• Tristan L
    187
    In this thread, I’d like to defend a moderate shape of solipsism. In particular, I’ll try to refute Stephen P. Thornton’s arguments against solipsism and the unknowability of other minds which he sets forth in his article Solipsism and the Problem of Other Minds in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP).

    First off, let me tell you what kind of solipsism I’ll not try to defend, and even try to refute in this paragraph: the view that all that exists is I or a content of my mind. Just as I’m directly aware of myself, I’m also directly aware of abstract things, such as the number (rimetale) 6, the rimetale 5, the property of propertihood, and the kind of mindhood. Since I can directly “see with my mind’s eye” that 5 is not the same as 6, at least one of them must be distinct from me. Hence, I cannot be the only thing that exists. Moreover, I have no power whatsoever over 5, 6, or the relationships between them, and in order for me to exist or be a self at all, I need the (Platonic) Shape (Form, Idea) of Existence and more broadly of Being as well as the Shape of Selfhood. Thus, there must be things outside of, because groundlaying (fundamental) to, my mind and self (I’ll use “mind” and “self” interchangeably here). (By the way, I hold that all things, including all minds, are abstract, and I can justify my claim, but that’s another matter.) So I believe that solipsism in the strict sense has been ruled out.

    However, the solipsism whose irrefutability I want to defend in this thread is the position that I’m the only mind in existence, that is, the only thing that has mindhood, and that there’s no physical world. I’m not trying to defend this kind of solipsism itself, but only that it’s irrefutable unless there are thoughtcasters (telepaths), and that the existence of a physical world and other minds can only be inferred on ultimately shaky ground, but not known – that is, again unless there are thoughtcasters.

    Thornton claims that it is meaningless to ascribe pain to a table. That claim is totally wrong imho. If some cannot do this, it may be due to too concrete thinking or lack of imagination. I, for one, can perfectly well imagine a table having a mind and so experiencing pain. Thornton claims that the physical manifestations of pain and anger and other mental states belong to the very concepts of those states, but I see no reason to accept this assertion. What, for instance, is about actors who just simulate emotions? How can you claim to see the anger of a person when that person is just behaving in such ways as to simulate anger? What if there’s only a soulless body in front of me displaying what I usually associate with anger due to physical processes in its brain?

    Thornton, and also Wittgenstein, who is quoted by him, assert that it only makes sense to attribute mental qualities to things that look or behave like living human beings. At the same time, he seems to claim that normal (non-telepathic) minds can directly observe each other. Isn’t he replacing a well-supported egocentrism by an ill-supported anthropocentrism? How am I to directly be aware of what you think or feel – if you exist at all –, and how are you – if you exist – supposed to truly know what I think or feel? And would extraterrestrials vastly superior to humans in intellect not be regarded as persons just because they look different from us? Isn’t that a laughable supposition? And yet Thorntin makes the false statement that personhood is the same thing as humanhood. I know that it is false because at least my concept of personhood is very much distinct from my concept of humanhood.

    Thornton does not at all give me any convincing reason for assuming that there is a necessary link between the mental and the physical.

    When I have pain, I most certainly know that I have pain. How can Thornton say that it is nonsense that I know that I am in pain? If anything is nonsense, then that claim of his, I find.

    He also makes the false claim that it is a false assertion that other people (unless they’re telepaths) cannot know my experience. Can you know what I’m experiencing right now from what you read on the screen? No, right? Well, that’s because you only see physical manifestations of me, namely activity on this forum, and if we met each other in person, you’d still only see physical manifestations of me. You’d see much more, I grant you, but that’s only a difference in degree and not in kind.

    Tell me, how can I know my brain isn’t connected to the matrix, and that all those so-called people are only conjured up in my imagination by the matrix sending appropriated electric impulses to my brain?

    In addition, Thornton makes the unsubstantiated claim that logical rules are intersubjective and public. I derive my logical laws from my (admittedly often blurred) “seeing” of propositionhood, propositions, and logical functions, entities that send propositions or indexed families thereof to propositions.

    But what strikes me is Thornton’s bold and unjustified claim that a “non-linguistic solipsism is unthinkable and a thinkable solipsism is necessarily linguistic”. With what right does he claim that speech is needed for thought? As a matter of fact, I can think and see abstract things without using speech, and speech is just my private tool for finding my way around in the abstract world and the world of my experiences. I can “look at” principlehood, in my mind “point” at it, and say to myself, “From now on, I’ll use the word ‘principlehood’ to mean that thing”. Basically, speech consists in setting onesself rules that a certain function is to obey which sends abstract objects from a particular set, which is the set of linguistic expressions, to abstract entities broadly. To obey these rules is to be the meaning-mapping used by the mind in question. The goal of speech is to make thinking easier by doing a one-time rule-setting, a one-time representation of a big part of sooth (reality) in the set of expression, and then mostly “looking at” the expressions; this is easier because the expressions are of a particularly easy-to-see kind, e.g. finite sequences over a finite set of abstract entities. But without thought, there could be no meaning-mapping and so no speech. Speech needs thought, not the other way round.

