Frozenworld wrote:... Why do we assume we experience a thing?

Is it because of the swing?

Frozenworld wrote:
All you have is sensation. How can you be sure anything exists outside it?

Whoever is asking that question seems to assume or to take on board as a properly basic belief that "outside" has a referent. At least the question assumes, or worse, recognizes implicitly that there is someone of whom to ask the question. The question is, therefore, fundamentally dishonest.

The way to ask the question honestly is to use first-person pronouns instead of second-person pronouns, and to provide a suitable answer, or at least a response. In the first person.

If instead one assumes there is someone to ask, which someone is or is not certain anything exists "outside", one response the questioner might get is that his interlocutor isn't locked into the notion of certainty and to hold in abeyance the notion that the questioner is at the pinnacle of attainable knowledge about anything, including the question of hard solipsism.

One possible result is that this interlocutor really exists and can proceed despite not being certain, whereas the questioner apparently is not up to this task. It is the questioner, rather than his interlocutor who is portraying certainty about some fact. Is that the goal?

Frozenworld wrote:
All you have is sensation. How can you be sure anything exists outside it? Why do we assume we experience a thing?

These cows are small, but the ones in field are far away. Smalllll......far awaaay.

Frozenworld wrote:
There would be no point in living if solipsism were true because.

An afterthought.
If solipsism were true, you might ponder what exactly living is and does it exist.

Frozenworld wrote:
All you have is sensation. How can you be sure anything exists outside it? Why do we assume we experience a thing?

You responded by ignoring the content of the post you're supposedly replying to.

No, you don't "have sensation" - that's an assumption you're making.

You may believe you sense things, but how do you know that the semblance of sense isn't wholly artificial? Isn't simply programed into you, or that you're directed to sense those things absent any other external motivation?

You can't half do these things - you can't declare all knowledge suspect then simply draw a line and state you'll suspend that suspicion for factors you decide like 'sensation'.

The rabbit-hole you've found for yourself has no bottom.

Of course, the rabbit-hole happens to be your own navel, so it should be easy to extricate yourself from it.

Spearthrower wrote:

Frozenworld wrote:
All you have is sensation. How can you be sure anything exists outside it? Why do we assume we experience a thing?

You responded by ignoring the content of the post you're supposedly replying to.

No, you don't "have sensation" - that's an assumption you're making.

You may believe you sense things, but how do you know that the semblance of sense isn't wholly artificial? Isn't simply programed into you, or that you're directed to sense those things absent any other external motivation?

You can't half do these things - you can't declare all knowledge suspect then simply draw a line and state you'll suspend that suspicion for factors you decide like 'sensation'.

The rabbit-hole you've found for yourself has no bottom.

Of course, the rabbit-hole happens to be your own navel, so it should be easy to extricate yourself from it.

Because that is all we have, sensation. Artificial or not that is still the final thing we know we have. Anything outside of our senses is a guess. We could be wasting our lives believing we are doing anything only for it to just be us lying to ourselves.

When you tear down the labels and rationalizations behind everything you'll find there is no longer any point of reference, and no coherency. You are left with nothing but the sensation of your own isolated perception, with no clear source or meaning in sight.

Frozenworld wrote:
Because that is all we have, sensation. Artificial or not that is still the final thing we know we have. Anything outside of our senses is a guess. We could be wasting our lives believing we are doing anything only for it to just be us lying to ourselves.

In the post you're supposedly replying to, I already addressed this. I addressed this adequately clearly and sufficient number of times that it is obvious you are working over-time to ignore the point.

You contend you can't know everything else, but that you can know your senses - but you've not shown that to be true: you haven't even bothered trying to justify it, merely asserted it.

The 'skepticism' you bring to bear on everything else is suddenly and conspicuously absent from your consideration of your senses.

This is a clear example of motivated reasoning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning

Motivated reasoning is a phenomenon studied in cognitive science and social psychology that uses emotionally-biased reasoning to produce justifications or make decisions that are most desired rather than those that accurately reflect the evidence, while still reducing cognitive dissonance. In other words, motivated reasoning is the "tendency to find arguments in favor of conclusions we want to believe to be stronger than arguments for conclusions we do not want to believe".[1]

Motivated reasoning is similar to confirmation bias, where evidence that confirms a belief (which might be a logical belief, rather than an emotional one) is either sought after more or given more credibility than evidence that disconfirms a belief. It stands in contrast to critical thinking where beliefs are approached in a skeptical and unbiased fashion.

