Because that is where the life lives.

That's where ↪Janus
becomes confused. — Banno

What do you think I'm confused about?

What do you think I'm confused about? — Janus

But this world is never experienced; it is a lifeless attenuated world of the mind. — Janus

5.621 The world and life are one.

5.621 The world and life are one.

I'm not confused; I simply don't agree. In any case there is this:

“6.41 The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value – and if there were, it would be of no value. If there is value which is of value, it must lie outside of all happening and being-so.

So, perhaps it is Wittgenstein who is confused, or your reading of him.

It doesn't matter anyway; we don't have to follow Wittgenstein or anyone else; there is more value in thinking for yourself, anything less than that lacks creativity.

The next few remarks show the poverty of the subject/object distinction. — Banno

Ha! I came to add a quote from the Tractacus.

5.632 The subject does not belong to the world: rather, it is a limit of the world.

Does this mean anything to you?

↪180 Proof Because that is where the life lives. — Janus

What?

What? — 180 Proof

Life is in the imagery, not in the propositions about hypostatized things, how to justify those propositions, facts about things, or logic. I'm not saying those things are worthless, but that they are worth less. But that's just my feeling about it.

I’m thrilled this discussion. Is still going on. As I e admitted, I’m a newbie. I’ve learned so much epistemology in the course of this debate, I can thank you enough.

Ok enough nice guy. Pie you said

“This 'one' is implicitly universal. A rational person ought to recognize that the existence of something other than the mind (like other minds) cannot be certainty established.”

That has been my point all along. Why couldn’t we have agreed on that? If there’s the possibility of only one mind, there’s also the possibility that “social” situations are illusions.

I made it clear I’m not a solipsist (if I was why would I be talking to you?) but I need a logical way to dismiss it.

Your quote admits that other minds can’t be logically shown to exist. Thank you. But then you talk about different kinds of solipsists. Now THAT is incoherent, if you acknowledge (in your quote) that you could be in a solipsistic limbo.

As a newbie, I just found that my profs always brushed off solipsism as being “silly” or incoherent. Nothing here has proven that to be anything than just repulsion at the thought of it.

Well then, "newbie", apparently you've not understood the counter-arguments made throughout. Your profs know their business – solipsism is "silly" & "incoherent" – and you have not "proven" otherwise.

I need a logical way to dismiss it. — GLEN willows

A logical proof moves from premise to conclusion. If someone is happy to doubt the existence of a world other than themselves, what could possibly serve as an acceptable premise? What might they hold in greater confidence than that there is stuff that is not of them?

Our whole lives consist in streams of imagery, a unique stream to each person. From out of those concrete streams we abstract the fictive things which remain timelessly the same, which make up the world of familiar objects, about only which is it possible to derive a world of facts, a world consisting totally of facts, a world that is the totality of facts. But this world is never experienced; it is a lifeless attenuated world of the mind. — Janus

Hi. I'm aware of that theory. I sketch it in my thread.

On this view, hairdryers and toothpicks are just handy ways to organize sensations...and electrons and quarks are just handy ways to organize hairdryers and toothpicks. I seem to see other people, but I can't be sure, because what I mean by person is roughly what I mean by 'I,' this existence I know 'directly.' My states of mind, my thoughts and sensations, are phosphorescently present for me, infinitely intimate. I can no more be wrong about what I mean by a word or how I see a patch of color than 2 + 2 can equal 5. And so on. I extend the same courtesy to you out there, behind the mask of your face and its smiles and grimaces, just in case you exist back there.

I criticize it elsewhere like this, following Ryle and Nietzsche.

I think there's a POV trick to be sussed out here. We see others from the outside and ourselves from the inside. So it's plausible that individuals depend on their sense organs and brain as mediators for them of their environment. But if we try to build only from the inside, we talk nonsense. We call everything sense-data while ( pretending to be ) no longer taking the sense organs and objects affecting them in the 'outside' or 'public' world for granted. The stereoscopic key may be remembering that the entities populating the 'inner' and 'outer' worlds are part of the same causal/explanatory nexus.

