Remember that I don't even think that talking about "nonphysical" things makes any sense, but I'm trying to pretend that it could make sense.

If it makes sense to talk about "nonphysical" things, I don't see why nonphysical things doing something, changing, moving in some way wouldn't be time.

So the arguments for a start of time imply that timeless change must be possible — Devans99

"Timeless change" is a simple contradiction on my view. Time simply is motion or change.

If you're saying that God is timeless, then god can't formulate, create, etc. anything. A timeless entity can't do anything.

Why not? There is nothing that happens without a cause. — god must be atheist

How do we know that? You're stating it as if it's just a given, or as if it's a logical principle--and it does need to be stated that way if it's going to be used in a proof. You can't appeal to empiricism for it if you're going to state it as a principle of logic.

Things outside of time do not have a temporal start or end, they are not created or destroyed, they just ARE. — Devans99

Being "outside of time" wouldn't imply anything about creation or destruction. It would only imply something that can't move/change at all as long as it exists "outside of time." If it's possible for there to be existents that can't move/change at all (it's not clear how that would be possible, but let's suppose it is), that could be possible for any arbitrary existent, right?

Cool. I was just wondering. I know sometimes when Dennett talks about this stuff he also sounds as if he never makes "random" decisions, but that could just be because he's not really interested in discussing those . . . but I think it's misleading to talk about decisions without mentioning them, as if we always go into a rational analysis mode, making lists of pros and cons, etc.

Is it just me that feels like this guy keeps jumping between these two options? I can't make sense of him anymore as I feel half the time he is saying he hasn't arguing for the thing he was just arguing for two minutes ago. First there is a forever then forever can't be. I am getting confused here. — Mark Dennis

I think it's because he has the aim of arriving at a particular conclusion (a religious conclusion), and the arguments are basically ad hoc means of getting to the conclusion he wants.

In general: 'to be X something has to start X' works for everything — Devans99

If you think that works for everything, then it's necessary for you to have things always existing.

All I perceive is a phenomenal state. — Hanover

That's the claim you're supposed to be supporting. It's not at all a given.

To use the arboreal example that's so popular, let's say you see a tree. Possibilities include that you're perceiving a phenomenal state (which presumably you're saying amounts to "perceiving" mental content qua mental content), and that you're perceiving something external to you--namely, a tree.

You're going with option #1. Why?

As always, by the way, you either have something existing forever or you have something spontaneously appearing "out of nothing" so to speak. Neither seems intuitively right, but there's no way around those being the only two options.

Even if reality is not fully deterministic, there is still a relationship between prior and subsequent states - if the prior state does not exist then the subsequent state does not exist. — Devans99

Well, just in the sense that if there's not a prior state of x, there can't be a subsequent state of x, sure. That's because of what "prior" and "subsequent" refer to.

So for a non-deterministic eternal particle, I would argue it has no start (because it existed 'forever') so it cannot have a start+1 state, a start+2 state, so by induction, it can't exist. — Devans99

If it "has existed eternally" then sure, those words conventionally refer to there being no start to it. And indeed it wouldn't have a starting state then, because of what "start" refers to. But this doesn't imply that something can't have existed forever. It just wouldn't have a "start + n" state, because there's no start to it. Again, that's what "existed forever" refers to--there's no start.

Everyone else seems to get the idea, about the ambiguity of stating that pure realism coincides with solipsism in the Witty quote. — Wallows

Who is "everyone else"? If you're referring to Hacker and the reddit stuff, those don't make any sense either. (As I noted in my post above.)

Or are you referring to someone else? If someone else gets what any of those folks are saying (Wittgenstein, Hacker, whoever wrote the reddit stuff), and they can think and communicate clearly, maybe we can ask them.

Yes, that is true, but initial state does not have to be a start state. It could be any point in a continuing series of states. If today's state is taken, then we could deterministically calculate the state as of tomorrow, AND still have a state preceding today's state, such as yesterday, last year, ten billiion years ago, any time ago.

Your deterministic approach does not exclude and infinite chain of states predicating other states. Initial, that is, starting time is NOT a necessary feature of determinism. — god must be atheist

I don't think that we can just assume determinism though. At least not in a "proof."

a system’s initial state determines all subsequent states. — Devans99

Why would you say that we have to be determinists?

Well, yes, there's the issue of hidden processes of the mind that are unknown to the conscious mind, — Wallows

I'm not talking about things that are hidden or unknown/not conscious.

Are you telling me that all of your conscious thoughts, imaginings, feelings, etc. are certain for you and never vague, fuzzy, etc.?