    On the whole, I find Thornton’s article thoroughly unconvincing. I’m still sure that I can directly know that I think and therefore am, I have no problems in imagining my or some other soul in a table or disembodied, and I have never “seen” any experience other than my own. (Please tell me if I’ve misunderstood Thornton is some way.)

    In particular, I’d like Thornton and Wittgenstein to answer the following challenges:

    What if there’s a puppeteer making all the bodies around me behave as if they had minds?

    What if I’m connected to the matrix?

    Two different minds in two different bodies, e.g. identical twins, can fool me into thinking they are one person. Two different numbers cannot do that. Why? Because I can be directly aware of the latter but not the former. How do you swuttle (explain) that?

    By the Law of Self-Identity, for each x, I trivially know that x is the same as x. Moreover, for each x and each y different from x, I trivially know that x is not the same as y. So for any two things, I either know that they’re the same, or I know that ther aren’t. How, then, can it be that I don’t know whether or not King Cniva and King Cannabaudes are the same? How can it be that I don’t know whether a pair of people on this forum are the same person or not? Because I can only hypothesize about them based on their accounts, right?

    What’s wrong with my soul having no body?

    Any thoughts?
  • Outlander
    1.8k
    Any thoughts?Tristan L

    Why would any thoughts or replies constitute a unique and individual thought or reply from again, a unique and individual... individual? What difference would a rebuttal or refute you post yourself after changing your mind or perspective have from me or another? Or... are there even such things as 'me' and 'another'?
  • Tristan L
    187
    Why would any thoughts or replies constitute a unique and individual thought or reply from again, a unique and individual... individual?Outlander

    Who said that they would? I’ve only done a certain mental activity which I interpret as telling my fingers to type that post and send it, and I hypothesize that there are other individuals that will give me an aswer. Of course, they might be philosophical zombies, but I expect that regardless of that, they will bring about sensations of mine that prompt me to have interesting thoughts. Indeed, if you’re a random number generator who typed the post I’m replying to by chance, you still stimulate my eyes in a way that prompts me to type this reply.

    What difference would a rebuttal or refute you post yourself after changing your mind or perspective have from me or another?Outlander

    Perhaps some, perhaps none.

    Or... are there even such things as 'me' and 'another'?Outlander

    Who knows :shrug:
  • magritte
    553
    all that exists is I or a content of my mindTristan L

    Language from other incompatible theories imports implicit assumptions which could make this solipsism self-contradictory. For example, 'exists' is explicitly Parmenidean for the one or Aristotelian for the many. In common parlance this need not be recognized, but philosophically it can become crucial. That's why only the vague 'is' is acceptable. This goes for Descartes as well, where only 'I am' is correct.
  • Tristan L
    187
    Language from other incompatible theories imports implicit assumptions which could make this solipsism self-contradictory.magritte

    Perhaps, but if there is a contradiction, where is it?

    Also, speech is important, but let’s not overestimate its importance. We know Existence itself before we have a name for it. And though there may be several underkinds of existence for which there are different names, there is an underlying Shape of Existence underlying them all, isn’t there?

    And keep in mind that without Existence itself, speech couldn’t exist.

    For example, 'exists' is explicitly Parmenidean for the one or Aristotelian for the many.magritte

    What exactly do you mean by this?

    In common parlance this need not be recognized, but philosophically it can become crucial.magritte

    True.

    That's why only the vague 'is' is acceptable.magritte

    I think that ‘to be’ refers to something broader than ‘existence’. According to my understanding, the word “be” means beon (the ‘deed/state’ of being, called “Sein” in German, to be distinguished from that which is, which is called “beonde” in English and “Seiendes” in German). The word “existence” means existence, which is but one aspect of beon, the others being so-being (the having of properties) and that-being (the link between something and its essence). Another thing meant by ‘existence’ is instantiatedness, as in the sentence “There are even numbers”, which means the proposition that evenness has instantiatedness and is basically an infinite disjunction. Here, though, I mean the first meaning of “exists”.
  • Aryamoy Mitra
    156


    So for any two things, I either know that they’re the same, or I know that ther aren’t. How, then, can it be that I don’t know whether or not King Cniva and King Cannabaudes are the same? How can it be that I don’t know whether a pair of people on this forum are the same person or not? Because I can only hypothesize about them based on their accounts, right?