I think Sellars makes a good case the the 'seems' operator (from which we get imagery, raw feels, ec.) is semantically parasitic on assertions. So 'the light looks red' depends on 'the light is red' for its significance, playing an adjusted but similar role in the inferences we'll tolerate from one another and use to explain ourselves and others.

There is nothing interesting in that pedantic world of facts except the science and math it makes possible. For me there is nothing interesting in chasing your tail trying to establish how our propositions are to be justified; because they can never be justified by the rich streams of imagery which constitute our actual lives. So, for me the best course for those who love science and math is to "shut up and calculate" and enjoy the richness and artistry of math and science (which logic totally lacks). — Janus

Note that your perspective (on its face is radically 'for you.') The implication's are highly impractical. Why go to the doctor to get a bone set and drink bleach or eat asparagus ? It's as if you don't think inferences are central even to practical life.

This also seems problematic:

There is nothing interesting in ... trying to establish how our propositions are to be justified; because they can never be justified by the rich streams of imagery which constitute our actual lives.

You seem to be justifying the unimportance of establishing how justification how works by declaring it to be impossible in terms of an authority that's uncheckable even in principle. You also refer to our lives, without it being clear how a ghost trapped in its own private imagery could make trustworthy claims about other ghosts...if trustworthy makes any sense is this world of dreams without contrast.

Apparently. (He probably wouldn't accept your apology.) — 180 Proof

Too bad, it's a sincere request for forgiveness.

Do you understand the difference between an instance of something being good, and the ideal good, the best thing? — Metaphysician Undercover

Nope! :grin: Edify me, please!

I have, and I've understand that every time someone gives an argument for it, they're basing on a starting point of people (other minds) communicating in a social context. That PREMISE begs the conclusion.

Can you see that if you were the only mind, these arguments would be ridiculous. What people? All I see are illusory images

- do you agree with this - a rational person ought to recognize that the existence of something other than the mind (like other minds) cannot be certainty established.”

You aren't quite understanding me. Perpend. "In epistemology, epistemological solipsism is the claim that one can only be sure of the existence of one's mind. The existence of other minds and the external world is not necessarily rejected but one can not be sure of its existence. ...Epistemological solipsists claim that realism begs the question: assuming there is a universe that is independent of the agent's mind, the agent can only ever know of this universe through the agent's senses. "

I take this claim to be philosophical, which is to say that, because it is (purportedly ) justified by a universal reason binding all rational agents, it itself would be binding likewise (if actually so justified and coherent). If a mathematician proves, for instance, that $\pi ^ \pi$ is irrational, other mathematicians are bound to acknowledge what has now become a fact about the real number system. Note that conclusions about the real number system are implicitly also about what mathematicians ought to believe. So statements about numbers are easily translated into statements about norms.

I will now translate epistemological solipsism into a form that reveals the incoherence.

"The epistemological solipsist claims that it's wrong for a philosopher to simply assume that there's something a philosopher can be wrong about." I use "something one can be wrong about" instead of "external world" because I think it captures the most general notion of inside/outside. It does not make sense for a self without a world or others to be able to be wrong (unless one maybe 'cheats' and gives the self an unconscious, playing the same role as that which he could be wrong about, in a failure of self-knowledge that assumes two objects after all.)

Anyway, the problem is that this statement itself makes claims about all rational agents, assuming the very thing it declares in the same breath to be unjustified.

"A logical proof moves from premise to conclusion."

I agree. Can you put this argument into that form?

As Pie pointed out, no one can logically prove there are other minds. — GLEN willows

Actually, it's almost the reverse. Logic and rationality are ego-transcending. That's how we use them and why we value them. An insane person can fear that others are p-zombies or the figments of dreams, but for a philosopher to claim that no one can be is to make a claim about the very others who might not exist.

Here's another version of ES : Rational agents ought not assume there are other rational agents.

Is this not problematic?

Can we put can the conclusion "we know there are other minds" into a formal logic equation?

Premise
Premise
Conclusion?

Can you see that if you were the only mind, these arguments would be ridiculous. — GLEN willows

What is "ridiculous" is assuming a perspective for which there are not any grounds to assume and then use such an groundless assumption as a conditional or premise.

