do the equivalent of wall people in and watch them die.
How do you explain the difference in your perception of a dream, and your perception of reality? Dreams do present themselves to your senses differently than waking reality, do they not?
To be consistent, you cannot posit that your subconcious mind “exists,” because you must then ask yourself in where, exactly, it exists. It would have to exist in reality, wouldn’t it? But for a solipist, that makes no sense, because there is no reality outside of his/her mind.
No no. To be consistent, you must argue that your “subconcious mind” is also a figment of your imagination. (So is your mind, for that matter.) Put another way, ”my conscious mind + my subconscious mind”=”conscious mind + my subconscious mind + reality”.
It seems to me this conundrum necessitates the assumption of the existence of something outside of the mind.
To clarify, I didn’t mean to knock Ockham. Certainly, it is a useful principle. But it’s been understood since Aristotle: “for the more limited, if adequate, is always preferable” (Physics, I, vi); and “for if the consequences are the same it is always better to assume the more limited antecedent” (Ibid, VIII, vi).
So what if dream worlds are different from the waking world?
When you’re dreaming*:
You don’t know you’re dreaming
You accept the “rules” of that world, and go about observing it and interacting with it.
You can’t decide on the outcome of your dreams, and can’t control the behavior of other characters in your dreams.
The above is remarkably similar to our experience in waking reality.
*Of course, the above refers to non-lucid dreaming.
Even though lucid dreaming exists, the mere existence of non-lucid dreaming shows that you can inhabit a world that exists solely in your head and not be able to control it (and not even know it exists solely in your head).
Let’s say I decide that the only entity that exists is me, and that the whole world and all the people and objects in it are all in my head.
Even if that were the case, the above does not provide any help in predicting how the objects in this “dream” behave, and how other people in this “dream” behave.
And since I seem to be stuck in this “dream”, I better learn how to predict how things behave, so that I have a better time while here.
So, you develop enough rules about various objects (“Heavy objects fall to the grund”, “I can eat a banana”) and enough emprical rules about various people (“John is a good guy”, “Mike is an asshole”), that, until you learn how to control this “dream” at will, are necessary for survival here.
It is immaterial whether these objects and people are in fact distinct from you, or in your head. Until you learn how to control this “dream” at will, you can treat them as if they were distinct from you.
Also, Ockham’s razor says “don’t use more entities than necessary”, but using the one entity (you) does not result in a good model about how the world works. Assuming multiple entities, each with their own easy-to-study behavior, provides a much better model about how the world works. So, in a sense, these multiple entities are “necessary” for describing how the world works (until someone comes up with a single-entity model that describes and predicts how the world works better)
Polerius: Thanks. That nails it for me. The world makes as much sense as it did this morning, at least. I hadn’t taken the discussion to the point of actually thinking about what’s happening in my dream world. Within my dream world, I’m a physicalist. Whether the physical is in my head or external to me makes no difference about how to think of the world.
Our problem is this: we have two competing theories that seek to provide an explanation of our experience of the world. Theory (1) claims that there is a world outside of your mind. Theory (2) claims that the world of our experience exists solely within your mind.
Jon is arguing that if you rely on Occam’s razor as the sole criterion by which to chose between these two competing theories, then you must chose theory (2), because theory (2) requires the fewest “entities.”
Now, here’s the problem with the dream analogy: while it is true that there are many similarities between a dream state and waking conciousness, there are significant differences as well. In general dreams are briefer, more ephermal, less rational, etc., than our waking experience. This difference would seem to require some sort of explanation to me.
A simple way to explain this difference is to postulate that there is world outside of your head, one that you percieve while awake. But I’d like to suggest that even if you come up with an alternative explanation, doing so will require the postulation of an “entity;” and we are thus left with two possible theories, both of which require the same number of entities. In such a situation, Occam’s razor cannot help us make a choice.
Thus, even a radical interpretation of Occam’s razor need not force us to be solipists.
On preview:
Yeah – that’s kind of what I’m trying to say as well.
