“Justhink, thanks for “checking in.””
Are you thanking yourself for your own profundity again? This arrogance is just intolorable! Braggart!
-Justhink
In a moment, yesterday, heading out to a coworker’s car to have him give me a lift home, it struck me. It struck me in a way that most things never do. And it took a post to another subject (do teens have it harder today?) to get it through my thick skull.
When I am, for example, sick, and I have a fever, or otherwise feel ill, I cannot remember what it is like to feel well or normal. I can say that: there was a time, not long ago [perhaps even only a few hours ago] where I would describe my state as well. But: I cannot feel well while I am feeling sick. I am only feeling. What right do I have to call this feeling anything besides how it affects the world around me? No, that isn’t quite right. It is difficult to say. Here I get the very real sense of the words betraying me: they are “putting” something there that doesn’t belong.
“I know I am ill.” Yes: why? “Well, I remember feeling this way before.” What are you remembering? What counts for a memory of a feeling? It isn’t as if you can demonstrate to yourself what well is like by feeling well when you are sick. “Well, I remember not feeling like this.” LIKE WHAT? Where is the standard? Can you, for example, go through a series of feelings to try and find the right one?
“But you can’t sit here and deny I am ill!” That is correct: you have all the characteristic outward signs of being ill. But then I can say you are ill as much as you can. “But I hate this feeling.” So you remember it? What is it? “It is feeling ill!” Bah! That’s not saying anything!
In what way is feeling well a feeling? “But there is something about feeling ill that I don’t like.” As much as the sick person has a right to feel ill, I have a right to call him ill, to give name to his characteristic exhibition of behavior. Where the outside observer cannot tell the difference, neither can the one who feels.
In what way is green a sensation? Look around you at all the colors and try to find one that is missing; for example, there is nothing orange around me. Now: I close my eyes and try to see orange. Just orange. I… I find myself helpless here. Even bringing to mind an orange doesn’t help me much. I feel like it is almost there, I get that tip-of-the-tongue feeling for thoughts, but it doesn’t quite come. And yet I should instantly recognize orange when I see it.
But then what am I recognizing? Isn’t that strange!? Imagine a gunshot (for those of us who have heard them close up). How loud is it? Can you hear it? Try to play a scene in your mind: a man there, earmuffs on, at a shooting range. He raises the pistol and squeezes…
Nothing comes here! I don’t hear anything. And I say: but of course I would recognize a gunshot when I hear it. And I don’t doubt it! But what are we recognizing? What is characteristic of a gunshot in our memory?
Wittgenstein’s example: a man at a shooting range fires and afterward someone says, “It was much louder than I expected.” I imagine many of us who have ever fired a weapon have either said or heard someone say this. But now: what sort of loudness were ew expecting? In what sense could we say: “It is exactly as loud as I expected!”
What is judging what here, and against what?
And that was my problem: I felt it must be like something to see green because I in fact am correct in saying “green” at these times. But I cannot bring the sensation of green to mind. And I felt it must be like something to feel ill because I in fact am correct in saying “I am ill” at these times. But I cannot feel ill for a moment just to see what it’s like, as a sort of reminder of “hey, good thing you aren’t feeling like this right now.”
Can I seriously imagine the color I call green changing on me? I say no, but then, why is it so hard for me to bring a sample of pure green to mind? What if it did change? Well, I am introduced new objects and can call their color out even before I am told what it is. And here it seems that I can recognize green. But the fiction here is that I can have some kind of standard that I can bring to mind when it comes to sensations, that I can have my own little private exhibition. If there is a look-up table for sensation, I do not have access to it. It seems like it is there. But now, what grounds could I give for saying “it” is there? for the questions can’t be answered: what, where?
Take this as an example [something I wrote]
But let us not leave it there. For I have no right to say that though I cannot “bring green to mind” that no one else can. Let’s let such a person exists. They can bring green to mind on request, they can hear a gunshot over and over and compare it to sense perception, etc. In short, they can do mentally everything I cannot.
What can this person do that I cannot? Put him and me in a room: we call the same things green. Put him and me in a room: we speak the same language and play chess while chatting about American Idol (go Nikki!). Put us through a battery of tests. Where is the difference besides that when prompted whether he can bring green to mind he says, “Yes”?
And what would he say when I asked him incredulously [and I would! —I’m not a nice guy like that]: “Are you sure that you’re bringing green to mind?”
Not quite correct: where the outside observer cannot tell the differenec, we are inclined to not ask for justification of a feeling.
