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Solipsism


traveling_man

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You can't. 

It gets into that can of never ending worms called "faith" for you to believe me if I claim I am NOT a figment of your imagination.

 

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Damn. OK, I admit it.

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A dream you dream alone is only a dream, a dream we dream together is reality ...

- yoko ono lennon

 

~

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Solipsism is lazy intellectualism. Phony philosophy. It is an excuse to do nothing and pretend your lack of achievement isn't your fault.

A way more interesting question is 'How do you know you are not a figment of your own imagination.'.

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Just now, AtlantisRises said:

Solipsism is lazy intellectualism. Phony philosophy. It is an excuse to do nothing and pretend your lack of achievement isn't your fault.

A way more interesting question is 'How do you know you are not a figment of your own imagination.'.

You could even spin this around and ask "Am I a figment of someone else's imagination?" Rather than they a product of mine.

Either way it's rather stupid.

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3 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

You could even spin this around and ask "Am I a figment of someone else's imagination?" Rather than they a product of mine.

Either way it's rather stupid.

The stupidity is less relevant than the pointlessness. It achieves absolutely nothing. Completely unprovable and there is no way to act that would benefit you if you are in imagination land.

It is just a way for morons to pretend to be smarter than other people.

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6 hours ago, traveling_man said:

How can I know that you are not a figment of my imagination?

I exist, I am real and solid, and if I run you over in my car then it will hurt.

So that means there is something very strange and odd going on with reality. Because while physics says things only exist as materialised objects if you are in receipt of information from them then once they exist they really do exist.

Do you want to play some inter-dimensional games? If you do you will notice something odd going on. You`d probably think your house was haunted or people around you have developed telepathy.

Edited by RabidMongoose
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7 minutes ago, seanjo said:

Yeah, she talks a lot of crap.

Not nearly as much as you

~

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8 hours ago, traveling_man said:

How can I know that you are not a figment of my imagination?

I am a figment of the imagination for everyone on this thread, because none of you have met me.

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The hardest thing about arguing against solipsism is that every claim made against it can be simply refuted by the solipsist.

"If I punch you in the nose, you'll know it's real"

"No, I would be imagining you punching me in the nose"

But I wonder if true solipsists truly comprehend the scope of what they are claiming. Not only would one have to imagine every single aspect of one's own life, you would have to imagine all the lives around you with all the details being kept consistent with one another. You would have to imagine every single aspect of your 'reality', which would mean that you would have invented/discovered/thought of everything since the creation of time. And you would have to keep track of all the details, continually.

In my above illustration, the solipsist would have to imagine:

"I" - solipsist would have to create the adversary

"punch" - what is a it? what does it look like, where does it come from? what does it do?

"nose" - again, same questions as "punch"

Even the language of the illustration is something one would have to imagine.

 

Now, for myself, I reject solipsism for two very simple reasons:

1 - if I were imagining this reality, I think I would be able to think up a more satisfying and rewarding life for myself

2 - I cannot begin to know why I would imagine so many annoying, P.I.T.A. people as I have had to deal with.

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11 minutes ago, Jodie.Lynne said:

The hardest thing about arguing against solipsism is that every claim made against it can be simply refuted by the solipsist.

"If I punch you in the nose, you'll know it's real"

"No, I would be imagining you punching me in the nose"

But I wonder if true solipsists truly comprehend the scope of what they are claiming. Not only would one have to imagine every single aspect of one's own life, you would have to imagine all the lives around you with all the details being kept consistent with one another. You would have to imagine every single aspect of your 'reality', which would mean that you would have invented/discovered/thought of everything since the creation of time. And you would have to keep track of all the details, continually.

In my above illustration, the solipsist would have to imagine:

"I" - solipsist would have to create the adversary

"punch" - what is a it? what does it look like, where does it come from? what does it do?

"nose" - again, same questions as "punch"

Even the language of the illustration is something one would have to imagine.

Now, for myself, I reject solipsism for two very simple reasons:

1 - if I were imagining this reality, I think I would be able to think up a more satisfying and rewarding life for myself

2 - I cannot begin to know why I would imagine so many annoying, P.I.T.A. people as I have had to deal with.

Actually you would only need to imagine that which you are currently experiencing.

