Disproving solipsism
'You can disprove everybody else's solipsism, but you can't disprove it to yourself.'. -- Searle
And because you can't disprove it to yourself, I can't persuade you to reject it. This is because argumentation has as its goal a meeting of the minds.
This state of affairs shows that mental states are enjoyed in isolation. By this I don't mean they're private in the Wittgensteinian sense, but rather that there appears to be clear boundaries between what I'll call minds.
Thoughts?
And because you can't disprove it to yourself, I can't persuade you to reject it. This is because argumentation has as its goal a meeting of the minds.
This state of affairs shows that mental states are enjoyed in isolation. By this I don't mean they're private in the Wittgensteinian sense, but rather that there appears to be clear boundaries between what I'll call minds.
Thoughts?
Comments (81)
Anglo-American philosophy has been stranded for some time in an attempted pivot away from Cartesian dualism. The OP is pestering the issue anew.
You could probably find a forum focused on welding if the OP question seems like a waste of your time. :grin:
Solipsism as usually understood is not something that can be verified or falsified empirically. It’s metaphysics. It’s something you can pretend to believe because it makes figuring things out easier.
Quoting frank
Just because I cannot experience what you experience directly does not mean there isn’t a connection. You are right though, what connection there is is not clear or direct.
If you're up for it, I'd like to try to persuade you that solipsism is wrong. I just need for you to play devil's advocate and defend it. Ok?
Let’s take a shot at it.
The connection is the verification of certain rules which must apply or not apply. If this verification were merely private, it would be empty. Rule making by definition is public.
I find most people who become entrapped in the belief that "nothing is real" that is to say "other people aren't real" do not appreciate the philosophical depths of true solipsism and are simply struggling with something quite non-philosophical and dangerous to themselves and those around them, is all.
It's a fine topic. For the few whom it actually applies to.
Quoting Colo Millz
This seems to disregard the main tenets of solipsism. It's not a "choice." It's literally the real world. That is to say, what you, or to your credit, any normal person would consider "dipping [their] feet into the real world" is doing the exact opposite. It's derived from a tale in Greek mythology (or perhaps the mythology was derived from an actual worldview) where a mortal is damned to live an eternity alone, all while thinking he's in a world full of innumerable other persons, thus making it an ever more vindictive punishment than if he was perceptively alone and sure of his or her fate. Again, it's a line of thought best avoided altogether. Particularly for those susceptible to the wills and minds of others.
Also, @frank this is what I'm talking about. Most people who believe "other people aren't real" (or sure, the deeper tenet that is, nothing except myself and my thoughts can be "proven" as real) really don't understand anything about the deeper philosophy, only the immediate descriptor (or in my view, symptom).
Yes. It is bound to be what we receive, all right. It is nothing to do with choice.
But we can nevertheless choose to receive - or not - certain facts.
One fact is that of rule-following.
That fact means that I cannot check, given the data of 104987098upeoih f mn , lkjhpojhoj hpao hpoiAHPO certain subjective elements - if I check only subjective elements that means that statement remains meaningless.
If i follow a rule, it has to be public - by definition. That is what a rule is.
Ok thanks! Shot number 1:
Doesn't your solipsistic view conflict with your everyday behavior? For instance, you talk to me without knowing what I'm going to say next. How could that behavior fit with solipsism?
Does it? How so?
Your existence might be an hallucination, a dream, an illusion, a brain aneurysm, psychosis, my imagination. Maybe I got lonely. I stole the following from a post I made many years ago.
One of the Hindu gods was sitting around, lonely. For company, he made himself forget he was god, and split himself into many parts. Maybe I’m God. I have this image of god behind the stage in a puppet theater that includes everything. He plays all the parts, speaks all the parts.
I’m not tossing this out just to be difficult. If I am the only thing that exists, it’s doubtful I would take any doubts I had about the existence of a real world outside myself seriously. Why would my lonely, isolated reality behave the way you think it should here in this purported reality.
I’m not sure whether the problem is with @frank’s comment or my response… As I think about it more, I think it was my response that was incorrect. See my response to @frank’s response immediately above this one.
So your answer is that everything is you, but parts of you are not available to consciousness right now?
Sure. It might not even be possible for them to become conscious. Who knows how my isolated super brain might work.
Surely some part of you knows how it works? Your personal Lord of Illusion?
Are you familiar with Kripke's argument that meaning can't arise from rule following?
I have some idea how my mind works in this, our purported reality. But that knowledge is based on my experience and understanding that my mind is connected with an outside world and other people.
What would be going on in your mind if you had been cut off from all physical and social experience since you were born.