Epistemic warrant (of assent) does not require that claims (re: e.g. other minds) "be certainly established". Reasonably, there are not any grounds to doubt that there are other minds.

"The epistemological solipsist claims that it's wrong for a philosopher to simply assume that there's something a philosopher can be wrong about."

Am I missing something, or you are? A soliipsist would be alone - no one else, right? , Whether self aware he is alone or not, he would not be having any real discussion, because there are no other people. It would all be in his mind. S/he would say "Those illusions I argue with on Philosophy Forum are wrong about this." And of course you can be wrong within yourself "I thought I was tired, but actually I feel fine."

Frankly I'm still surprised that people can't even IMAGINE that we could be brains in vats - which Descartes attempted to disprove but didn't ....or on future virtual reality ventures...or extended dream states.

Can you put this argument into that form? — GLEN willows

and

Can we put can the conclusion "we know there are other minds" into a formal logic equation? — GLEN willows

And if we cannot, do you think that proves that other minds do not exist? Of course not.

When you are in pain, need you produce an argument to prove to yourself that you are in pain?

So when are proofs needed, when are they redundant?

That is how I feel about other minds "What is "ridiculous" is assuming a perspective for which there are not any grounds to assume and then use such an groundless assumption as a conditional or premise."

What is your grounds for other minds that doesn't PRESUPPOSE other minds?

And before you make any other "arguments from authority" I'm untrained in higher level philosophy because of my family's inability to pay for university. That's not the same thing as being cognitively inferior. Add to that - some of the poorest thinkers I've ever met were University professors...I could cite chapter and verse.

Of course not. I think I've said this 15 times here - my quest is not bickering, it's a logical argument for a non-solipsistic solution. Solipsism is where you end up when you can't prove other minds. I believe you can't prove the existence of a world outiside of your senses. Similarly there's no proof that other minds exist. Then solpsism is the default.

Can we put can the conclusion "we know there are other minds" into a formal logic equation?

Premise
Premise
Conclusion? — GLEN willows

You might want to look at this thread : https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/13308/our-minimal-epistemic-commitment-fixing-descartes-cogito

As @180 Proof has seen, the central issue is 'normative rationality.' It's possible/thinkable that I really am the last creature in the universe able to make excuses, so the contingent existence of others is not crucial here.

The point is that ES aims at a world beyond itself, describing norms that bind even merely possible rational agents. The existence of other minds and the external world is not necessarily rejected but one can not be sure of its existence. Granted that all the others might be dead, and assuming you are not satisfied with my 'possible' or 'potential' rational agents, you can still see, I hope, that an external world is being referenced in terms of norms that transcend the claimant. One cannot be sure. It's not just that I am not in fact sure. No. It's wrong or irrational for you and anyone 'out there' to think you can be sure...that there is an out there in the first place. In other words, 'one ought not take the possibility of norms for granted.' 'It might be wrong to think there is something we might be wrong about.'

Frankly I'm still surprised that people can't even IMAGINE that we could be brains in vats - which Descartes attempted to disprove but didn't ....or on future virtual reality ventures...or extended dream states. — GLEN willows

I can easily imagine vats. I've seen The Matrix and lots of other sci fi (like the happy world of the 'dead' in Black Mirror). Trust me, sir. That's not the issue.

"SO when are proofs needed?"

When we do philosophy. Do you just take for granted that there MUST be other minds? Surely not, you must have a reason. And that must reason must not involve anything "social" in the answer, as Pie has done, to prove there other minds. That's seems as clear as day, even to a newbie like moi.

There are other minds

premise 1 - We act in a social context

premise 2 - this could not be an illusion

Conclusion - Therefore there are other minds.

Both premises are wrong.

And do you agree Descartes never really disproved the BIAV? Except by bringing God in.

I wish I had an argument for the Matrix not existing - sadly I don't. Kidding. The new one is heinous though.

As for the BIAV - I've already replied to this, the world that's created is nonetheless NOT the real world, and the scientists looking at my brain aren't part of it. My world is still fully solipsistic. And if you want a better example - My mind is a mysterious mist on an unpopulated planet. I like that - it's poetic.