It can lead to forming and clinging to false beliefs despite substantial evidence to the contrary. The desired outcome acts as a filter that affects evaluation of scientific evidence and of other people.[2]

Whatever 'justification' you employ to call into question the existence of everything else except your senses is equally applicable to your senses. Special pleading isn't going to change this. You've argued yourself into irrelevancy; from your 'position' nothing of any worth can ever be said - it's pseudophilosophy. Perhaps it makes you feel special, but for other people, it's really, really dense.

Spearthrower wrote:

Frozenworld wrote:
Because that is all we have, sensation. Artificial or not that is still the final thing we know we have. Anything outside of our senses is a guess. We could be wasting our lives believing we are doing anything only for it to just be us lying to ourselves.

In the post you're supposedly replying to, I already addressed this. I addressed this adequately clearly and sufficient number of times that it is obvious you are working over-time to ignore the point.

You contend you can't know everything else, but that you can know your senses - but you've not shown that to be true: you haven't even bothered trying to justify it, merely asserted it.

The 'skepticism' you bring to bear on everything else is suddenly and conspicuously absent from your consideration of your senses.

This is a clear example of motivated reasoning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning

Motivated reasoning is a phenomenon studied in cognitive science and social psychology that uses emotionally-biased reasoning to produce justifications or make decisions that are most desired rather than those that accurately reflect the evidence, while still reducing cognitive dissonance. In other words, motivated reasoning is the "tendency to find arguments in favor of conclusions we want to believe to be stronger than arguments for conclusions we do not want to believe".[1]

Motivated reasoning is similar to confirmation bias, where evidence that confirms a belief (which might be a logical belief, rather than an emotional one) is either sought after more or given more credibility than evidence that disconfirms a belief. It stands in contrast to critical thinking where beliefs are approached in a skeptical and unbiased fashion.

It can lead to forming and clinging to false beliefs despite substantial evidence to the contrary. The desired outcome acts as a filter that affects evaluation of scientific evidence and of other people.[2]

Whatever 'justification' you employ to call into question the existence of everything else except your senses is equally applicable to your senses. Special pleading isn't going to change this. You've argued yourself into irrelevancy; from your 'position' nothing of any worth can ever be said - it's pseudophilosophy. Perhaps it makes you feel special, but for other people, it's really, really dense.

The problem is that there isn't really evidence to the contrary. All I have is my own senses to tell me what's going on. I can't exactly verify them without being able to go outside of them, which I can't. For all I know there is no world outside of me and it's all just inside my own head, like a dream. I don't really believe that but unfortunately I can't really say much besides that I don't believe it's all in my head. Motivated reasoning doesn't apply here.

There is some arguments that say that since our brains construct reality based on the input of our senses that this in a sense can support solipsism since we are only seeing a filtered view of reality itself. I have no counter point to this.

To be honest it's difficult to communicate the loneliness of understanding how all you have is your own senses and that everything around you could be a lie or not even real. Not that it is, but considering that possibility is what scares me. That I'm just living a dream and when I die nothing I will do will have mattered because no one was real. There is no point to helping others because they don't have emotions, etc. Again, not saying they don't. But I can't really verify it. I only have the words of what I can only believe to be "others" and have to take it on faith.

I know I have feelings and thoughts and all that, but with others I have to assume that. That's what hurts. What I "knew" to be facts (other people, external reality, etc) are more beliefs than anything else. And I don't know how to deal with that.

Some arguments like this can help: https://www.quora.com/How-can-you-theor ... rid=uHpSfZ

But at the end of the day the possibility is scary and still haunts me. It's leaving me scared to invest in life for fear it's not real.

Frozenworld wrote:But I can't really verify it. ... It's leaving me scared to invest in life for fear it's not real.

No, you can't. If you find that incapacity paralyzing to any extent or more than occasionally, that could be what keeps reinforcing the existential angst. To be so scared is strange, because it suggests you also don't believe that life (whatever your referent for that is) comes to an end. That your consciousness will end, whether it's solitary or not.

The contest between verifying absolutes and coming up with our best current model is not really a contest, because, if you're not doing mathematics, and are just performing intellectual masturbation, verifying is de facto out of the question. If you think that philosophy verifies anything, you've been handed a bill of goods. It means that you're upset about not being able to verify a statement that you have no business trying to verify.