    I may have misapprehended your arguments, but isn't this a conflation between apriori truths and infallible truths? Your self-equivalence of X is too a hypothesis; it is merely that the degree of conviction that you hold with regards to its truth is far more pronounced than in the example concerning 2 people on this forum. If the same argument sustains, then one may infer that a confirmation of existence through belief is unattainable, and that the fact of your mind is no less falsifiable than the fact of an external experience ie. one must concede to non-existence in its totality.

    "What’s wrong with my soul having no body?"
    Materially, there's no philosophical conundrum that arises from that proposition. The human mind, in my estimation, is dichotomous: it conceives of abstract states and is in and of itself abstract. There's no instantaneous obligation that impels its attachment to an exogenous being or variable, (or 'body', for that matter), insofar as its existence can be rationalized as being independent. It's just that there isn't a universal distillation from 'experience' to 'existence' in terms of one's mind. What there does seem to be a consensus on (in my opinion) is the mind being the essence of all experience.
  • Tristan L
    187
    Your self-equivalence of X is too a hypothesisAryamoy Mitra

    Well, when I’m in radical-questioning-mode, I regard eveything as a hypothesis, inlcuding the Law of Identity and even this very statement. However, when I’m in normal-philosophizing-mode, the proposition that for each x, x is the selfsame as x isn’t a hypothesis; rather, it’s an apodictic fact. In any case, there very much is a difference in kind between my knowledge that 4 isn’t the same as 5 and my belief that the account @Aryamoy Mitra belongs to a different person than the account @magritte, for instance. Why? Because I’m directly aware of 4 and 5 and can directly ‘see’ the difference between the two. On the other hand, I cannot directly see any person behind the two accounts. When I say “4 ≠ 5”, I’m predicating not-selfsameness of an ordered pair of entities. That’s because when I use ‘4’, I mean the number four, and likewise for ‘5’. By contrast, when I say “The person behind the account @Aryamoy Mitra is distinct from the person behind the account @magritte”, I’m not predicating non-identity of any one ordered pair of things. Rather, my sentence is shorthand for “There is exactly one person A to whom belongs the account @Aryamoy Mitra, there is exactly one person B to whom belongs the account @magritte, and for every person A and every person B, if the account @Aryamoy Mitra belongs to A and the account @magritte belongs to B, then A ≠ B”. That’s so because when I use the phrase “the person behind the account @Aryamoy Mitra”, I don’t mean anything directly, and likewise for “the person behind the account @magritte”.

    Now, we can easily swuttle (explain) why my conviction that 4 isn’t the same as 5 is an instance of knowledge whereas my conviction that the two accounts belong to different people is just a belief:

    I can directly “see” 4 and 5, and so I can predicate something of them directly. And since selfsameness and non-selfsameness are always trivially had or trivially not had, my statement that 4 ≠ 5 is an expression of knowlege. However, since my statement about the two accounts isn’t a simple predication of non-identity, but rather contains synthetic assertions, it’s no wonder that it isn’t trivially true and may indeed well be false. If “The person behind the account @Aryamoy Mitra is distinct from the person behind the account @magritte” really did predicate not-identity of two things known by me, it should be trivially and knowably true or trivially and knowably false, shouldn’t it?

    By this, I want to demonstate that I’m directly aware of 4 and 5, but not of you. Do you think – if you can think, that is :wink: – that I’ve been successful?

    The human mind, in my estimation, is dichotomous: it conceives of abstract states and is in and of itself abstract.Aryamoy Mitra

    Yes, I fully forewyrd (agree) forewyrd (agree) with you if I understand you rightly; the mind is an abstract thing and can directly see many other abstract things, though oddly seemingly not other minds*. I’d just like to replace “human mind” with “mind” generally, for isn’t attibuting a fundamentally special role to Man 1. too physicalistic by believing the brain of Homo sapiens to be fundamental to mind, and 2. wrong even on the physicalistic understanding because the human brain obeys exactly the same physical laws as everything else?

    insofar as its existence can be rationalized as being independent. It's just that there isn't a universal distillation from 'experience' to 'existence' in terms of one's mind.Aryamoy Mitra

    Could you please swuttle further what exactly you mean?

    What there does seem to be a consensus on (in my opinion) is the mind being the essence of all experience.Aryamoy Mitra

    I forewyrd with you here, too, if I get you right. Perhaps you’re one of those thoughts of mine whom my subconscious endows with my own views :wink:.


    So what do you think of the irrefutability of moderate solipsism?