Well, Kant put the "not knowing" the other way around. Here is the Theorem from the Refutation of Idealism:
Quoting Critique of Pure Reason, B275
Same ignorance, different day.
Excellent. Why don't you flesh out Kant's argument for us?
The Introduction written by Guyer and Wood in the linked edition is the clearest summary (and limits to summary) that I have found. Kant developed his view over many years.
For this discussion of solipsism, I suggest reading the Refutation of Idealism from B275 to B288 in the linked text. It reflects much of the previous part of the book while also trying to sharpen his use of terms.
I will do my best to answer any questions from that common ground.
I was just trying to interject some harmless fun into the conversation.
I was having fun, too. Maybe it was too culturally limited to my ruralism.
We do not have access to an "I" as a given before our experience in the world. So, when we approach the matter as if that is not a critical feature of experience, we take on airs and imagine proximity to the divine.
But that is not all that Kant was trying to say. My summary may be correct and not very useful heard in isolation. Or it could be incorrect which also would require more work reading the text.
He's just saying that consciousness of my own existence requires something to compare and contrast with me. The use of dialectics runs through the CPR. This is a case of that.
This is why I resisted giving a summary.
Perhaps you could provide references that support your interpretation. On the surface, your description does not account for the emphasis upon the intuitions of space and time.
Per Kant, we don't learn about space and time a posteriori. As for a reference, I don't think we can do better than Kant himself. Have you read the Transcendental Aesthetic?
That is more of an argument toward accepting an "ontological" limit than saying:
Quoting frank
The Refutation of Idealism section previously linked to argues against the "any difference will do" idea.
I don't know what an ontological limit is. That we know about space and time a priori is the outcome of a series of arguments.
Quoting Paine
I don't know what "any difference will do" refers to. It has nothing to do with anything I said.
And?
Since the intuitions are separated from the processes of reason a priori, differences of experience are neither what Descartes nor Berkeley described, as outlined in Kant's Refutation of Idealism.
That approach is different from observing there are "differences" of experience that provide a context for a subject as presented in Descartes and Berkeley. It is on the same grounds that Kant resisted Hume describing causality as only a story that is told.
I'm not sure what you're saying. Kant is basically arguing that consciousness of the self is generated by the mind's organization of experience according to a priori categories. You could put it this way: as the mind goes about organizing experience, it develops the concept of a unified world that allows the disparate elements to become meaningful. Each thing has the potential to be meaningful relative to this cohesive world. It's just part of the mechanics of this process that a proto-subject appears as a kind of logical entity. Who is having these experiences? It's me!
I'm a really non-linear thinker, so I'm struggling to explain this. But Kant is suggesting that when consciousness of the self appears, it's consciousness of a unified grounding to experience. That unity reflects the unity of the world.
Quoting SEP
Consciousness of the self requires a division between the subject and object. The self has to have boundaries, in other words.
The quote you provided from SEP comes from a particular contrast between Kant and Hume. The argument about what the "I" is in the context of representations is an important issue throughout the book.
The matter of intuition goes to a more "existential" cause of the difference of self and object when Kant says:
Quoting Critique of Pure Reason, B275
I continue to have no idea what you're trying to say. I'm sure you're not being purposefully cryptic, but that is the way you're coming across.
I am trying to avoid being cryptic by referencing specific portions of the actual text. I was sincere in my general thumbnail that you asked for. But that generality is cryptic as all general descriptions tend to be. That is why I was so reluctant to offer it.
I am doing the best that I can as I understand effort.
We've long had this conflict between us (you and Foolos4) where you dissect passages of text, and I have a much broader outlook. No need to try to resolve it. :grin:
Pretty contemptuous last word.
I will leave you with it.
You're projecting.
I do. To get my bearings, I try to place the text in its historical context. Like, why is Descartes writing this? What is Kant responding to? I'm not saying my way is superior to anybody else's. It's what I do naturally.
You, on the other hand, take a bit of text and use it as the basis for what ends up being self reflection. You want every philosopher to be something like a materialist, and you take one word and draw out a materialist outlook.
Whose approach is more fruitful? Mine is fruitful for me. Yours is fruitful for you. Ultimately, neither is right or wrong.
That is not the case. I have argued extensively against Gerson's interpretation of materialism as a general idea in Plato and subsequent literature. Are you remembering my objections to Cornford's view of the forms as an argument for materialism? Nothing could be further from the case. I see that I have only been a cypher in your mind.
I don't want Kant to say this or that. Or if I do, it needs to be a way to read what was written. I don't see the world the way he does in many ways. But he deserves to be fairly represented.