Yeah, although I wouldn't say that regularly asking oneself, "Is this correct? Why is the author claiming this? Is it well-supported? Is the author clearly communicating their ideas?" etc. is "hijacking" any sort of philosophy interaction--it's what we should be doing.

Well of course, that’s how logic would like you to see it. — Brett

That sneaky bastard!

Rolling dice seems random, but we know the outcome is actually determined by the physical factors involved in the roll. Do you really think that there's some sort of truly random process in our brains (or in our spiritual minds, if you are a dualist)? It may SEEM that way, but there's no way to know if that's the case. But if we do produce randomness, why is that such a wonderful thing to have as part of our decision making? — Relativist

The whole reason that I wrote "seem random" and "where we're assuming that dice-rolling gives us random results" is so that we wouldn't go off on a tangent about whether anything is really or ontologically random. Because I wasn't interested in that. I was interested in whether you don't make any choices that seem random, rather than rationally deliberating every single choice you make. But you didn't answer that.

You completely ignored this part: "Consider thoughts you have, things you imagine, ways you feel, etc. Aren't they sometimes vague/uncertain for you?"

Epistemically the solipsist lives in absolute certainty. — Wallows

That's not a tenet of solipsism and it doesn't follow from anything. Consider thoughts you have, things you imagine, ways you feel, etc. Aren't they sometimes vague/uncertain for you?

I've not said the perception is different from the object. I've said the object is entirely unknowable. — Hanover

The object is entirely unknowable based on what? What is the support for that claim?

I was just interested in whether from a phenomenal perspective Relativist doesn't make some choices that seem random rather than always thinking about consequences, weighing them against each other, etc.

It would seem very weird to me to not make a lot of seemingly random decisions, to go through some rational process for every single decision made (again, simply from a phenomenal perspective).

You can't explain what an object is like independent of looking at it — Hanover

Sure you can, because it's not different independent of looking at it, at least from the point of reference in question, and there are always points of reference.

You can't talk about the object sans particular points of reference, because the very idea of that is incoherent.

All we know is what sense, and what we sense is subject to interpretation by our sense organs and brain — Hanover

The only way you could know that what we sense is different than the object in itself is to know what the object is like in itself AND know what we sense, where you then note the differences. Otherwise, you'd have no basis at all to say that what we sense is any different than the object in itself.

Please contemplate how your decision making processes if you actually had free will. If the decision were important, you would try to think of all the consequences, some would be good some would be bad. You might weigh these against one another. You might give greater weight to long term consequences, or perhaps you'd be more inclined to receive a sure short term benefit instead of a possible long term detriment that may or may not occur. All of the factors you would consider would come from you, your mind - your knowledge of the world, your hopes, your dreams, your desires as well as your worries and fears. — Relativist

Don't you make any decisions that seem random, where you have two or more options you like equally, so you do the mental equivalent of "rolling dice" (where we're assuming that dice-rolling gives us random results)?

I mention property dualism because it doesn't say there is a nonphysical substance mental states belong to. Rather, brain states have non-physical properties. — Marchesk

So you're not positing nonphysical properties of some nonphysical substance, but nonphysical properties of physical substance? (Remember that I'm asking you about this in terms of ontology)

It would have to be some sort of substance, object, etc., no? Even if you're positing nonphysical objects, substances--whatever that would be. Otherwise, you'd be positing "free floating" properties. I don't know how we'd make any sense of that. They'd be properties that aren't properties of anything.

How about this part:

"properties have to be properties of something. Do you agree with that?"

(This is why I usually try to not type more than one thing at a time now)

This thread is not about philosophy; it is about reading and understanding a text - — tim wood

Yeah, a philosophy text.

Opinions and arguments are not welcome! — tim wood

Get lost with that. That's not philosophy.

So that is where your stand point on whether free will exists or not that you belive that the choices you make are your own and therefore do not think about the possibility that it is otherwise too much as you think it to be irrelevant. — AwazawA

You asked how I'd feel if strong determinism were true. I told you how I'd feel. I'd feel no differently, because I could just choose to ignore it.

I'm trying to say that if hard determinism as you phrase it is true that one of the purpose or "the meaning of life, the universe and everything" is simply that we follow through with our predetermined fates as is the only way things could be. — AwazawA

I'm not seeing what you think that would follow from. Why would any fact about the way the world is amount to a purpose?

1. If we see things as they are, why don't we see the perceptions and thoughts of others? Is it that they don't exist? — leo

You're confusing different ideas, seemingly based on a weird "literal" reading of "seeing things as they are."