Frozenworld wrote:
The problem is that there isn't really evidence to the contrary.

That's not how reasoned discourse works.

Why exactly are you worried about 'evidence to the contrary' when you've got no evidence at all for any of your claims?

This clearly isn't a conversation about evidence, and if you wish to suddenly raise the bar for claims to now being needed to be supported by evidence, then every claim you've made also needs to cross that bar too.

Frozenworld wrote: All I have is my own senses to tell me what's going on.

Untrue.

You also have other peoples' senses to tell you what's going on. For example. I can tell you it's night time here. It's probably not night time where you are, and you probably didn't think about how dark the sky is for me as I write this, but now I've just told you - you can now picture that I am sitting in a room lit by a light bulb and the outside world is pitch dark. Your senses were completely useless in divining that information.

Further, as has now been pointed out in spades, according to your own 'logic' - you have absolutely no reason whatsoever to trust that your senses are operating at all - all your senses' output could be wholly a figment of your imagination or - still using your 'logic' - could be a figment of someone else's imagination.

If only you exist, and all other people are just a figment of your imagination, yet your senses clearly indicate to you that other people exist, then either a) your entire contention is fatally flawed and you are not the only person who exists, or b) your senses are misleading you thus you cannot contend that you can rely on your senses.

This is why solipsism is so devoid of credibility to anyone with half a functioning brain - because it's self-contradictory. No idea that genetically contradicts itself is an idea worth lending credence to.

And you still haven't even touched trying to reason with the problem of who it is you're supposedly having this conversation with, or why exactly you're engaging in this conversation while pretending to be erecting a logical defense of solipsism.

It's such a bad idea, and you're so desperate to lend belief to it.

Frozenworld wrote: I can't exactly verify them without being able to go outside of them, which I can't.

Um, your senses ARE the things which let you go outside - they're your means of perceiving the world external to you. Verification of the credibility of those senses comes in many forms, for example, autonomic reactions indicate that the external world can induce into you movements you can't control, heat can make you leap away. Other means of verification involve intersubjective considerations, the fact that multiple agents can all cross-interrogate their subjective experiences to find common characteristics.

Frozenworld wrote: For all I know there is no world outside of me and it's all just inside my own head, like a dream.

Mystical obfuscatory bollocks. Your own arguments do not allow this to be valid - trying to maintain this genetically undermines your own argument.

Frozenworld wrote:I don't really believe that but unfortunately I can't really say much besides that I don't believe it's all in my head. Motivated reasoning doesn't apply here.

Factually, it's motivated reasoning from the ground up. You're trying to argue for a position which you pretend you're not committing to, but the reality is that you're ignoring the litany of problems other people raise - flat out ignoring them - and simply asserting over and over again, absent any evidence or reasoning, a position which is manifestly failing to correspond to any approximation of reality.

Frozenworld wrote:There is some arguments that say that since our brains construct reality based on the input of our senses that this in a sense can support solipsism since we are only seeing a filtered view of reality itself. I have no counter point to this.

I do: poppycock!

Try it - try saying 'poppycock' to yourself more often, because you clearly need to hear it.

Our brains don't 'construct reality' - whoever claims that is already mystified into gibbering nonsense, and that claim by you amounts to nothing more than circular reasoning.

Rather, what credible people say is that external reality exists entirely independently of us, and our senses and brain are able to perceive some parts of that reality dependent on our senses - we can see light bouncing off it which allows us to perceive a shape and colour, we can sniff it to detect the release of any chemicals given off, we can touch it to feel the texture and temperature.

What we can all agree on is that our senses do not give us an entire picture, senses do not give us all maximal data about an object we encounter, but that's a rather different argument than the mystical pap that the object is being created internally.

Again, this is how stupid this idea you're buying into is: you now want reality to be constructed by your mind which only has access to that reality by mind-governed senses, so your position now has you creating a reality that you can only partially perceive. This is becoming more equivalent to religious belief than philosophy.

Frozenworld wrote:To be honest it's difficult to communicate the loneliness of understanding how all you have is your own senses and that everything around you could be a lie or not even real.

Sorry, play your pathos card somewhere else - I don't care how 'lonely' you are; it's fuck all to do with the point, and considering the consequences of your argument, it's comparatively irrelevant since I and everyone else don't get to feel 'lonely' or, in fact, feel anything at all as we're all just figments of your imagination.