When I happen upon those debates in which people are speculating as to whether we are brains in a jar, I like to point out that indeed we are. Okay, bags of bones and water, but still…
To play devil’s advocate, I disagree. Subjective differences between states of consciousness do not prove that either state is “real”, nor do they prove that either state is “unreal”. Consider that if I take LSD, my experience will be subjectively different, yet I will in fact be experiencing the same reality. There is an explanation for that, but it has nothing to do with the nature of reality itself; it has only to do with the chemical activity of the brain. As already pointed out, it’s normal for us to accept the dream state as reality; we are only aware of it being a dream in retrospect upon awakening. Since we have no analagous state “outside” of waking consciousness, there is no benchmark by which to judge its reality. For all I know, my conscious state could be similar to the dream state in that I am unable to remember that a state outside consciousness exists until I awaken into that state. One can observe that yes, it is possible to be in a state of consciousness where external reality is an illusion. This is true whether or not we explain why there is a difference between different states.
But I think that’s the best explanation, regardless of whether the dream-state is different than the conscious state.
Why must Ockham’s razor be dragged into every philosophical argument? It’s a heuristic, not a natural law. What it basically says is that, all things being equal, the simpler argument–to put it crudely–is the one to bet on. As far as solipsism goes, you have two possibilities. If solipsism is true I must come up with a reason for the seeming reality–if you will–of the world. If it’s false I can accept the world as it is. Therefore the assumption that solipsism is false, that there is a world outside myself, is simpler. Granted it postulates more “entities” but only in the crudest, most material sense.
Solipsism is in a sense almost irrefutable as a hypothesis. It’s like the ultimate conspiracy theory. Any evidence that the world is not an illusion is itself part of the illusion. The best way to deal with solipsism is to steal ideas from Popper and the Pragmatists. Since solipsism is completely unfalsifiable and has no real consequences–since we have to deal with the world anyway–it can be ignored.
The one area in which solipsism seems to me vulnerable is this. If the world is an illusion, it certainly isn’t an illusion I create. Otherwise I’d certainly be having all those Angelina Jolie–Jessica Alba experiences mentioned above. Therfore something else is creating this illusory world. Thus you need at least two entities to explain experience. Yourself and the Creator of Illusions.
How is that vulnerability? If solipsism’s false, you have Yourself, Creator of Physical Reality and other Other entities. Occam-wise, solipsism’s still on top. Conversely, if you can accept existence of yourself, others and the physical world without requiring a creator, what requires a creator for Illusions?
Solipsism comes down to other minds i.e. consciousness. Either way, you’ll display signs of pain if you burn yourself. Is there a ‘You’ really consciously experiencing pain or is what I sense all there is that is being sensed?
Solipsism does lead to real differences in lifestyle, if you accept it. Altruism, no longer, makes sense. There’s no one actually feeling happy or miserable or in pain. Just outward appearances. Selfish hedonism becomes more acceptable. You still might display acts of kindness and resist sadism, but with a selfish calculus in mind.
It’s a vulnerability because something other than my conscious mind is creating these illusions. Thus something besides “me” is required to explain my experience. Also, the refutation of solipsism has nothing to do with Occam. As I said, solipsism is all but irrefutable. It’s simply something best ignored because it is irrefutable and without consequence.
BTW, when I say without consequence I mean without metaphysical consequence. There may still be ethical consequences. If someone really believed in solipsism, I suppose they may indeed act in a less altruistic way, as you mention. Of course this raises the question of whether anyone really does believe in solipsism, outside of philosophical discussions. Even sociopaths seem to accept the reality of the world around them.
While a refutation of solipsism need not involve Occam’s razor, Occam provides no defence for solipsism either. Occam’s razor workjs for solipsism only in its crudest sense: If we count the number of things involved in a solipsistic universe (1) and the number of things involved in an objectivly existing real universe (1 kajillion) I suppose there are fewer entities in the solipsists universe. But if Occams razor is going to be a useful principle at all, it has to be more than a mere counting of things, but rather a quest for the simplest explanation. Here I think the positing of a real universe accepted for itself is simpler than explaining how an illusory universe is somehow being created with the appearence of a real universe, and where this illusion could possibly come from if I am the only thing in the universe and I am not consciusly creating it this illusion. (Because if I was creating it, I assure you I would be having a much better time.)