I am temporarily without home connectivity and absurdly swamped at work, so it will be a little while before I can respond to some of these posts in the depth which they desrver. I just wanted to make 2 quick observations regarding the “proofs” that solipsism cannot be corect.
Scott Dickerson: The truth value of solipsism need not be equal to the truth value of an assertion of solipsism. Any sufficiently complex and consistent logical system has true statements which cannot be asserted validly from within the system.
**justthink:b[/] For all practical purposes, your posts could be an example of private language in my world.
“**justthink:b[/] For all practical purposes, your posts could be an example of private language in my world.”
Hmm… I’m a bit confused now. “Private language in your world”, I can scarcely comprehend what that even means.
So am I to assume that “your world”
a.) you are the creator of it
b.) you are created in it
c.) you are determined in it
d.) you are determined in it with a string cut loose once entered, and can have will.
e.) It has other people in it
f.) You are the only person in your world
g.) There are or are not possibilities of other worlds…
h.) You are nothing but someone elses simulation (hopefully a greater body of yourself, for your sake!)
That list is not important really IMO; just the general idea that it is large…
I am, however, a private language in your world…
I’m assuming that this language is determined to have encryption that is unbreakable?
Is this language private to you as well?
Is there anyone who can understand and/or decipher or comprehend this private language in your world?
Do you have any degree of communication with that language outside of its privateness?
Are you only reading a simulation of that language which your world only allows you to interpret? (Is this wholly deterministic?)?
The entire usage just seemed bizarre to me: “You are a private language in my world.” as if to ultimately mean nothing at all when being stated. I was under the impression that the topic was private phenomenon; which doesn’t necssitate the implied structures of language; it seems redundantly counter-logical to speak of private language in ones ‘own world’; or even private phenomenon (though that makes a bit more sense to me).
It’s as if a Solipsist is claiming that they belong to their solipsism; a very odd remark IMO; as it requires phenominal disregard for the nature of what solipsism espouses as a veiwpoint in regards to axiomic structure.
I’m also being a butt about this, because I believe I already asnwered your question; as I ran through all the possibilities I could concieve… I thought I covered it from many different angles including the most obvious one presented here. Maybe I’m missing something about this whole ‘private language’ thing.
It’s almost to suggest that my posting is an autonomous process maintained by your sub-conscious, and that your replies are governed by a process similar to blood circulation; that only works when you don’t think about it; which strikes me as a bit preposterous from the veiw that you would be able to address me in any coherent manner.
-Justhink
Eris: On Orange:
All you have demonstrated is that the memory of a color is not the same as the perfect visualization of a color. Which is to say that perfect visualization is not one of humanity’s capabilities.
Similarly, one can remember feeling sick without actually feeling sick while one is doing the remembering.
Memory is an empirically tricky phenomenon.
Q on PP: Can one remember a sensation or feeling without an external referent?
(Subquestion: Can one remember anything with complete accuracy? A: Practically speaking, no. A (large, no huge) exception would involve concepts simple enough to, um, be remembered. So I can remember that 2+2 is 4. Or 5, in certain works of fiction. At any rate, remembering concepts is typically easier than remembering (eg) visual scenes, as the former embody much less information.)
A: Yes, one can remember a sensation or feeling w/o an external referent. But not with complete accuracy.
Q: But can one have a verifiably remembered sensation without an external referent?
A: No, since verification requires an external referent. Your definition.
Q: So how do we know the memory is even roughly accurate?
A: Well, we don’t know for certain of course.
Q: Ok, but what’s the basis for trusting it at all, if we lack this external referent?
A: Well, I’m assuming that your memory-mechanism has been calibrated with external referents. (Note that the calibration may allow comparison across time, though no memory-calibration will allow us to compare pain across 2 people. For that other sorts of observational data would be appropriate.)
Q: So, based on your ability to remember shades of color across successive days, you are drawing conclusions on your ability to remember (eg) pain?
A: Um, yes. But I am not claiming that I can remember the latter with the same accuracy.
Q: But what about your ability to remember the sensation of a particular color?
A: I think I’ve noted that sensations have a lower level of memory-accuracy. Still, if I can choose napkins with same shade of blue on successive days, it seems reasonable to conclude that I was experiencing similar color-sensations on successive days (though my wider mood may have varied, of course). In fact, I’m not sure how I could have gotten the correct answer, if in fact I was experiencing substantially different color-sensations.
Q: Would you allow for the possibility that the accuracy of your memory stinks (w.r.t. pain, say)?
