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I mean, saying firmly that other things exist doesn't make it true. Solipsism may be disliked but not disproven.

mannykannot 3y ago
Solipsism is a concept insofar as we can define it, and even talk about it, in a way that is not obviously nonsensical, and is arguably useful in discussing epistemology, but it is not obvious that a rational person could be a solipsist in the sense of holding a justified belief that the (i.e. their) self is the only reality. I suspect that any such person attempting to justify that belief (to themselves, of course - who else?) would run into inconsistencies whenever they tried to define concepts such as the self, justification and reality in ways that are not tautological.
- mypalmike 3y ago
  What inconsistencies would you encounter? It would seem that a solipsistic view is trivially consistent. Any phenomenon you experience has a simple explanation : that's how it was designed for you. Conversely, a non-solipsistic view demands explanations for an unimaginable plethora of phenomena. Everything you observe from the subatomic to the cosmological to people eating Tide Pods has aspects that are difficult to explain.
  - mannykannot 3y ago
    I'm not convinced that there are unavoidable inconsistencies, but I suggested it would be difficult for a rational solipsist to define concepts such as the self, justification and reality (all of which are concepts needed in order to take any position on solipsism), and I don't see how saying "it's just how it was designed for me" gets the job done; in fact, this introduces another concept, design, in need of definition. If you could present a more worked-out example of how a rational solipsist would define the concept of reality without, at any point, adopting a non-solipsist stance (such as using the concept of design), I might be more convinced. Furthermore, a rational solipist does not avoid any of the questions faced by non-solipsists: wherever the latter asks "why is it that... and not something else?", the rational solipsist has the question "why does it seem that... and not something else?" Saying "it was designed that way" is no more of an explanation than "it is that way", and the rational solipsist will realize that this is so. Perhaps you are thinking of brains-in-vats or simulations in their own simulated universe? If such an entity supposed that it was a brain-in-a-vat or a simulation, however, it would not be a rational solipsist, as these hypotheses presume a reality beyond their experiences (in any such case, of course, the non-solipsist brain-in-a-vat or simulation would be mistaken about what reality lies beyond its experiences, but nevertheless, there would be such a reality.)
    - whelp_24 3y ago
      There are different forms, but isn't the main one just that you can only prove the existence of your own mind? If there is a reality beyond your senses that you cannot interact with, does it matter to you? A brain in a vat hallucinating a universe, is the same thing as just hallucinating a universe with no further reality, is the same thing as being in a particularly vivid dream, is the same a being a simulation. The idea that a brain must exist somewhere in a vat to present this reality to you, came from your mind. If some of the rules of your reality are entirely disconnected with your senses, why not all?
      - mannykannot 3y ago
        When you say there are different forms, I think you mean different forms of solipsism. If that is what you meant, then I think this discussion is circling back to my original post, in this sense: you are demonstrating that one can have a rational discussion about it. What I am not so convinced about, however, is whether one could rationally be a solipsist - to really (that word again!) believe that (to pick one particular definition for concreteness) the self is the only reality. In this regard, the inability to disprove solipsism is not sufficient to be a justification for believing it; if it were, the mirror argument would