On Solipsism
Wittgenstein famously said that the limits of my world are the limits of my language.
We can only be aware of our own mental states, just like we are or become aware of the fact that we are born with two hands. So, what's the issue with solipsism? I think, that solipsism is a bedrock belief no matter how you phrase it or a hinge proposition.
It would seem that people have some abilities or traits that are superior to our own, like intelligence. This would seem to point to prelinguistic mental abilities that are exclusive to an individual. Obviously, those traits can only be observed in action and deed; but, that does not remove the solipsistic aspect of their mental faculties.
However, there is truth to solipsism. As stated here in the Tractatus:
§5.631 There is no such thing as the subject that thinks or entertains ideas. If I wrote a book called The World As I Found It, I should have to include a report on my body, and should have to say which parts were subordinate to my will, and which were not, etc., this being a method of isolating the subject, or rather showing that in an important sense there is no subject . . .
and,
§5.64 Here it can be seen that solipsism, when its implications are followed out strictly, coincides with pure realism. The self of solipsism shrinks to a point without extension, and there remains the reality co-ordinated with it.
So, it would seem to the early Wittgenstein that solipsism is a form of pure realism in disguise. One can be aware of their own mental states and still profess an attitude of pure realism. How is that?
We can only be aware of our own mental states, just like we are or become aware of the fact that we are born with two hands. So, what's the issue with solipsism? I think, that solipsism is a bedrock belief no matter how you phrase it or a hinge proposition.
It would seem that people have some abilities or traits that are superior to our own, like intelligence. This would seem to point to prelinguistic mental abilities that are exclusive to an individual. Obviously, those traits can only be observed in action and deed; but, that does not remove the solipsistic aspect of their mental faculties.
However, there is truth to solipsism. As stated here in the Tractatus:
§5.631 There is no such thing as the subject that thinks or entertains ideas. If I wrote a book called The World As I Found It, I should have to include a report on my body, and should have to say which parts were subordinate to my will, and which were not, etc., this being a method of isolating the subject, or rather showing that in an important sense there is no subject . . .
and,
§5.64 Here it can be seen that solipsism, when its implications are followed out strictly, coincides with pure realism. The self of solipsism shrinks to a point without extension, and there remains the reality co-ordinated with it.
So, it would seem to the early Wittgenstein that solipsism is a form of pure realism in disguise. One can be aware of their own mental states and still profess an attitude of pure realism. How is that?
Comments (32)
§5.61 Logic fills the world: the limits of the world are also its limits. We cannot therefore say in logic: This and this there is in the world, that there is not. For that would apparently presuppose that we exclude certain possibilities, and this cannot be the case since otherwise logic must get outside the limits of the world: that is, if it could consider these limits from the other side also. What we cannot think, that we cannot think: we cannot therefore say what we cannot think.
Does a professed attitude really suggest certitude? I don't think so.
Some attitudes* are indubitable or nonsensical to ponder over. Like, the fact that I have two hands.
I'm not even sure talking about having two hands is an attitude. More like a groundrock belief, one that never gets's questioned.
1. The world is all that is the case.
1.1The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
So, if the world is the totality of facts, then it would seem that it is something indubitable. Obviously, facts can be relevant, something I don't think Wittgenstein incorporated into the Tractatus. However, solipsism is an indubitable fact.
http://www.tractatuslogico-philosophicus.com/#node/n1-1
A thing doesn't exist. Only facts do.
That's right, as long as it's clarified that "thing" is being used with a restricted meaning that explicitly excludes facts, or is maybe even limited to "physical" things.
There are only facts. There are no things other than facts.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Strictly speaking, all facts are things.. ...unless the meaning of "thing" has been specifically limited to exclude facts.
But not all things are facts. For instance a statement isn't a fact, but only a claim about a fact. Of course there's a fact that a statement has been made, or that there's a potential statement that could be made.
The state of affairs that is a fact is a state of affairs that relates some things. Those things, while not facts, could be called parts of that fact. ...what the fact is about. ...comprising the topic of the fact.
In general, unless otherwise specified, things are whatever can be referred to, and that includes facts as things too.