A: Um, yes. Though in fact, I could imagine experiments that could attempt to measure this degree of accuracy.
Q: So these questions are should be addressed empirically, to the extent possible?
A: Funny you should ask, grasshopper…
Q: Ok, but haven’t you missed Wittgenstein’s deeper epistemological point?
A: Probably, as I have never read more than a few paragraphs of his work.
ERL: I congratulate you on having what I think is an insight of enormous importance. With regard to things/events that have already happened, there is a distinction between: the kind of knowing that amounts to a willingness to endorse the aptness of a verbal description; and, the kind of knowing that amounts to a willingness to endorse the similarity between a present experience and some prior experience. In the first case, we are claiming, in effect–
PRESENT DESCRIPTION “=” PAST EXPERIENCE
–whereas in the second case–
PRESENT EXPERIENCE “=” PAST EXPERIENCE
And in noting this distinction, you are very close indeed to making effectively distinguishing between (a) the informing content (that which is possible to describe/communicate); and (b) the form-of-presence (which has no description and cannot be communicated, only “now-experienced”).
I once had kidney stones. I remember THAT they were quite painful. Yet almost instantly upon the surcease of pain, that very particular pain blurs away into something generic–presumably the sort of micro-pain my brain can produce at will “in the moment” to remind me of what pain is “like.”
Or think of the face of a good friend, or your spouse. See it clearly in your mind’s eye. Now look at a blank sheet of white paper and SKETCH THAT FACE. Should be easy–just mentally project the outlines and trace over them. But most of us can’t, because what we really remember is not “that” face, but a sort of generic face with “footnotes.”
In one of his fascinating books, Oliver Sacks talks about people who, when they neurologically can no longer process color-input, begin to forget what colors were “like,” until the fact of their odd blindness is just a verbal thing, not something known to them by direct experience.
There are those who, in some purely physical/optical sense, “can see,” yet deny that they can. (blindsight) There is also the reverse, folks whose optical system is completely dead, yet who insist that they watch TV, etc.
Interesting stuff.
FLOWBARK: Though the greater or lesser development of ordinary capacities surely plays a role, for what it’s worth my own approach is a very radical denial that it is even logically intelligible to claim that purely experiential elements, occurring at two diferent times or “in” two distinct persons, can be compared in any respect. Something is indeed available in every actual experience that can be compared; but it is not that aspect that is most “sensation-like,” but rather a second corresponding element that is more like an “abstract concept.” I am not so much addressing your post as taking this opportunity to make clear my position, in case you care to critique it.
“…The truth value of solipsism need not be equal to the truth value of an assertion of solipsism. Any sufficiently complex and consistent logical system has true statements which cannot be asserted validly from within the system…”
SM, I know this is the Goedel thing. I don’t quite know what to make of your statement. As I understand it, Solipsism is presented as a universal and all-encompassing metaphysic: there can be nothing at all outside it, if it is true. Therefore, how can there exist true statements ABOUT solipsism that are not read-off FROM the system–unless solipsism is false?
I guess I’m having trouble with the idea that a (wanna be) comprehensive system of thought can assert everything–except that its assertions are true (ie, that the system guarantees its own validity).
Or…maybe I didn’t make clear that my argument does not pretend to absolutely annihilate solipsism, is “absolutely annihilate” is taken to mean that all alternatives are knocked out of the ring. What I am claiming is: either solipsism is false, or knowledge is impossible.
If knowledge is impossible, the evident fact that one could not know that it is impossible is beside the point, I guess.
You deserve better, but time escapes my control.
Scott Dickerson: An inability to demonstrate that solipsism is “true” implies neither that solipsism is “false” nor that knowledge within a solipsistic metaphysic is impossible. Consider, for instance, that in the present I can “know that I am in pain”. Regardless of whether that knowledge is transerable to another, subject to falsification, or reliable in recollection it can be true and I can “know” it.
justthink:
Found irony is the best irony.
My statement was tongue-in-cheek. To state more directly: you use language in a manner which obviously contains meaning for you but conveys no meaning to me. You use the symbols of the English language in a manner with which I am unfamiliar.