I`m also pretty sure you can dissociate from the pain of being punched on the nose so that it doesnt exist. The psychiatric departments are full of people who have dissociated from all aspects of reality. In fact thats how anaesthetic works too when you go for an operation. When they put you under how do you know reality still exists? You have no experience of anything.

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1 minute ago, RabidMongoose said:

You have no experience of anything.

That was my point in my roundabout way.

If one is "a brain in a vat", you would have to mentally create everything that you could experience, everything you could know, without the knowledge of what it is.

Like pain for example. If you are a brain in a vat, you have no experience of pain, of hot, cold, hunger joy, etc, etc.

 

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29 minutes ago, Jodie.Lynne said:

That was my point in my roundabout way.

If one is "a brain in a vat", you would have to mentally create everything that you could experience, everything you could know, without the knowledge of what it is.

Like pain for example. If you are a brain in a vat, you have no experience of pain, of hot, cold, hunger joy, etc, etc.

A brain in a vat actually knows two things - that it exists (1st truth), and that its having an experience even if it doesnt know if that experience is true or not (2nd truth). In reverse order:

2nd Truth: In order for something to be true it needs to be true under all circumstances. Not true today but false tomorrow. Not true so long as I am doing A, B, or C. Not true for one person while being false for another. Pain, hot, cold, hunger, and joy, can all be turned off by medication so arent real. If we move to physics with General Relativity then that means virtually everything in the universe is not true under all circumstances. And for those that are all we need to ask is... did it exist in the past? will it continue to exist in the future? and has it always existed? In which case we can quickly show that nothing in the whole of existence is true under all circumstances. Hence, nothing our mind is experiencing is actually true.

1st Truth: So with the delusion we are experiencing how can we experience it if we dont have a mind? Even a delusion experiencing a delusion means that at the very minimum something deluded exists. Nothingness is impossible, it is the complete absence of everything and therefore never has and never will exist. Therefore at least one thing has always existed and because the only thing that we cannot show to be false is that we have a mind then that must necessarily be the case.

Edited by RabidMongoose
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The underlying issue is epistimalogical in nature. The only thing we can really know is our internal thought. We are constantly presented with streams of information from our senses and we choose to flow with it and we choose to accept that other people have the same type of conscious experience as we do. However, there is no way to verify that anyone else is conscious.

Do any of you remember going through this and considering the consciousness of others?

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16 hours ago, RabidMongoose said:

A brain in a vat actually knows two things - that it exists (1st truth), and that its having an experience even if it doesnt know if that experience is true or not (2nd truth). In reverse order:

2nd Truth: In order for something to be true it needs to be true under all circumstances. Not true today but false tomorrow. Not true so long as I am doing A, B, or C. Not true for one person while being false for another. Pain, hot, cold, hunger, and joy, can all be turned off by medication so arent real. If we move to physics with General Relativity then that means virtually everything in the universe is not true under all circumstances. And for those that are all we need to ask is... did it exist in the past? will it continue to exist in the future? and has it always existed? In which case we can quickly show that nothing in the whole of existence is true under all circumstances. Hence, nothing our mind is experiencing is actually true.

Can a brain in a vat even be aware of itself without having anything against which to differentiate? Does it follow that it is impossible for a brain to have a sane thought without first having had external stimulation?

I wrote the following first ---

I disagree with your establishment of your 2nd Truth.

I can say that I am happy and that be a true statement. I cannot say that I am happy always because my memory informs me that there have been times when I was sad. Due to this fact, I can infer that I will not always be happy but it is possible that I can be happy or sad. 

A rock is a rock as long as it is a rock. Just because it could become a not-rock does not mean that it was never a rock. If you look at it as a slice of time then the rock, being a rock, is true.

 

 

 

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“I think therefore I am.” 

Our ability to self reflect proves that we exist at least to oursleves. I know that others are structured the same as I am, so the logical conclusion is that there are others like me. Solipsism is sort of just a way of recognizing that our preceptions really are just creations that we make out of the stimulus we receive. Those perceptions have been evolving for billions of years, and without them, we wouldn’t be here, so we can say they are fairly accurate. They are at least accurate enough to allow us to survive and dominate the planet.

I do think that it is possible, though, that we are manifestations inside of a higher intelligence. A simulation perhaps. Although I doubt we could call the thing running our reality a computer. I’m sure it’s not a pimply teen in a garage somewhere.