When it's (truly) said that there are no things, just facts, what is meant is that there are no things other than facts. I agree with that statement.
Michael Ossipoff
I don't know what W would say to that, but, by definition there's no such thing as an untrue fact.
If a statement isn't true, it doesn't state a fact.
A statement is a claim about a fact.
A fact is a state of affairs, or part of the way things are.
As for "certain", often we can't be certain whether or not a proposition or a statement states a fact.
Michael Ossipoff
Descartes asked in 1641 how he could know that all his experiences aren't illusions caused by an evil demon. He concluded that since God is good, God would not let such a thing happen.
Cold comfort in our secular age. But it's not a new idea.
Isn't "Solipsism" just a namecalling word used by advocates of Realism?
There's some sort of supposed, pretend-consensus, stigma implied, so that, if someone says, "That's Solipsism.", that's supposed to settle the matter against whatever position is being called "Solipsism".
My metaphysics is an Anti-Realism. There's no reason to speak of a fact-system other than (each of) our own llfe-experience story..And that system of inevitable abstract facts about hypotheticals is as valid as any other abstract fact or system of them, and is completely independent of those.
On the other hand, plainly there are plainly other abstract facts too. And the ones that make up your life-experience possibility-story aren't really different from those. And it would be chauvinistic and circular to say that the facts that aren't part of a living-being's experience-story are less valid, because validity means being part of someone's experience.
That's why I say that absolute Anti-Realism is out of the question.
Michael Ossipoff
But, then it must be true!
All that you know about this world is from your experience. ...is part of your experience. That's what your life is. The world surrounding you is merely the setting for that story.
Other people? Of course it goes without saying that your experience-story, to be self-consistent, must have you as a member of a species that begat you. Necessarily, in that story, there are other members of that species.
And, among the infinity of life-experience possibility-stories, there inevitably is one about the experience of each of those other beings too.
They're just like you, basically.
Michael Ossipoff
It might be true. But it's nihilistic. We should dismiss it because it's boring. Why did the sun rise today? My vat programmers did it. Why didn't the sun rise today? Vatprogs again.
It fails as a philosophy because it's not interesting.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Berkeley's subjective idealism, right? The world "outside" is irrelevant, all I know is my sensory impressions. And why do my sensory impressions seem consistent from moment to moment? God did it.
Berkeley was a Catholic bishop so we can understand his point of view. What was Descartes's excuse? "God makes everything work out" is not much of a philosophy either.
Then, I ask to reread the TLP passages I posted. He makes solipsism compatible with pure realism.
[quote=Bitter Crank]I would hop on you solo solipsistic soul train but I am just too busy being me to boss all the nonentities I once spawned and who now linger on. I have spawned throngs. I comprise worlds.[/quote]
I clicked on your Wittgy link and read the yellow highlighted part and I confess I didn't understand at all how that has anything to do with solipsism. Can you break this down for me? I'm not a Wittgy scholar.
They're in the OP and next post right below it.
First, it's not the case that Wittgenstein was a solipsist in the sense that you may be ascribing to him (keeping in mind that there are variations of solipsism, including linguistic solipsism), but he is sympathetic to the view that there is a metaphysical I that represents a kind of privileged view of things. The self that is associated with this privileged view is not part of the world, i.e., it's at the very boundary of the world peering in. It's also important to point out that for Wittgenstein what's beyond the boundary is what's mystical, and as such can only be shown or reflected in our actions. Remember his illustration of the eye, and the visual field of the eye. One cannot see the eye itself, the eye is behind the visual field, not in the visual field. Think of the self in this way, the metaphysical self is not part of the world, one doesn't see it in the world, although one experiences the world through the self, as one sees the world through one's eyes.
So to partly answer your question about the compatibility of realism with this kind of solipsistic view; Wittgenstein did not deny realism (if anything he affirmed realism, as I understand him), but he also did not deny a kind of privileged view of the world, which is a kind of solipsistic view, but not in the vain that you may be thinking.
There is so much more to this, but it would take much more analysis to spell it out, and it needs, again, to be seen from Wittgenstein's goal of the Tractatus.
Yes, to which I was alluding to here.
I'll repost it:
What do you think is so profoundly important about these transcendental idealist doctrines?