Scott, I wanted to mention to you how much more I’ve enjoyed the thought of what I’ll name sense-nominalism. When we get down to the nitty gritty, what more can we use to describe our inner workings other than pointing (helplessly for anyone but us) to “this”? This: the ultimate identifier which gives no information other than “something with identity”.
flowbark
Well, this is the funny part: to myself I demonstrated much more than that. The “images” in my mind of an orange, my kitchen, etc,… they have no color to them. Or rather, they have nothing I would call color. I tried to close my eyes and very calmly [this weekend] just picture a nice, thick black line on a white background. Surely, I thought, I can picture that. But, though I could answer a thousand questions about what such a scene would be like, and even give a rough estimate of the slope of the line, I saw nothing. And when I say “see” I of course don’t mean see with my eyes, but “picture” or see “in my mind’s eye”. There are several misleading expressions here.
In no sense does color exist in my mind except in a descriptively immenent way, as far as I can tell. And yet when presented with new objects I tend to name the right color as judged by other people’s reactions. Of course if it is the color I would name it there is no way for me to tell I am right at all. Who is going to argue that? And if I thought for a moment I was wrong, well, why then wouldn’t I think that for the moment I was wrong about being wrong? [etc ad nauseum]
Whoa, whoa, whoa. But with partial accuracy? Judged by what standard? IOW, think about the times when you correct yourself. What has caused this? If you suspected that that wasn’t your hand, why would you trust your eyes to tell you?
Think about it this way:
“But clearly I see red!” What does this say other than that, under certain circumstances, you are inclined to attribute a single word to a wide range of perception? What makes you think it says anything more than that? That it could be an object of the mind?
engaged with observing the current conversation between Eris and Scott
I’ll with-hold input on the above for purposes of the concise integrity of the current exchange (meaning, I’d probably ‘mess it up’, as any reply would be almost 100% improv).
So, I’ll continue along the enjoyable line of solipsism! Hopefully all of it will merge at some point.
Spiritus: Point well taken.
Let me try again (…as the bandwidth God recoils in nervous tension):
I first stated that it is safe to assume:
No matter God, no God, solipsism (all memory stored in you), phenominalism (memory distributed in other ‘real’ entities outside of you with which to engage, that persist beyond you). Tenative definitions, but not particularly relevant to this point.
For any or all of it to make any sense, it strikes me that
DIFFERENCE is a necessity for any and/or all of these realities to ‘be’. Does any solipsist deny the very concept of DIFFERENCE?!! Would any human being deny the concept of difference to God, or even humor the idea that God can exist, and yet not percieve difference through every core of his being?
How about trees, animals or rocks … none of it makes any sense without aknowledging DIFFERENCE. Nothing makes any sense if one doesn’t formulate that all things ‘outside of the self (including the self)’ are abstracting difference in order to ‘be’. I was stating that difference is the universal PP! – some sense of ‘other’.
The question then becomes, is that ‘otherness’ wholly self-contained or not? Are you the only being in the universe? Do you really die when you jump off a cliff, or does that only happen to the simulations in your mind? (i.e. has anything actually jumped off a cliff before, do cliffs even exist??!) Are you just going to live forever, have you already lived forever; where your birth is the very birth of ‘somethingness’? Does it matter that you remember being young, and now, that you are old; like all the simulations in your memory have done as well? Does any of it actually apply to YOU?! Does any of that memory, any of that truth or cohesiveness have ANYTHING to do with you, outside of merely being a simulation to that effect? If it does OR DOES NOT; then, there must be a truth, that exists outside of you.
It is to say: Something must be: difference
To percieve difference, something must be: change
Universal stasis and universal ‘sameness’ are conceptual synonyms in the realm of absolutes; …this realm of cohesiveness.
In light of those synonyms, nothing makes any sense to the percieved memory of others or ones-self; that such a state as cohesiveness could even exist in a lack of motion or difference.
Does anyone concieve a means in which this is not true? (Whether one is a wholly determined simulation or not?) That everything must be bound by change and difference; the universal communicator between even the most rudimentary robot or ‘rock’ and those who create them, or otherwise perceive them with permissiveness or aknowledgement?
How can any form of memory function in the way we observe it, if every aspect of it is unilaterally constructed and/or unmoving?
That even a solipsist concieves this; shows it to be true of even the most superfluous of existant realities; that somewhere (else), lies truth that:
“otherness”, “difference”, “change” is equative with “reality” “being” “existence” on the most fundamental level.
Discernment, distinguishment; being the fundamental properties of cohesiveness, without which; nobody suggests from either their veiwpoint or even the veiwpoint of a rock, that any of this can ‘STICK’.
The question then becomes one of meaning. Is there a meaning of this cohesiveness? If there is not a fundamental path between the two, could one then strike a path from cohesiveness to meaning; and by doing so, make it purposeful; or would it only be illusionary?