equally justify not-solipsism, and so a rational person should regard both arguments as inconclusive. I only mentioned brains-in-vats and simulations because I wondered whether mypalmike had them in mind, and only to say that I don't think it matters whether or not the putative solipsist is either of these things. Rather than continue in this vein, I will point you to an article which concludes with the section "The Incoherence of Solipsism": One might even say, solipsism is necessarily foundationless, for to make an appeal to logical rules or empirical evidence the solipsist would implicitly have to affirm the very thing that he purportedly refuses to believe: the reality of intersubjectively valid criteria and a public, extra-mental world. There is a temptation to say that solipsism is a false philosophical theory, but this is not quite strong or accurate enough. As a theory, it is incoherent. What makes it incoherent, above all else, is that the solipsist requires a language (that is, a sign-system) to think or to affirm his solipsistic thoughts at all. https://iep.utm.edu/solipsis/ https://iep.utm.edu/solipsis/
  - svnt 3y ago
    > It would seem that a solipsistic view is trivially consistent. Any phenomenon you experience has a simple explanation : that's how it was designed for you. Designed for you by whom? And when? That is the problem.
svnt 3y ago
If I find the remains of another person who has been killed and eaten by an animal, should I assume that this can never happen to me because this world was created for me and this person was only a simulation? Because if all that exists is what I know then that would be pretty logical. I’ve never been eaten by an animal and I am the only one in here.
- roenxi 3y ago
  That is the big question, isn't it? We don't know enough about time to say. It is as philosophically plausible as any other idea that any particular thread of consciousness wends on infinitely in its own personal timeline, watching everything else decay and disappear until it is the last thing left. It is so implausible that the universe even exists for our statistical impossibility of self to have happened, it would be a bit of a chuckle if there was a third impossibility in the future.
  - incompatible 3y ago
    It seems a bit odd that we exist at all though, doesn't it? Surely the natural state, or the starting state, would be to have nothing, no time and no space. But then, how would anything ever happen? But given that we exist, then perhaps things have always existed, before the apparent beginning of the universe that we can apparently observe? But if things have existed for so long, why are we in such a state of ignorance and imperfection? Surely given all this infinite time, something better would have been created by now? But consciousness doesn't seem to be a "thing" with a physical presence in the real universe. It seems to be an emergent phenomenon created by the brain apparently because it's useful in some way. Like a web browser running on a computer. Go to sleep and the web browser shuts down, wake up the next day and a new one is instantiated. Then there's no continuity of consciousness, it only lasts for a few hours, and we can return to wondering why I feel like I exist in a here and now, one moment in a possibly infinite timeline.
    - vintermann 3y ago
      > It seems to be an emergent phenomenon created by the brain apparently because it's useful in some way. People need to be more careful about that word "useful". Saying something is useful, is always implying a who it is useful for. Saying it's useful, but it's not useful for anyone, is as meaningless as saying something is useful, but it's not useful for anything. (This was, as I recall, one of Kant's "categories of reason"). So by saying the brain creates something for a purpose, you're already assuming that the brain is a thing, and it's a thing that wants things. I'm not saying that's wrong, but given how hard it seems to not make circular arguments with it, maybe it isn't actually an empirical question.