The fact that I outright don't give a fuck about your feelies while you're looking for empathy and understanding from me should suggest to you that I am entirely independent of those feelies, and that consequently I cannot be constructed by your imagination.

You can then take it further: as I am not constructed by your imagination, and as I clearly possess my own senses (for example being able to read what you've written and respond to it) then your very own argument could suggest to you that YOU are a figment of MY imagination, and it's my mind and my senses which are the One True Mind and One True Senses, but because narcissism walks hand-in-hand with solipsism, you of course don't even consider this.

Feel worse now? Even your apparent loneliness is simply a quirk of my thought landscape - it's a mind state I made up for you to have so that I could have a more edifying conversation with myself. Funny how you won't lend that credence, and the fact that you won't is yet another indicator of the rational bankruptcy of your position.

Of course, the 'solution' to this manufactured problem is that we are distinct entities, that I possess different experiences and thoughts to you and thus you can know, very well, very clearly, that other people exist independently of your mind. Consequent to that, and nailing that absurd coffin shut, if multiple experiencing subjects exist then we can test our senses by reporting what we sense in a specific context and cross-corroborating it.... in fact, that's the cornerstone of one of the most useful means of knowing shit in the world (epistemology) - it's called 'intersubjective verifiability'.


Humans tend to begin to learn this theory of mind around the age of 3 or 4.

Straight up - if you genuinely cannot perceive intersubjective verifiablity, then you almost certainly need to see a neurologist or a psychologist because either some damage has occurred to your brain, or you are suffering from sociopathy having no empathy, and concept or understanding of other people.

You want consequences to your belief system? Them's the real world consequences.

Frozenworld wrote:Not that it is, but considering that possibility is what scares me.

Are you also able to frighten yourself by imagining a particularly terrifying monster with too many eyes, big fangs, and acidic saliva lurking under your bed?

Why shouldn't you be able to do that? It's contrary to reason, like your stated belief - it's contrary to evidence, like your stated belief - it's lacking any credibility, like your stated belief - and it's childishly self-obsessed, like your stated belief.

By all accounts, you should be able to do this to yourself. If you can't, and particularly if you wish to quickly dismiss this, then I'm gonna have to say it: motivated reasoning. You want to believe X, so you only allow yourself to consider things that corroborate X and refuse to engage in anything that is Not-X.... whereas, the reality is here that the Not-X vastly outweighs any consideration of X in any reasoned discourse.

Frozenworld wrote:That I'm just living a dream and when I die nothing I will do will have mattered because no one was real. There is no point to helping others because they don't have emotions, etc. Again, not saying they don't. But I can't really verify it. I only have the words of what I can only believe to be "others" and have to take it on faith.

*yawn*

Borrrrring!

Sorry, but your New Age pap is just ignoring all the errors already identified in this wibble.

Frozenworld wrote:I know I have feelings and thoughts and all that,...

Nope, false. This has been pointed out to you in such clear terms that your continued ignorance of it is no longer acceptable.

You do not KNOW these things. You BELIEVE them.

You've given zero rationale why you lend belief to your senses, but ironically don't lend belief to the objects which stimulate your senses.

This has been shown to be fatally flawed from any reasoned position several times - despite your terminal unwillingness to engage honestly in any level of meaningful exchange.


In reality, you do have feelings and thoughts, and the reason why you can trust them (for the most part) is not simply that you possess them but that they continuously provide you with approximations of reality that allow you and your meaty bits to navigate an independently existing reality. Additional to that, other people also exist, and they also experience that independent external reality and thus also have thoughts and feelings which are wholly independent of yours.

Frozenworld wrote:I but with others I have to assume that.

To the exact same degree that you have to assume that you possess thoughts and feelings, and not a jot more.

Frozenworld wrote:I That's what hurts.

Am I supposed to be sympathetic that you keep poking yourself in the eye and declaring it hurts?

Frozenworld wrote: What I "knew" to be facts (other people, external reality, etc) are more beliefs than anything else.

Back on the Merry-Go-Round. If that's the case, then you are also obliged by reason to apply it to your own thoughts and feelings, ergo you've become an omni-nihililist for no good reason at all.

Frozenworld wrote:And I don't know how to deal with that.