There is some striking statistical and physical evidence that gives simulation theory some strong momentum though. Everything may exist in some sort of higher brain, but it is not mine. Maybe I’ll join it evenchually though. 

 

 

 

Edited by White Crane Feather
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  • 2 weeks later...

Because it's a realm with shared experiences of energy producing.  when you dream(most of the time) your dreams are those "figments".  But those are phantom projections.  You can confuse a snake with a rope.  Some shamans say that an "energy producing' world is real because it has real energetic substance behind it.  Subconscious dreams are where solipsism comes into play.  Maybe you're a figure of Gods imagination. Whatever "god" may be.  

Edited by JohnHermes
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On ‎06‎/‎01‎/‎2019 at 7:21 AM, traveling_man said:

Can a brain in a vat even be aware of itself without having anything against which to differentiate? Does it follow that it is impossible for a brain to have a sane thought without first having had external stimulation?

I wrote the following first ---

I disagree with your establishment of your 2nd Truth.

I can say that I am happy and that be a true statement. I cannot say that I am happy always because my memory informs me that there have been times when I was sad. Due to this fact, I can infer that I will not always be happy but it is possible that I can be happy or sad. 

A rock is a rock as long as it is a rock. Just because it could become a not-rock does not mean that it was never a rock. If you look at it as a slice of time then the rock, being a rock, is true.

 

Point 1: Can a brain in a vat ever be self-aware? The answer is yes, because even if a mind is full of delusions then the mind still needs to exist to have them. Upon reflection we can see this thought process inside ourselves which is self-awareness.

Point 2: Can a brain in a vat ever know itself? The answer is no, because it can only know itself in comparison to other things. When we compare ourselves against other things we make the mistake of adopting the conclusions we reach as our self-identity. Those conclusions only actually talk about the relationship between ourselves and other things, not ourselves.

For clarification I will give an example of this. Compared to a Dutch person I am small, but compared to an Italian I am tall. Obviously I cannot be both small and tall and therefore there is no inherent truth about me in either assessment. In order for my identity to be true it must always be true under every condition. Not true in one situation but false in another. Therefore small and tall speak only about the relationship between myself and other people, not my self-identity. Therefore I cannot use such assessments to know myself.

Point 3: Is my 2nd truth correct? You seem to be questioning my assertion that in order for something to be true it must be true across the entirety of time. If we look at the phrase `I am happy today but was sad yesterday` then let us start by saying that line includes an identity (the I), a passage of time, and the identity has different emotions attached to it (one is remembered and one is currently being experienced). I will cover several of these not just time.

We have already shown in Point 2 that identities dont say anything true about ourselves. Expanding upon this then Identities are transient in nature because the passage of time exposes us to changing relationships. Therefore it is easy to see how the passage of time reveals our identities to be fake. 

Fake identities can have memories but memories are fake too. If someone is mean to you then you might remember them as a bully. Someone else might remember them as being stressed. Someone else might remember them as being tired. If memories were true then how can different recollections of the same event be reconciled with each other?

The emotions that fake identities having fake experiences have might seem real, they might feel intense, but they cannot be real if the thing having them isn't true.

Point 4: Are rocks really rocks? The answer is no, because a rock is just an idea. Its an idea about what a large number of atoms arranged in a particular way are. You might identify something as a rock but ideas arent real as they are a matter of opinion.

I have tried to be clear and concise with my replies but you are pushing my communication skills to the limit lmao. 

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For point 4 You're basically saying a rock is a rock without the label of the rock'  The "idea" is called a rock".  All we did is come back to a full circle.  We just call that a "rock" which pertains to that idea or geometrical blueprint of the energetic atomic configuration (As you claimed yourself)  How do we discern things without labels or contrast? 

Edited by JohnHermes
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On 05.01.2019 at 7:11 AM, traveling_man said:

How can I know that you are not a figment of my imagination?


If everything around was a figment of imagination it would be easy to create and destroy external objects with the power of thought but we cannot do this because everything around us exists independently of our imagination and state of consciousness.

 

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On 05/01/2019 at 3:41 PM, traveling_man said:

How can I know that you are not a figment of my imagination?

To whom are you speaking? :) 

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