Subjective Idealism, sure.
No. The physical world is the setting for your experience. It's a necessary part of your experience.
Of course.
And of course there are all of the abstract facts, and it would be chauvinistic to say that the ones in your experience are the only valid ones and are somehow different or more true. I don't take Anti-Realism that far.
But the fact remains that your experience, the system of abstract facts that comprise your experience-story, is quite independent of other abstract facts, and is a universe unto itself.
That's a good question, and I don't claim to have a completely satisfactory answer to it. I'd like to hear others' explanations, from other Idealists.
Of course, if your experience-story were inconsistent, then it would no longer consist of inter-referring facts. Mutually inconsistent propositions aren't facts.
Why is there something instead of nothing? Because abstract if-then facts, and complex inter-referring systems of them, are inevitable. But, if mutually-inconsistent, they wouldn't be facts.
But who says experience has to be factual and consistent? Well, your experience is of life in a physical world, and, right there, that means that it's about a logical system of inter-referring facts. Would it be meaningful to speak of a physical world without facts? Only in a cartoon?
There are all of the abstract objects, but how much do they mean without the relations among them that we call "facts"? "Things" could be defined as what facts relate. ...parts of facts. By that definition, things would be meaningless and undefined without facts.
Does that come close to an explanation for why our experience is consistent?
Maybe the "Why is experience consistent?" question comes from the fallacy of believing in metaphysically-meaningful isolated things.
That seems confirmed by the Witgenstein quote that there are no [independently metaphysically-meaningful?] things, just facts.
Of course, if things are defined as what can be referred to, then facts are things. But when referring to something, you make a statement implied to be a fact, which just means that fact can also be a thing, as part of another fact, something that another fact or claimed-fact is about.
Just as we tell a Biblical Literalist, "What makes you think that God needed to contravene the physical laws of His creation? What makes you think we weren't created via and in keeping with physical law?", we could ask the same thing, with respect to metaphysics, of someone who wants to portray God as an element of metaphysics.
Michael Ossipoff
There are some very interesting ideas contained in Wittgenstein's thinking. I don't agree with some of it, but it has expanded my thinking. No matter how much I read his writings I always seem to learn more.
One has to be careful trying to fit Wittgenstein's thinking into some neat philosophical theory.
I included in this post PMS Hacker's book. I will try and read and post what I think he says from that passage.
And so on. All can be found on pages 99 henchforth.
Well, I haven't claimed that it's objectively, "concretely" (whatever that would mean) real.
We've had it hammered into us, from elementary-school and on,that it goes without saying that there's this "concrete", objectively real, brute-fact, physical world.
And, whether explicitly expressed, as it always is, by naive Materialists, or just felt and not expressed, by subconsciously Materialist people familiar with philosophy, who know better than to actually say it, I claim that that long-ingrained teaching referred to in the paragraph before this one, is the basis for why people have a problem with logical Idealism.
Another objection that I sometimes hear:
Some people object that a logically-based metaphysics, based on inevitable abstract facts, takes away the indeterminacy that they expect or want.
Of course there's indeterminacy, even in metaphysics. I can't prove that the objectively-real physical world of Materialism doesn't superfluously exist, as an unverifiable, unfalsifiable brute-fact, alongside of, and duplicating the events and relations of, the inevitable logical system that I describe.
But there are definite things that can be uncontroversially-said in metaphysics. But metaphysics doesn't embody or describe all of Reality. There's definitely indeterminacy, and matters that we don't and can't know--But, for the most part, they aren't in metaphysics.
Metaphysics has a lot in common with science. Definitions need to be well-specified, and consistently-applied, Statements need to be supported. Assumptions should be avoided. Unnecessary brute-facts should be avoided. Definite things can be uncontroversially-said.
Unfalsifiable, unverifiable propositions are rightly suspect.
And, like physics, metaphysics isn't, and doesn't describe, all of Reality.
Michael Ossipoff
And so on...
I am quite aware that the solipsism professed in the Tractatus is not of narcissistic of vain attitude. Rather Wittgenstein, from my readings, professed an attitude of humility and selflessness (mentioned in the OP) by professing solipsism.
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