Locate the motion of your arm which is currently engaged in a motion that moves its most distal appendage into a trajectory that impacts with the contents of your ocular orbit, then stop doing that motion.

They're supposed to be YOUR thoughts and feelings, and those thoughts and feelings are supposed to be quite literally manufacturing reality, so if you are unable to exert any control over those thoughts and feelings, then your contentions are once again shown to be internally contradictory.

Frozenworld wrote:Some arguments like this can help: https://www.quora.com/How-can-you-theor ... rid=uHpSfZ

Frozenworld wrote:But at the end of the day the possibility is scary and still haunts me. It's leaving me scared to invest in life for fear it's not real.

Either you do believe this, in which case you need to seek medical help - and I mean that absolutely honestly.

Or you're talking shit for a rise with strangers on the internet.

Of course, the very fact that you are motivated to seek out people - complete strangers on the internet, no less - to tell them that you've very scared of the unassailable logic that informs you that those very people don't exist - very, very strongly suggests that you don't actually believe a word you're wittering about.

If you truly were as convinced of this as you claim, then you STILL need to explain why you're engaged in this internally contradictory behavior. If I don't exist, why are you repeatedly coming here to argue with what I write? How is it that I can even write something you don't agree with if you're the dude constructing reality with his mind? How is your behavior here (i.e. coming to a webforum to splurge narcissistic crap at people) in any way consistent with your own claims? Answer: it's not. It's clearly bollocks.

Finally, why aren't you even more terrified that your thoughts and senses are just figments of someone else's imagination? What if it's actually ME who's the One True Mind - and while you believe you exist, you actually don't - I made you up for fun, so your entire life is a meaningless lie - that seems to me to have considerably upped the 'scary' stakes.

We can do this as long as you need to.

Frozenworld

Here's a litmus test of the authenticity of your belief:

Would you send me your bank account details and PIN number?

Why not?

Walk me through the reason why you wouldn't.

Ugh. How many more laps...

Frozenworld wrote:There is some arguments that say that since our brains construct reality based on the input of our senses that this in a sense can support solipsism since we are only seeing a filtered view of reality itself.

Recognising that since our brains construct reality based on the input of our senses does not support solipsism. It supports the argument that we have a filtered view of reality. The two are not the same.

Sure, we can not arrive at objective truth one day. Our knowledge will always be filtered through our senses, but we do have a pretty good reason to know that there is a world outside our minds: the predictive power of our filtered observations. Take Pluto, for instance. When the theory of gravity (which itself was arrived at via observations filtered through our senses) was applied to our planetary system certain discrepancies between along what paths certain planets should be travelling according to the theory of gravity and the paths they actually took were observed in planetary orbits that could only be accounted for by the existence of other - as yet undiscovered - body affecting those paths with its own gravitational force. Astronomers used these observed orbital irregularities to calculate the size and location of the hypothesised bodies and finished up discovering Neptune in 1846. It brought theory and observation closer together, but not entirely. So another existence of another body was stipulated. Calculations on the remaining discrepancy resulted in the discovery of Pluto.

The fact that we could predict Neptune's and Pluto's existence, the paths they took and the mass they contained before we had any direct empirical knowledge of them is a pretty good indication that there is stuff outside our own minds. Generally, the recognition of regular patterns, be they scientific or casually experienced ones, are indications that we are not just imagining a world out there.

Untrue.

You also have other peoples' senses to tell you what's going on. For example. I can tell you it's night time here. It's probably not night time where you are, and you probably didn't think about how dark the sky is for me as I write this, but now I've just told you - you can now picture that I am sitting in a room lit by a light bulb and the outside world is pitch dark. Your senses were completely useless in divining that information.

This is not correct. I only have my own senses. Anything else is speculation. I don't have evidence that you have senses. I can't know you aren't a philosophical zombie.

You've given zero rationale why you lend belief to your senses, but ironically don't lend belief to the objects which stimulate your senses.

This has been shown to be fatally flawed from any reasoned position several times - despite your terminal unwillingness to engage honestly in any level of meaningful exchange.


In reality, you do have feelings and thoughts, and the reason why you can trust them (for the most part) is not simply that you possess them but that they continuously provide you with approximations of reality that allow you and your meaty bits to navigate an independently existing reality. Additional to that, other people also exist, and they also experience that independent external reality and thus also have thoughts and feelings which are wholly independent of yours.