Hardly. If you accept the World As Real (WaR), all science is doing is describing how objects and processes behave, in time and space. The question still remains where time, space, matter, energy come from, and why?
So
Solipsism --> Appearance --> Behaviour of apparitions --> Why? (Metaphysics)
WaR --> External World --> Behaviour of external world --> Why?
Everything can be relabelled to fit within both schemes. Ethics, metaphysical notion of other minds and teleology(if there’s a purpose) is all that distinguishes solipsism and WaR.
As opposed to WaR? I think we can agree that humans did not create the laws of nature, nor do we consciously create our perceptions even in WaR. Our consciousness follows the brain, rather than precedes it. So the issue still remains. Instead of tying and correlating your current conscious activity to brain tissue, you’d have to tie it to some unobserved metaphysical essence. The difference being that even in WaR, that would have to be your next step anyway.
Exactly my point. Even in solipsism the world still appears law like and real. All the laws of science apply in a solipsistic world. If the two worlds are metaphysically indistinguishable, why not go with the simpler notion that the world is, in fact, real.
As to where everything comes from, that’s as much of a problem for solipsism as for WaR. What creates this incredibly complex and sophisticated illusion? It certainly isn’t my conscious mind. If it’s my unconscious, how does that work? Why am I unable to affect the slightest change through an act of will?
Again my argument against solipsism is not based on Occam’s Razor other than to say that if Occam’s razor doesn’t refute solipsism, it doesn’t support it either. My argument is simply that the our actions and thoughts are based on the notion that objects are independant of us and persist in time whether we are aware of them or not. This notion is not tied to any scientific theory, or even to science at all. It’s tied to the way we live and speak. Given that we act in a way that pre-supposes other minds and real objects, that’s what we should believe in, barring serious evidence to the contrary.
I acknowledge solipsism is practically irrefutable. It is also consequenceless and contrary to the way all of us live. Even by replying to you I am acting as though you existed as an autonomous being. Even such grotesque people as Bundy, Dahmer and Gacy believed in other people’s existence. They just didn’t care.
Except they are not metaphysically indistinguishable. One has one conscious observer, the other has multiple.
Correct, so neither is favored.
But it does, in a crude sense, like you admit.
Which doesn’t change in solipsism. All you are arguing for is structure and consistency. Both exist in WaR and solipsism.
Circularity much? Paraphrase: I don’t believe in solipsism, so I act as if WaR, so I shouldn’t believe in solipsism.
“All of us”?
This also doesn’t fit. If you start to believe there’s only You, why should you continue as before, apart from some lazy, uncertainty or fear-driven conservatism?
Yes but since you’re not immediately aware of the other minds, they’re indistinguishable. (I probably shouldn’t have used the word metaphysically. It was confusing, unnecessary and pretentious.)
Right. Again solipsism is irrefutable. But neither is it demonstrable. So it comes down to a matter of choice. Since I treat objects and other people as really existing, I may as well make their reality part of any philosophy I hold.
Only in the sense of counting entities. But if this is all Occam’s razor boils down to, it loses all value as a heuristic. As Liberal and others point out, the principle tells us to look for the most parsimonious explanation, not merely the explanation with the fewest number of discrete things. As you point out, both solipsism and WaR leave the question of the ultimate origin of phenomena unresolved. Therefore Occams razor favors no choice between the theories.
Sure. I’m not making an argument which refutes solipsism in favor of WaR. I’m merely pointing out that WaR seems more compatible with the way I live, even to posting and replying on this board. Believing in WaR is an existential choice, if you will. There is no argument I can think of to prove its existence in a definitive way.
Because you still have to live in the world of phenomena. You still deal with people and things. You eat food, you don’t step in front of buses, and you give and demand respect from others, real or not. I don’t see why that’s lazy or fear-driven. I’m not sure how anyone would survive, let alone prosper, doing anything else.