    *I don’t even think that moderate solipsism is irrefutable. Since the mind is abstract and can “see” other abstract things, as you and I seem to hold, there’s no reason to believe that it can’t directly ‘see’ other minds as well. In fact, I’d expect that to be the case, that is, I’d expect thoughtcasting (telepathy) to be widespread. The strange thing is that I believe to have never (at least almost never) experienced thoughtcasting. What I want to defend is that you can’t refute moderate solipsism with mundane means. What’s your opinion on this?
  • Aryamoy Mitra
    156


    'Because I’m directly aware of 4 and 5 and can directly ‘see’ the difference between the two. On the other hand, I cannot directly see any person behind the two accounts. When I say “4 ≠ 5”, I’m predicating not-selfsameness of an ordered pair of entities. That’s because when I use ‘4’, I mean the number four, and likewise for ‘5’. By contrast, when I say “The person behind the account @Aryamoy Mitra is distinct from the person behind the account @magritte”, I’m not predicating non-identity of any one ordered pair of things.'

    That's a very commendable sequence of reasoning that I hadn't gauged prior. I'm inferring, on the basis of your arguments, that self-sameness is what engenders direct awareness in the first instance (4 ≠ 5), as opposed to the second. In essence, presupposing a non-identity amongst one ordered pair is epistemologically weaker than hypothesizing non-self-sameness amongst that same pair. They're identical in terms of their outcome: mutual exclusion. What differentiates them though, is that in the case of the non-identity, nothing is meant with regards to the accounts themselves. It is merely that the hypothetical circumstance of individual operating both accounts is disallowed. When non self-sameness is posited (4 ≠ 5), one can predicate a statement of them directly, which constitutes a basis for knowledge.

    'Insofar as its existence can be rationalized as being independent. It's just that there isn't a universal distillation from 'experience' to 'existence' in terms of one's mind.'

    I meant through this statement two implications. Firstly, the existence of the mind is not, by some prerequisite constraint, subject to the condition of the world's existence. The foundational pretext of solipsism, existence can only be confirmed through experience, however, is nonetheless contested. When the mind is used to justify the non-existence of external reality, and concurrently its own existence, it is necessarily complemented by the truth of experience. That's precisely why the philosophy is seldom falsifiable; experience outside the immediacy of the human mind is unattainable.

    'Since the mind is abstract and can “see” other abstract things, as you and I seem to hold, there’s no reason to believe that it can’t directly ‘see’ other minds as well.'

    That's a very adept observation. What is of pertinence here, I believe, is that it isn't superficial experience or thought upon whom the distinctiveness and uniqueness of the mind are predicated. It's perspective. Two minds can be physically and phenomenally identical ie. they can be indistinguishable in terms of both biological circuitry and thought, but they will still share a unique perspective. How do you transfer from one such perspective onto another?
  • Tristan L
    187
    That's a very [...] basis for knowledge.Aryamoy Mitra

    Importantly, I can “see” the thing meant by ‘4’ and the thing meant by ‘5’, but I can’t “see” any entity x which is a mind and stands behind any account on this forum other than mine.

    How do you transfer from one such perspective onto another?Aryamoy Mitra

    In what way are their perspectives different?
  • Aryamoy Mitra
    156


    'In what way are their perspectives different?'

    Two structurally and phenomenally identical minds that exist in simultaneity will bear the same edifices and beliefs, but will necessarily be identified by the distinctiveness of their waking states under certain rarefied events.

    The most immediate results of this dichotomy can be studied under mutually exclusive constraints.

    For instance, account for the propositions below:

    1) Two minds, A and B, are observed in the same manifest domains and are equivalent, meaning that under naturalistic influence (sans intervention), they will act identically when confronted with a stimulus.

    2) Both Minds A and B are intimated with a Nash Equilibrium with respect to one another.

    3) You, a hitherto spectator, are now designated the liberty of electing either mind to occupy the perspective of, and participate in the Nash Equilibrium with finite resources and time. Abstaining is not an eventuality that can be indulged.

    In the event that either mind shared the same perspective, then there must necessarily be no difference between selecting either Mind A or Mind B. This is precisely what one observes prior to the game commencing.

    However, consider the same circumstances above, but wherein you are not asked to occupy either perspective instantly:

    A) Mind A stimulates the domain of all utility by entertaining a mixed strategy.
    B) You are now asked to partake in either perspective.

    In the latter example, the two perspectives share different utility functions upon the activation of a choice, and are therefore distinct. Despite being both biologically and phenomenally interchangeable, imparting judgments with one mind is not tantamount to doing so with another.

    Naturally, this sequence of reasoning is only a mathematical distillation. For all practical purposes, it may be repurposed to justify the distinctiveness of any two abstract self-aware entities.
  • Tristan L
    187
    Naturally, this sequence of reasoning is only a mathematical distillation. For all practical purposes, it may be repurposed to justify the distinctiveness of any two abstract self-aware entities.Aryamoy Mitra

    Of course.
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