That's the main point of solipsism though. That we can't truly trust our senses and that the only thing we know is that we exist in some form. If we didn't then we wouldn't be thinking now or having any sort of experience. One thing you can be sure if is that you exist in some from. Everything else, not so much. The objects that stimulate can be illusions or not even real, as many experiments can show. Optical illusions trick us into seeing what isn't there. Color is LITERALLY all in your head, it doesn't exist in the world and neither does sound. You don't have a solid argument for "other things".

Recognising that since our brains construct reality based on the input of our senses does not support solipsism. It supports the argument that we have a filtered view of reality. The two are not the same.

Sure, we can not arrive at objective truth one day. Our knowledge will always be filtered through our senses, but we do have a pretty good reason to know that there is a world outside our minds: the predictive power of our filtered observations. Take Pluto, for instance. When the theory of gravity (which itself was arrived at via observations filtered through our senses) was applied to our planetary system certain discrepancies between along what paths certain planets should be travelling according to the theory of gravity and the paths they actually took were observed in planetary orbits that could only be accounted for by the existence of other - as yet undiscovered - body affecting those paths with its own gravitational force. Astronomers used these observed orbital irregularities to calculate the size and location of the hypothesised bodies and finished up discovering Neptune in 1846. It brought theory and observation closer together, but not entirely. So another existence of another body was stipulated. Calculations on the remaining discrepancy resulted in the discovery of Pluto.

The fact that we could predict Neptune's and Pluto's existence, the paths they took and the mass they contained before we had any direct empirical knowledge of them is a pretty good indication that there is stuff outside our own minds. Generally, the recognition of regular patterns, be they scientific or casually experienced ones, are indications that we are not just imagining a world out there.

Actually no, none of that is any indication that stuff is outside our minds. All of it could not have existed until we observed it. How can one know any of this exists outside of their senses? You can't. All we have access to is our own immediate experience. That's what I am getting at and why this is so stubborn to get rid of. Because one cannot deny the fundamental truth that all we have is sensation and everything else is just induction. I can't be sure you exist or that the world won't end when I die. I believe people do exist and have minds, but have no proof of this. I believe that the world will persist beyond my death, but again I can't know that. There is a lot we take for granted and it shapes our navigation of the world, and once you see you have no basis for it, well....

Solipsism came in many flavors, most recently the Boltzmann Brain paradox which the math shows is inevitable given infinite time.

You say I have evidence, but what is that? My senses? In that case then my dreams are real. Is it persistence? Everything ends or breaks down so that's out. Your say so? That's a fallacy in and of itself. There is a reason solipsism is called logically impeccable. It can't be attacked or defended.

Frozenworld wrote:That's the main point of solipsism though. That we can't truly trust our senses and that the only thing we know is that we exist in some form.

The main point of solipsism is that you would not behave differently if solipsism turned out to be true. You can test it quite easily like this: Stand in the middle of a road. Try not to get out of the way of a truck bearing down at you because the truck exists only in your imagination. Go on, try it. After all you asserted yourself that you don't have a solid argument for "other things".

Frozenworld wrote:
This is not correct. I only have my own senses. Anything else is speculation. I don't have evidence that you have senses. I can't know you aren't a philosophical zombie.

Its a broken record. I've already shown beyond any rebuttal you've mustered doubt why this is bollocks, but you just keep repeating it.

If you truly want to believe something, then no one can ever convince you otherwise. But you really need to explain why you are so desperate to talk to other people you contend plausibly don't exist and parrot your fucking stupid idea at them repeatedly regardless of what they say.

Other people's existence is no more speculative than you own. You fail - repeatedly - to apply standards consistently.

Further, and yes I've explained this one already to you as well, another example of your idea's inconsistency is that the very same senses you claim to just know you have are also telling you that other people exist. Ergo, if you CAN trust your senses, then other people exist - but if other people don't really exist, then you CAN'T trust your senses. This is called a well. It is one you have dug for yourself, and now you've jumped down it and refuse to believe there's anything outside the well anymore.

It's not even silly FW.

Frozenworld wrote:

You've given zero rationale why you lend belief to your senses, but ironically don't lend belief to the objects which stimulate your senses.

This has been shown to be fatally flawed from any reasoned position several times - despite your terminal unwillingness to engage honestly in any level of meaningful exchange.