Is it meaningful to talk about change, when a lack of it, is all that maintains it from stasis? What is more superfluous than static change; that a property cannot express itself ideally in order that it may exist for existence, scrutiny and record?
-Justhink
Gentlepersons…
- Spiritus: I do not regard “able to be affirmed” as being the precise equivalent to “able to be proven/demonstrated.” As you rightly note, we can know absolutely, of certain things, that they are the case without there being any possibility that other persons will be able to confirm that fact.
What I am denying is the LOGICAL POSSIBILITY that any philosophy or metaphysic can recognize something characterized as “truths that cannot be posited”-- which is closer to what I was getting at by “(not) able to be affirmed.” I can form posits of a sort about my inner experiences; if all I mean by that is that I can gesture with the mind’s hand and say to myself, “thus it is!” I concur with you in taking this as an example of an indemonstrable, yet known-to-be-true, “fact.”
But if we are going to discuss some topic, we ought to be clear what the topic IS. If we are to discuss a metaphysic called “solipsism,” then you and I have to mutually attach some meaning to that term. And as we stand to one another as members of the public, this “meaning” must be a public meaning, not something that by nature is only available to oneself.
Now it seems to me that the meaning of a term is, at minimum and very roughly, the set of statements regarding it that one is willing to affirm–in other words, the collection of its (actual and possible) affirmables. I am saying that no one who brings “solipsism” up for discussion can, in strict logical consistency, affirm anything about it. I say this for the reasons listed a couple posts back. In consequence, the term “solipsism” is inconsistent with its own (pseudo-) definition–as the definition is either self-contradictory or unintelligible for some other reason.
Thus I arrive at the conclusion that “nothing regarding what people seem to mean by what they call ‘solipsism’ can be affirmed to be true, in that ‘solipsism’ cannot be the subject of affirmables of any kind, because it remains, necessarily, without definition.” It follows that if I claim, “I believe solipsism is true!” I am speaking falsely; just as if I were to shout out, “I believe quzgrbggle is true!”. The statement is false, in that one cannot in fact “believe” something with respect to an undetermined subject. (Whew, so hard to find the right words…!)
ERL: Not much “for” me this exchange, but always a pleasure to hear from you.
JUSTHINK: It occurred to me (from your joking remark) that you may have interpreted my posts in a way that suggests that I am taking an “it’s all in my own head” view of the world. Not so. I am saying that everything (even my own thoughts!) is external to my perceiving Self; but that the action of perceiving that external reality is associated with the “production” of an inner (= “private”: not spatially within) counterpart that only the Self can perceive. The latter does NOT “represent” the former to me, but stands alongside it…or, if you like, is a kind of transparent overlay through which external realities are observable.
“”""“JUSTHINK: It occurred to me (from your joking remark) that you may have interpreted my posts in a way that suggests that I am taking an “it’s all in my own head” view of the world.”"""""
I was adding the perpective into the thread (for ‘posterities’’ sake); as a solipsism ‘joke’ which, when NOT laughing, suggests something quite serious behind the mechanism that triggered the laughter. It was not directed specifically at you.
“”""“Not so. I am saying that everything (even my own thoughts!) is external to my perceiving Self; but that the action of perceiving that external reality is associated with the “production” of an inner (= “private”: not spatially within) counterpart that only the Self can perceive. The latter does NOT “represent” the former to me, but stands alongside it…or, if you like, is a kind of transparent overlay through which external realities are observable.”""""
You may then, want to ponder whether this relationship is conditionally symbiotic. I believe that we can reduce, (from even a solipsistic veiwpoint), that properties of change and difference MUST exist outside of that virtualization for the ‘real’ ‘people’ ‘out there’. To this degree, I would suggest that solipsism does not exclude phenominalism (axiomic truth); though it can establish its own determinism (hypocritically so) until becoming absolute.
You’re talking about the ‘black box’ phenomenon with that “(“private”: not spatially within)” comment. I would suggest that this is necessary and can be utilized to form an artificial intelligence that can act as an omniscient feedback device for our ‘virtualization’, if indeed we are being counter-intelligently virtualized. I just can’t fathom how a human being who does this, will find a reason to use the ‘program’ without just ‘exiting themselves’ from the virtualization. If the process was absorbed into an being that abstracts being itself (anthropromorphizes un-like objects); it would necessarlity result in the collapse of any effect, by collapsing the abstraction itself within itself. A computer can do it, but why would a human even program it to do so? Screwed at both ends.
-Justhink