Cool. How do you interpret the passage you originally posted? I'm curious.
I am not going to say more until we deal with your charges about my agenda.
I'm cool with resolving it with a "fair enough." What else?
Conscious
Preconscious (might become conscious
Subconscious (cannot become conscious).
That would be a neat trick for a God to play on themselves.
Then what will be the difference between our points of view?
Will you no longer challenge what I have said in the past as you just did?
I would rather work with that gap than agree to disagree. It is more interesting.
Ok. It's just that you posted a passage from Kant in a thread about disproving solipsism. Subsequently, I've been unable to determine how you're reading that passage. Since Kant is known for a persuasive argument that we know about time and space prior to any experience with the world, it seems a little odd to put him forward as disproving solipsism.
I can deal with that challenge tomorrow. I will quote from the text I have been referring to and link it to other sections of the other Critiques.
Ok. I was just asking you to tell me what you think it means.
For Kant, in his time, the statement that awareness of self required the existence of "exterior" things was his argument against solipsism.
What kind of god would I be if I couldn’t do something like that?
That's definitely food for thought. Thanks :up:
You are right. That remark is more complicated than it seems. It is true that to seek to disprove everybody else's solipsism is something that only a non-solipsist would want to do. That's why the addition that you can't disprove it to your self is such a surprise.
I can't tell whether he is trying to say that proof or disproof are not relevant to the argument. Everything that others might say can be interpreted in a way compatible with solipsism and vice versa for the non-solipsist. It's not helpful to see solipsism as a thesis or doctrine about the world. It is more like an interpretation (for lack of a better word) of it.
We should start by accepting that the solipsist has a point. That needs to be recognized, and understood. Then it may be possible to show how that point is being misinterpreted, But it is difficult to express the point clearly.
We need to recognize, alongside the recognition of other selves, the unique place in our worlds of our own selves. Put simply, I cannot experience other people's experience or perform other people's actions. There is a sense in which we cannot eat another person's food, or suffer another person's illness or live another person's life. The self - the meaning of "I" - has a uniquely complicated logic. Self-control, self-deception, unselfish action are all difficult issues. I have a unique place in my world, which is curiously close to having no place in it at all. We put too much emphasis on the truth that we are no different from anyone else and too little on the equally true point that we are also unique and not in virtue of the emprical differences (and similarities) between us.
Quoting ProtagoranSocratist
It depends on what you are paying attention to. As long as you are immersed in your dream, there is no way to understand that it is a dream. It is only after you wake up that you can appreciate a wider context, extract yourself from your immersion, and realize the wider world that shows that it was a dream.
Quoting Paine
That's one nail that he hits right on the head. I take it as pointing out that one can only grasp one's self by also grasping the not-self all around. The same applies to many (I nearly said "all") concepts. One can only understand what a table is if one understands what is not a table. However, the second half of that process is to understand the distinction between one table and the next. Similarly, awareness of self requires an understanding of what other selves are. (Here comes the specialness of "I" - there is no possibility of my mistaking someone else for myself. What I mean is the understanding that other people are also "I".) The tricky bit is understanding that the differences and similarities are not at all like understanding the difference between one table and the next. Neither table is me.
As you well know, Kant’s refutation concerns itself with the existence of things, but the OP asks about the existence of minds.
It seems that if you’re going to prove the existence of bodies in general from the apodeictic certainty of your own, you still have to prove, given that certainty, the existence of other minds, that is not mere inference.
Even if every human ever, already granted Kant’s argument by and for himself, perhaps without even knowing of its precedence, he still hasn’t proved it for any human not himself.
Quoting Paine
I’m not so sure the refutation of the established idealism of the day, is the refutation of solipsism itself. The proof for the consciousness of your self cannot follow from my proving the consciousness of my own.
Existence itself is misused with respect to minds anyway. Existence is a category, categories apply only to phenomena, mind is not and cannot be phenomena, so mind is not conditioned by existence. Or, mind in not that which exits, so trying to prove it does or doesn't exist, is unintelligible.
Seems to me, anyway.
like i was saying about Descarte's dream theory in a different discussion, you can "know" that the world is not just a product of your imagination through intuition and experience. You can't prove that your life is nothing but a dream, you can't prove your waking world is the waking world and the dream world is the dream world, you can't prove that you are not the only living person (solipsism), but your intuition will tell you that those theories are all rubbish. Kant's assertion that consistent objects in your environment disprove idealism and extreme solipsism are perhaps evidence, but you can actually dream consistent objects in your environment...even though dream matter tends to be more random and fleeting.
