One series of questions on solipsism
{I signed up with a group to attend a virtual pub night. The sign-up process included sending a note to the organizer with the email address of the potential attendee. I complied, then said the following, requesting to know whether I need to change my RSVP if I can't attend.)
I only join things on the Internet that at the time of joining or before give me clear instructions on how to unjoin. FaceBook is a singular exception to this personal rule, so is Life, and Falling In Love, although these last two are not Internet Apps. On my phone. However, maybe they are on someone else's phone, who knows. Interesting question... is a person possibly capable of being the puppetmaster of his or her own soliptical existence? If s/he is, then is the experience soliptical indeed, or not, in its essential core? Because solipsism requires that one ought not to exist but only as a function of a puppetmaster; which requires that the puppetmaster exist, and if the person is the puppetmaster, then the requirement of his/ her nonexistence is violated.
However, the puppetmasters can be a string of infinite length, each puppetmaster getting manipulated for his or her perceived existence by a different puppetmaster, in effect in an infinite regress, in which I am each of the puppetmasters, then do I really exist, and do I really violate the "non-existence" clause, or not? Similarly: if I am only an occasional puppetmaster in the string, which is still an infinitely long one, say, I am every nth puppetmaster in the string where n can be a fixed or can be a variable-value integer, but still I appear infinite times in the string, do I exist, and is my existence violating the rule? What if the string is infinite, but I only appear a finite times in it?
I only join things on the Internet that at the time of joining or before give me clear instructions on how to unjoin. FaceBook is a singular exception to this personal rule, so is Life, and Falling In Love, although these last two are not Internet Apps. On my phone. However, maybe they are on someone else's phone, who knows. Interesting question... is a person possibly capable of being the puppetmaster of his or her own soliptical existence? If s/he is, then is the experience soliptical indeed, or not, in its essential core? Because solipsism requires that one ought not to exist but only as a function of a puppetmaster; which requires that the puppetmaster exist, and if the person is the puppetmaster, then the requirement of his/ her nonexistence is violated.
However, the puppetmasters can be a string of infinite length, each puppetmaster getting manipulated for his or her perceived existence by a different puppetmaster, in effect in an infinite regress, in which I am each of the puppetmasters, then do I really exist, and do I really violate the "non-existence" clause, or not? Similarly: if I am only an occasional puppetmaster in the string, which is still an infinitely long one, say, I am every nth puppetmaster in the string where n can be a fixed or can be a variable-value integer, but still I appear infinite times in the string, do I exist, and is my existence violating the rule? What if the string is infinite, but I only appear a finite times in it?
Comments (5)
Social media issues aside, the question of whether a brain-in-vat, living in a dreamworld, is able to control the dream is interesting.
I think too much control is deadly to a good dream, primarily because of the potential for violating the inner integrity of the dream.
A prime example of this is in the movie Adaptation. Have you seen it?
I haven't, but I heard of it. Apparently Adaptation was a movie adaptation from a short story with the same title.
It's good