No one is saying that we see "everything about everything," from every perspective. The very idea of that is incoherent. First off, any observation (in the scientific sense of that term, where it's simply referring to interactions of things) is going to be from a particular perspective or "reference point" and not from other perspectives (reference points). There are no perspective-free or reference-point-free perspectives/reference points.

So, you see x as it is from reference point y, say. That doesn't include reference point z, unless you change the observational reference point to z, and then you see x as it is from z, and not y.

X really is like a at y, and really like b at z.

The perceptions and thoughts of others are like perceptions and thoughts from the reference point of being the particular brain in question. If you're not that brain, you're not going to observe it from that reference point.

If mind stems from the brain, why is our mind not a brain in a vat, — leo

Say what? Why would it be?

. If our concepts stem from our mind, such as the very concept of things, why say we see things as they are outside mind? — leo

You're not thinking that anyone is saying that we observe concepts, are you? Concepts are ways that we think about particulars. It's a way of forming abstractions about them in order to make the world easier to deal with for survival purposes, because we'd not be able to deal with seeing everything as a unique particular (while trying to figure out if it's safe to approach, safe to do, safe to eat, etc.)

4. If we see things as they are, why do some people not see things as they are (hallucinations, delusions)? — leo

No one is claiming that there can't be perceptual problems, that we can't have hallucinations, etc. The entire way we arrive at the concept of a hallucination or perceptual problems in the first place is by being able to see things as they are and realizing that in some cases, something is going wrong, or proceeding unusually/differently. Otherwise it wouldn't even make any sense to talk about hallucinations.

In that case what about the thought that given the culmination of you as a person (the past experiences, environment etc.) led you to "make the choice" to ignore it. regardless of wether you believe you are making the choice if the decisions you make are the result of there predetermined factors then you have no choice but to ignore or not ignore something. — AwazawA

That's what it would mean for strong determinism to be true.

What I'm pointing out is that it's irrelevant, because phenomenally, it seems like I can make the choice to ignore the idea. Whether I really can is irrelevant. It seems like I can, and that's what I care about.

when I say purpose i mean it in the sense that if we are acting out this play of life all actions that will be performed to make the whole show as it was always going to be could be seen as fate and following fate regardless of wether we try and kick our fates away (which ironically would be exactly as fate would dictate we behave in the same annoying way a friend might always claim to know what you are thinking but this time it is actually inevitable) it could be considered that we are fulfilling a certain purpose or a role in the full picture no matter how minute that role may be in the grand scale of things. — AwazawA

Say what? You've got 15-20 prepositional phrases in one run-on sentence. Could you rewrite that?

Ontological solipsists are saying that they definitely know something. They're not saying that knowledge isn't possible. What ontological solipsists know is that only one mind exists.

Epistemological solipsists are saying that they don't know a specific thing: whether anything exists other than their own mind. They're not denying any other knowledge.

Epistemological nihilists are saying that knowledge isn't possible period. Arguably we could say that epistemological nihilists are simply saying that knowledge isn't objective, but on the standard definition of knowledge and a standard philosophical sense of the subjective/objective distinction, no one should be arguing that knowledge is objective, unless they have a very weird ontology where beliefs can somehow obtain outside of minds.

According to the early Wittgenstein of the Tractatus, the solipsist is one and one and the same with the world. He then makes the claim that solipsism coincides with realism.

5.64, Wittgenstein asserts that “Here it can be seen that solipsism, when its implications are followed out strictly, coincides with pure realism. The self of solipsism shrinks to a point without extension, and there remains the reality co-ordinated with it.”

P.M.S Hacker provides the following:

What the solipsist means, and is correct in thinking, is that the world and life are one, that man is the microcosm, that I am my world. These equations... express a doctrine which I shall call Transcendental Solipsism. They involve a belief in the transcendental ideality of time. ... Wittgenstein thought that his transcendental idealist doctrines, though profoundly important, are literally inexpressible.

— Hacker, Insight and Illusion, op cit., n. 3, pp. 99-100.

Can anyone help me better understand this notion of solipsism that Wittgenstein professes in the Tractatus?

I have never been so captivated by an idea in philosophy that is metaphysical and epistemic solipsism.

Here is an answer to be found on Reddit:

(1) Realism maintains that reality exists independently of the mind.

(2) His solipsism removes the mind from reality.

(3) For a solipsist without skeptical concerns (Wittgenstein), the world still exists independently of the mind.

(4) Therefore, his solipsism affirms philosophical realism.