In reality, you do have feelings and thoughts, and the reason why you can trust them (for the most part) is not simply that you possess them but that they continuously provide you with approximations of reality that allow you and your meaty bits to navigate an independently existing reality. Additional to that, other people also exist, and they also experience that independent external reality and thus also have thoughts and feelings which are wholly independent of yours.

That's the main point of solipsism though. That we can't truly trust our senses and that the only thing we know is that we exist in some form.

No, it's not. That's bullshit. No component of solipsism says 'we can't trust our senses'. You made that up ad hoc, and of course, you contradicted what you'd just written in the previous paragraph.

How exactly is your idea meant to be taken seriously when possessing it causes you to write these two sentences:

I only have my own senses. Anything else is speculation.

we can't truly trust our senses and that the only thing we know is that we exist in some form.

You can't even formulate a consistent argument, and the reason for that is that the idea you are trying to expound is internally contradictory, self-defeating, and lacking any coherence.

Frozenworld wrote: If we didn't then we wouldn't be thinking now or having any sort of experience.

Moronic.

The same argument applies. By the same criteria you're sloppily trying to apply elsewhere, you don't know you're thinking or having experiences - they could be merely hallucinations.

I've explained this to you as well already. What you suppose are your thoughts and experiences are really just figments of MY imagination - I'm the One True Mind, and all the thoughts and experiences you feel you are having are really just projected into you from me, the One True Source.

It's so fun to write inane assertions without bothering with logic, reason, or credibility, isn't it?

Frozenworld wrote:One thing you can be sure if is that you exist in some from. Everything else, not so much.

Go see how little the floor exists if you jump out of the 2nd storey window.

Frozenworld wrote: The objects that stimulate can be illusions or not even real, as many experiments can show.

An unreal object. Oooh aren't we in for a treat - you're not just making up new philosophy inconsistent with everything in the world, but now we get New Science too!

Frozenworld wrote: Optical illusions trick us into seeing what isn't there.

Yet the optical illusion is factually there, ergo your contention is wrong. You still need a physical object to trick the eyes and brain.

And who is "US"? Can't you remain consistent across a single paragraph? You're contending that you have no way of knowing we exist, so why are you now appealing to everyone else to try and establish your point? If you're being consistent, then it is YOU who are tricked by optical illusions, which means it must be YOU whose observational skills are in doubt.

Frozenworld wrote: Color is LITERALLY all in your head, it doesn't exist in the world and neither does sound.

You had both of these explained to you already in another thread of dross you started:

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/philo ... l#p2764556

You're talking shit to people who clearly know better than you. No one's jumping down the well with you, I'm afraid.

Frozenworld wrote:You don't have a solid argument for "other things".

And, of course, I've already addressed this assertion half a dozen times too. I don't need to come up with any superior justification to the one that you've offered to debunk your contention. The exact same argument you use to justify your senses and mind, I also get to use to justify my senses and mind - my senses and mind tell me other things exist (because I can see outside my own rectal passage) and these are corroborated by thousands - millions - billions of other human minds. If I see a wall, I can't walk through it as it exists empirically in the objective world... and lo and behold, no one else can walk through it either - do you want to claim you can walk through a wall that I can see? Going to try and appeal to optical illusions when your face is grinding against concrete?

Frozenworld wrote:
Actually no, none of that is any indication that stuff is outside our minds.

Qualification: actually, it very much is to serious minds capable of serious thought. You, on the other hand, have a faith position you want to tell people but are unable to support with anything other than repetitive blind declarations.

Frozenworld wrote:All of it could not have existed until we observed it.

/point and laugh

Frozenworld wrote:How can one know any of this exists outside of their senses? You can't.

How about you try reading what people have written in response to your previous asinine assertions to this effect?

Frozenworld wrote: All we have access to is our own immediate experience.

And according to your OWN ARGUMENT, there is NO reason whatsoever for you to trust your own immediate experience - but that would require you to be consistent, and for you to be consistent there would need to be a cogent argument, which there most certainly is not.

Frozenworld wrote: That's what I am getting at and why this is so stubborn to get rid of.

You said what you are getting at a dozen times and it's not convinced anyone for the reasons they've given you. However, you are unable to address anyone's replies, which is why you have long since just started repeating your assertions dogmatically.

Frozenworld wrote: Because one cannot deny the fundamental truth...

See? You're working hard to craft a faith position, but no one here shares that faith.