As I have followed along in this thread, it struck me that solipsism, the simulation argument, and belief in God are equivalent metaphysically.
Metaphysically? or do you mean epistemically?
Hmm… explain the difference in this case.
Well, if you say belief in God and solipsism are metaphysically equivalent, it sounds like you're saying they contain the same metaphysical outlook.
If you say they're epistemically equivalent, it would sound like you're saying the two are the same with regard to what the holder of the belief actually knows.
Interesting. Maybe both. I’ll have to think about it more.
I agree that Kant's argument does not directly approach the thesis of solipsism. Kant introduced the goal of his Refutation as:
Quoting C Pure R, Preface B XXXIX
It is toward this end Kant figures he has overturned Berkeley and Descartes with one theorem even though they say completely different things:
Quoting ibid. B275
Descartes solved his solipsism problem through a means that Kant rejects. Both Berkeley and Descartes are taking for granted a view of the self that Kant does not.
Now Kant does say a lot of things about the "self" that involves faith. The Critique of Judgement tries to make sense of that.
A lot depends here on what you call proof and when proof is the appropriate way to go and when alternatives need to be found. I'm not sure I'm happy with intuition - it's a bit like waving a magic wand. I don't say intuition is always wrong, but it's a bit like waving a magic wand. One needs a bit more. The question is what? I'm thinking of looking at things differently. It's a question of attitude and interpretation, rather than proofs and facts.
Is that because they all assert that the world is very different from what it seems to be. I've always though that the simulation argument and Descartes' demon are equivalent. Does that count?
In that case, quantum physics would go on the list as well.
Cool. That’s all I was looking for.
Regarding idealism and the refutation thereof, in A, idealism is distinguished as empirical or transcendental. In B, idealism is distinguished as dogmatic or problematic. The introduction of a dedicated title consisting of a “new refutation” in B, meaning over and above the 4th paralogism in A, I think is just his way of uniting the former distinctions into “psychological idealism”, in order to justify his reduction of the idealism being refuted in B, to “material idealism”. In other words, empirical and transcendental idealisms have a common psychological ground, countermanded this way, dogmatic and problematic idealisms have a common material ground, countermanded that way.
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What do you think Descartes’ solipsism problem was?
What do you think the view of the self both of them held was, that Kant rejected?
In Meditations, Descartes wonders if all his experiences in the world are merely dreams and illusion. He asks if the people he sees are machines pretending to be human. He does not have the experience of making everything up, so he wonders if there is an evil demon producing the show. The recognition that a producer is needed divides the solipsism into a least two beings. Descartes opts for a good God over an evil demon which leads to a cosmological proof of said being.
The above is what Kant considers "assuming merely on the basis of faith" in his Preface of the B edition. The cogito ergo sum would seem to undermine this view with the introduction of a rational agency. I read both A and B versions of the paralogisms as a dismantling of the "ergo" part of the sentence. A slice of that pie:
Quoting ibid. B420 (The long footnote at the end of this passage gives a detailed breakdown of his reasoning)
By these criteria, solipsism is an empty statement. The judgement of what exists is a process I am engaged within but did not design. It is here that Berkeley also loses the ground to declare what is imaginary or not. Humans are in the cognition through experience business. We are not allowed into the engineering room. That is why Kant has all of our experience as active agents relate strictly to the theater of Practical Reason.
Interesting. Thanks.
I might go with causal agents rather than active, with respect to practical reason. Unless you have a special meaning for “active”.
Causal agency is the language of practical reason.
I guess I am trying to see a flip side to that where Kant says we have an experience of ourselves through intuition but that does not make us a knowable object. We don't "act" through our thinking alone that would make that possible. Kant often uses a thought experiment imagining an "intellectual intuition" we do not have. Maybe there is a kind of solipsism in that 'missing limb' approach.
If nothing else, we agree the notion of solipsism is empty, thus attempts to disprove it are foolish. At least from the perspective of our mutual reference material.
Yes.
I like the way you carefully qualified the agreement.
I agree. I think Kant constructs a system which is incompatible with solipsism. That's not the same as disproving it.
Yeah, sorry. I get skittish when language is brought into the dialectic. On the other hand, it might just be that your subtlety escaped me, re: “…language of practical reason”
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Quoting frank
I’m not sure he ever even acknowledged the concept as it is today. Like most -ism’s, it’s a cover for many books.
That doesn't even make sense...
Please do not be sorry. Being very specific about agreement and disagreement helps me look for what I am trying to find. I was not speaking ironically.
I figure we do have different views of language. I think there is a benefit in looking for an author's intent before questioning it.
D’accord.