Wittgenstein’s solipsism removes the subject from the world. In so doing, he shows that the world still exists without the subject being in the world. Therefore, his solipsism is consistent with philosophical realism. — Reddit


My question is in regards, if you're still with me here, to the third premise. There's seemingly a joint discontinuity between maintaining a world of one's own and the world at hand. If I am the same as my world, then what becomes of the world? — Wallows

There must be someone who can write clearly, in a way that makes sense, that has some sort of logical flow to it, and that doesn't seem ridiculously murky and confused. Those examples from Wittgenstein, Hacker and whoever wrote that on Reddit don't qualify.

I'm not a fan of a lot of the moral tenets of the major religions. I don't have a problem with every tenet, but I disagree with a lot of it.

The religion that's closest to my own views on this sort of stuff--though I don't 100% agree with it, either, is LaVeyan Satanism.

So it depends on the religion we're talking about.

I'm planning on writing a paper soon about the relationship between epistemological solipsism and using it as an ad hoc proof that knowledge is possible. I'm looking for some feedback or how to shape these loose ends into something coherent.

A while back I come to the conclusion that for any solipsist inhabiting a 'world', that solipsist cannot doubt. One of the implications of such a hinge proposition is that if a man or woman were presented with Descartes Evil Demon, which prods the fictional Job or what have you to doubt, then the very process of doubting cannot be doubted itself implying that the doubting of the evil demon is proof that the person is not living in a hermetically sealed off world of their own (brain in vat)/(solipsism).

Therefore, if one can doubt when confronted with any skeptical argument, then that implies that knowledge is possible, and that we don't live in a solipsistic world.

Let me expand on this idea of epistemological solipsism. The world of the solipsist is one and the same with the self of the solipsist. What does this mean? It means that doubt cannot arise, because the world of the solipsist is full of certainty. To present this issue another way, epistemologically the solipsist is hermetically sealed off from anything beyond what constitutes their 'world'.

That's about the gist of it.

Main points:

Descartes Evil Demon causes an individual to doubt.
A solipsist can never doubt, and live in a world full of certainty.
Therefore, in the presence of doubt knowledge is possible.
Hence, the Evil Demon's prodding to doubt is proof that an external world exists. — Wallows

Yet another "Huh?" response from me. A lot of what you wrote seems bewildering to me.

The first question, I suppose, is why are you conflating solipsism and whether knowledge is possible? They're not the same thing.

I was partially joking, partially making a serious point.

Whether strong determinism is true or not, things are just as they are now. As things are now, I can just choose to ignore the idea that strong determinism is true. Part of the joke there is that I'm saying I can choose something, even though if strong determinism is true, then I couldn't really choose anything. But it seems like I can. It sure seems like I can just choose to ignore the idea. So even if strong determinism is true, I can do what seems exactly like choosing to ignore it. So it doesn't really amount to much if it's true. At least not phenomenally.

On my view, purposes are subjective. They're things we construct for ourselves.

*Successful* linguistic communication is not subjective because it is the transfer of information between minds. — Nasir Shuja

What definition of "information" are you using?

"Logic" is the smaller circle inside larger "Thinking" circle in a Venn diagram, not the other way around.

like if free will is an illusion and if we are basically fleshy predetermined robots how does that make us feel, — AwazawA

Like I could choose to ignore it. So what would it really amount to?

Regardless of whether God(s) of any religion do exist or have always existed, their existence has never been considered substantial for whatever reason until their respective religion was developed. There was no Allah to speak of, for example, until the advent of the Islamic religion, regardless of whether He existed prior to that, and in fact there have been hundreds or thousands of other religious breakthroughs that have come and gone over the years, along with their respective God(s). This alone should put some perspective on the credibility of the Gods of even current major theistic religions, but that is another discussion. The actual purpose of this post is to determine if any given God(s) had a presence prior to thee advent of their respective religions, and if so in what capacity. This is probably difficult if not impossible to say since much of what we now consider to be "God's work" was not and effectively could not have been said to be such until it was thought that God existed, but the main point is that one cannot say with any level of certainty that God even does exist as anything more than a matter of religion without having existed or having been identified prior to the advent of any given religion. Since this was clearly not the case, it can be argued that God(s) came about and had an identity only in light of their respective religion, and the implications of this are anyone's guess, although I would argue that it is a definite sign that God is a pure matter of religion. Of course there is nothing wrong with this, but I'm sure other people will think differently if they have a different belief about God. — Maureen

This doesn't make any sense to me. If any gods exist, their existence didn't hinge on whether we were aware of this.

It's just like Pluto existed long before any animals existed on Earth. It's existence doesn't hinge on us being aware of it.