Frozenworld wrote: that all we have is sensation and everything else is just induction.

i) inconsistencies: all 'we' have? No no no, you are contending there's no reason to believe that anyone other than you exists, ergo it's only YOU who has X... and of course, the fact that despite your senses explicitly telling you that other people exist, you don't trust your senses in that regard, meaning your supposed justification for knowing you have senses and experiences is shown to be nothing more than an assertion which is internally contradicted by other of your assertions.

Frozenworld wrote: I can't be sure you exist or that the world won't end when I die.

Yawn

Frozenworld wrote:I believe people do exist and have minds, but have no proof of this.

You have no more 'proof' that you exist or that you have a mind.

Frozenworld wrote:I believe that the world will persist beyond my death, but again I can't know that.

Do these statements feel deep to you? Do you feel like you're plumbing some uncharted intellectual territory, or something?

Frozenworld wrote:There is a lot we take for granted and it shapes our navigation of the world, and once you see you have no basis for it, well....

Well nothing. Take whatever you like for granted as you navigate your way to sitting on a train track and see how little basis you have for believing in physical reality when you hear the train coming. Incidentally, the world won't end when the train smashes your existence in a meaty sludge, but you will cause a fairly sizeable number of people to be late for work.

Frozenworld wrote:Solipsism came in many flavors, most recently the Boltzmann Brain paradox which the math shows is inevitable given infinite time.

Oh dear - another half-arsed series of assertions. If you think the Boltzmann Brain Paradox lends succor to solipsism, then I guess we have yet another thing to add to the list of things you don't understand but pretend to in order to argue with strangers whose existence you question.

There are multiple flavours of solipsism: there's narcissism flavour, and there's bloody ignorant, desperately in need of an education flavour.

Frozenworld wrote:You say I have evidence, but what is that?

What is it?

You are sitting in front of a computer screen. Rotate your chair 180 degrees. Stand up. Run forward at maximum speed.

When the bleeding stops, let us know what happened and how you manage to explain that to yourself. Did you just use the power of your One True Mind to conjure up the experience of running face first into a wall? Why would you do such a stupid thing to yourself? Why didn't you just run forever without hindrance? Ooh ooh ooh! I know, I know - pick me! It's because the world exists entirely independently of you, it existed before you were born and will continue to exist once you shuffle off the mortal coil. You're just not that important in any scheme of things, but you can make your bloody mark on the wall of reality as testament to your brief existence.

Frozenworld wrote: My senses?

You lack any good faith in discussion too. No, you don't respond to someone else's post which clarifies the faults in your post by dragging back in your faulty assumptions to answer for them.

Frozenworld wrote:In that case then my dreams are real.

Uh of course your dreams are real. They're real in exactly the same way as when you remember an event that happened in the past. There are physical, chemical systems of storing memories in your brain, and so you are absolutely experiencing your dreams. The content of those dreams isn't real - you're not really having a spaghetti fight with Santa Clause in a bath of blancmange, but that you're dreaming is not at all controversial, and can even be observed and recorded independently of your reporting.

Frozenworld wrote:Is it persistence? Everything ends or breaks down so that's out.

Whu...?

Frozenworld wrote: Your say so? That's a fallacy in and of itself.

Then your entire thread and everything you've written is fallacious.

Frozenworld wrote:There is a reason solipsism is called logically impeccable. It can't be attacked or defended.

An idea constructed never to be testable is an idea that is veridically worthless.

I understand how people like you - new agey mysticist types - think that holding positions which speculate based on gaps in what can be ascertained lends you some kind of kudos - but to those of us who don't share your religious motivations, we find your ideas inconsistent, poorly reasoned, self-contradictory, and clearly derived entirely from what you want to believe rather than what's actually justifiable - you think you're being deep, but I'm afraid at this forum, your ideas are exposed as being shallow as a gnat's piss puddle.

Hermit wrote:

Frozenworld wrote:That's the main point of solipsism though. That we can't truly trust our senses and that the only thing we know is that we exist in some form.

The main point of solipsism is that you would not behave differently if solipsism turned out to be true. You can test it quite easily like this: Stand in the middle of a road. Try not to get out of the way of a truck bearing down at you because the truck exists only in your imagination. Go on, try it. After all you asserted yourself that you don't have a solid argument for "other things".

FW doesn't want to test his ideas because they can't stand up to a moment's honest scrutiny, and he's busy making this into his religion.