Solipsism is a concept insofar as we can define it, and even talk about it, in a way that is not obviously nonsensical, and is arguably useful in discussing epistemology, but it is not obvious that a rational person could be a solipsist in the sense of holding a justified belief that the (i.e. their) self is the only reality. I suspect that any such person attempting to justify that belief (to themselves, of course - who else?) would run into inconsistencies whenever they tried to define concepts such as the self, justification and reality in ways that are not tautological.

mypalmike 3y ago
What inconsistencies would you encounter? It would seem that a solipsistic view is trivially consistent. Any phenomenon you experience has a simple explanation : that's how it was designed for you. Conversely, a non-solipsistic view demands explanations for an unimaginable plethora of phenomena. Everything you observe from the subatomic to the cosmological to people eating Tide Pods has aspects that are difficult to explain.
- mannykannot 3y ago
  I'm not convinced that there are unavoidable inconsistencies, but I suggested it would be difficult for a rational solipsist to define concepts such as the self, justification and reality (all of which are concepts needed in order to take any position on solipsism), and I don't see how saying "it's just how it was designed for me" gets the job done; in fact, this introduces another concept, design, in need of definition. If you could present a more worked-out example of how a rational solipsist would define the concept of reality without, at any point, adopting a non-solipsist stance (such as using the concept of design), I might be more convinced. Furthermore, a rational solipist does not avoid any of the questions faced by non-solipsists: wherever the latter asks "why is it that... and not something else?", the rational solipsist has the question "why does it seem that... and not something else?" Saying "it was designed that way" is no more of an explanation than "it is that way", and the rational solipsist will realize that this is so. Perhaps you are thinking of brains-in-vats or simulations in their own simulated universe? If such an entity supposed that it was a brain-in-a-vat or a simulation, however, it would not be a rational solipsist, as these hypotheses presume a reality beyond their experiences (in any such case, of course, the non-solipsist brain-in-a-vat or simulation would be mistaken about what reality lies beyond its experiences, but nevertheless, there would be such a reality.)
  - whelp_24 3y ago
    There are different forms, but isn't the main one just that you can only prove the existence of your own mind? If there is a reality beyond your senses that you cannot interact with, does it matter to you? A brain in a vat hallucinating a universe, is the same thing as just hallucinating a universe with no further reality, is the same thing as being in a particularly vivid dream, is the same a being a simulation. The idea that a brain must exist somewhere in a vat to present this reality to you, came from your mind. If some of the rules of your reality are entirely disconnected with your senses, why not all?
    - mannykannot 3y ago
      When you say there are different forms, I think you mean different forms of solipsism. If that is what you meant, then I think this discussion is circling back to my original post, in this sense: you are demonstrating that one can have a rational discussion about it. What I am not so convinced about, however, is whether one could rationally be a solipsist - to really (that word again!) believe that (to pick one particular definition for concreteness) the self is the only reality. In this regard, the inability to disprove solipsism is not sufficient to be a justification for believing it; if it were, the mirror argument would equally justify not-solipsism, and so a rational person should regard both arguments as inconclusive. I only mentioned brains-in-vats and simulations because I wondered whether mypalmike had them in mind, and only to say that I don't think it matters whether or not the putative solipsist is either of these things. Rather than continue in this vein, I will point you to an article which concludes with the section "The Incoherence of Solipsism": One might even say, solipsism is necessarily foundationless, for to make an appeal to logical rules or empirical evidence the solipsist would implicitly have to affirm the very thing that he purportedly refuses to believe: the reality of intersubjectively valid criteria and a public, extra-mental world. There is a temptation to say that solipsism is a false philosophical theory, but this is not quite strong or accurate enough. As a theory, it is incoherent. What makes it incoherent, above all else, is that the solipsist requires a language (that is, a sign-system) to think or to affirm his solipsistic thoughts at all. https://iep.utm.edu/solipsis/ https://iep.utm.edu/solipsis/
- svnt 3y ago
  > It would seem that a solipsistic view is trivially consistent. Any phenomenon you experience has a simple explanation : that's how it was designed for you. Designed for you by whom? And when? That is the problem.

svnt 3y ago

If I find the remains of another person who has been killed and eaten by an animal, should I assume that this can never happen to me because this world was created for me and this person was only a simulation? Because if all that exists is what I know then that would be pretty logical. I’ve never been eaten by an animal and I am the only one in here.

roenxi 3y ago
That is the big question, isn't it? We don't know enough about time to say. It is as philosophically plausible as any other idea that any particular thread of consciousness wends on infinitely in its own personal timeline, watching everything else decay and disappear until it is the last thing left. It is so implausible that the universe even exists for our statistical impossibility of self to have happened, it would be a bit of a chuckle if there was a third impossibility in the future.
- incompatible 3y ago
  It seems a bit odd that we exist at all though, doesn't it? Surely the natural state, or the starting state, would be to have nothing, no time and no space. But then, how would anything ever happen? But given that we exist, then perhaps things have always existed, before the apparent beginning of the universe that we can apparently observe? But if things have existed for so long, why are we in such a state of ignorance and imperfection? Surely given all this infinite time, something better would have been created by now? But consciousness doesn't seem to be a "thing" with a physical presence in the real universe. It seems to be an emergent phenomenon created by the brain apparently because it's useful in some way. Like a web browser running on a computer. Go to sleep and the web browser shuts down, wake up the next day and a new one is instantiated. Then there's no continuity of consciousness, it only lasts for a few hours, and we can return to wondering why I feel like I exist in a here and now, one moment in a possibly infinite timeline.
  - vintermann 3y ago
    > It seems to be an emergent phenomenon created by the brain apparently because it's useful in some way. People need to be more careful about that word "useful". Saying something is useful, is always implying a who it is useful for. Saying it's useful, but it's not useful for anyone, is as meaningless as saying something is useful, but it's not useful for anything. (This was, as I recall, one of Kant's "categories of reason"). So by saying the brain creates something for a purpose, you're already assuming that the brain is a thing, and it's a thing that wants things. I'm not saying that's wrong, but given how hard it seems to not make circular arguments with it, maybe it isn't actually an empirical question.