Posted: Feb 19, 2021 12:36 pm
Frozenworld wrote:zoon wrote:Frozenworld wrote:….
I understood the sentence, but you failed to grasp what solipsism is. There is no imaginary friends. It's just you. No one exist exists or is real. What are you not understanding about this concept?
https://sagebodisattva.tumblr.com/post/ ... ifiability
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=so ... M%3DHDRSC3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3FlyFVK_WE
OK, I’ll agree with you (and with the speaker in your second link) that in the end we don’t have any means of being sure of anything, even ourselves, even as a matter of probability. I would call this radical scepticism rather than solipsism, but that’s a matter of language. My line is that if we don’t know anything we may as well do what we want, what we think we will enjoy, which is probably what we were doing before. Quoting my own post #153 in this thread:zoon wrote:Frozenworld wrote:
Generally my stance is the "why do anything" since the "why not" aspect of it has already been answered.
If your stance is “why do anything”, does that include “why eat”? Would you plan to continue with mealtimes if you reach the conclusion that food, along with the rest of the external world, is a product of your imagination and doesn’t really exist?
It’s not just about food, we do everything because it makes us feel more comfortable or happier, including, for example, looking after children, taking a moral stance on racism (for or against), or mulling over the ontological status of minds.
I’m repeating the question which I asked you in post #153, and which you have not answered: you say that you take the stance of “why do anything?” rather than “why not?”; would you then refuse to eat when you were hungry, on the score that you have no way of knowing whether food is real or whether eating would let you feel better?
About the only response so far the understands it.
But to explain the why not, if solipsism were true there would be no point. There would be no friends or lovers because there is only you. Morality doesn't exist because there are no other minds. Life quickly becomes a lonely hell as the phantoms dance across your vision but you can't know if they truly are real or not.
In a sense behaving as though they are is lying to yourself because you don't know for sure. Don't know if all your effort is being wasted in making friends and the like, and having to second guess your interactions with people all the time.
There is no "apparent" existence of other people, that's what Spear fails to grasp. It's just you.
No matter what we do all we have is provisional knowledge:as I indicated, there is nothing wrong with relying on your senses to build a "provisional" worldview. I do it all the time. but if you are questioning the efficacy of sensory input to arrive at absolutes, at some point you have to rely on something other than the senses to avoid cirular reasoning do you not? so you asked - what then do we rely on? some traditional thinkers would say that we should rely on philosophical examination. but they also admit (whether they realize it or not) that philosophical concepts are ultimately contingent on sensory input. as you said - senses are the starting point.
so where do we go from here?
why go anywhere? some people desperately seek absolutes - a safety blanket against the cold reality that is essentially and ultimately unknowable and in flux. some people want to build a house of cards and "make it all fit". but I ask; what's wrong with a provisional worldview? I'm perfectly content in relying on my senses to build an incomplete and flexible reality, like the proverbial reed that bends in the wind and stays whole, while the oak tree snaps like a twig and lies shattered in the aftermath of the storm.
when I pointed out that human perception and human reasoning cannot arrive at absolutes, maybe you assumed that there was something else I relied on to get there, like divine revelation. no. my point was that there is no there there.
I am agreeing with you that the senses are the foundation of our reality, and as such, a provisional reality is all we have.
I’m happy to agree with you in saying that a provisional reality is all we have (and that what we think about other people is dependent on our senses, and in that way even more provisional). When you say that "I" can be sure of myself as a real centre of consciousness, I don’t think your scepticism goes far enough, it’s still provisional, I've no way of being certain of my own existence, it could all be hallucination.
Expanding on that, I think you have 2 separate issues:
One is ultimate, radical scepticism: we cannot, in the end, be sure of anything, including that. OK, I'm happy to go with your answer of provisional reality.
The other, separate, issue is that our evolved model of another person (and also of one’s self) as a future-oriented centre of consciousness is very different from the scientific model of a person as a collection of atoms following the non-teleological laws of physics and chemistry.
I also think the first issue, somewhat unexpectedly, stems from the second. As the speaker in your second link points out, my view of myself as an essentially goal-directed conscious being is a deeply unscientific creation of my brain. A scientific model of my brain could potentially predict my actions even more accurately than I can, without bringing in my goals or intentions. Our brains don’t need to “know” anything about the future in order to operate as they do.
The fact behind the confusion is that as social animals we have evolved to predict each other by guessing what the other person wants, and then working backwards to guessing what they are likely to do about it (example piece on Theory of Mind here). This is a future-oriented method of prediction, which works because our brains are very similar to each other. The upshot is that we see others, and by extension ourselves, as essentially future-oriented, and this is thoroughly ingrained in our way of thinking. So far, this evolved guesswork is very much more effective for predicting other people than the best of modern science, so we are dealing simultaneously with two very different models of what we are.
For practical, social purposes, this evolved model of ourselves, as essentially goal-directed, maps well enough to the underlying scientific model to be very useful. This is where I disagree with your solipsism; when one person sees another as conscious I don't think they are suffering from “an illusion” which is leading them away from “the truth”, I think they have a useful working model of that other person, which does the job of prediction until science catches up, which may or may not happen.
I’m agreeing with you when you say that we cannot be sure of the future in any way. A question for myself here is whether, if I were hungry, I would refuse to eat a meal in front of me on the basis that I have no way of knowing whether it would do me any good? Refusing to act in those circumstances would be actively hard work. Why not accept my brain’s flawed, future-oriented model as provisional, and eat?
By extension, I would continue with my life in other ways because it's the most comfortable option, refusing to act would not be easier, it would be harder. This involves accepting that the best of science is still provisional, and that, on top of that radical uncertainty, the “reality” of a person as a goal-driven conscious being is scientifically flawed, in spite of being, so far, the best working model we have for practical purposes. It may well be superseded when neuroscience has improved, but at the moment the physical science of brain activity is almost completely useless for predicting people in ordinary life. The best way of predicting non-living things is physical science, so the physical scientific model is "real enough" although provisional; and the best way of predicting a person in ordinary social life is via the evolved model of goal-directed consciousness, so that model is also "real enough" for the time being, although it is both provisional and also likely to be superseded by science in the long term.