Transcendental Solipsism

Quoting Posty McPostface

What is literally inexpressible...

I'd answer you, but I can't express the answer. :wink: :up:

Have a look at the very brief entry in Wikipedia on transcendental apperception. Except for [4] I think it’s accurate, and profound. (The reason I object to 4 is because I can’t see how ‘the unity of self' can be treated as 'an object of experience'.) Note that the introductory text - this is where the self and world are said to come together.

But the reason it’s not solipsism, is that because this is general to the nature of being for all beings. It is true for any and everyone. What it does undercut, however, is the notion of ‘mind-independent reality’ in any absolute sense. But in order to understand how it does that, you have to be able to ‘get’ the sense in which this process of apperception is real, which takes a certain kind of insight, which not everyone has. It’s a kind of ‘through the looking glass’ realisation - which Kant, for example, went through, but Hume had not.

Quoting Posty McPostface

Wittgenstein thought that his transcendental idealist doctrines, though profoundly important, are literally inexpressible.

Probably because trying to explain them is impossible for those who don't have the insight, and unnecessary for those who do.

Recall the apocryphal Flower Sermon, the legendary origin of Zen Buddhism:

In the story, ??kyamuni gives a wordless sermon to the Sangha by simply holding up a flower. No one in the audience understands except Mah?k??yapa, who smiles.

Within Zen, the Flower Sermon communicates the ineffable nature of tath?t? and Mah?k??yapa's smile signifies the direct transmission of wisdom without words.

??kyamuni affirmed this by saying:

I possess the true Dharma eye, the marvelous mind of Nirv??a, the true form of the formless, the subtle Dharma Gate that does not rest on words or letters but is a special transmission outside of the scriptures. This I entrust to Mah?k??yapa.

Heinrich Dumoulin (2005). Zen Buddhism: a history. p. 9. ISBN 0-941532-89-5.


Mah? K?shyapa, legendary forefather of Zen

Reply to Wayfarer Shame there's no 'like' button on this forum. :wink:

1. If you think you’re the only thing, who are you going to express that to?

2. The profound thing is you have to be ok with that by yourself.

Compassion is the antidote to solipsism.

Quoting Pattern-chaser

I'd answer you, but I can't express the answer. :wink: :up:

You win, good Sir.

Quoting Wayfarer

Compassion is the antidote to solipsism.

Is it?

I feel as though Wittgenstein was trying to dispell the egotism of solipsism. He remarks many times about the mystical aspect of being itself and ethics. A transcendental solipsist would be concerned with aesthetics and the ethical (which are one and the same according to Wittgenstein), due to their mystical nature.

Reply to Pattern-chaser One might be able to show it; but there is likely to be some misunderstanding.

Quoting Posty McPostface

Compassion is the antidote to solipsism.
— Wayfarer

Is it?

How could it not be?

In my view, Wittgenstein is almost always misinterpreted in terms of positivism - remember the Vienna Circle co-opted him - but he was anything but positivist.

[Wittgenstein's] style of thinking is at odds with the style that dominates our present era. His work is opposed, as he once put it, to “the spirit which informs the vast stream of European and American civilisation in which all of us stand.” Nearly 50 years after his death, we can see, more clearly than ever, that the feeling that he was swimming against the tide was justified. If we wanted a label to describe this tide, we might call it “scientism,” the view that every intelligible question has either a scientific solution or no solution at all. It is against this view that Wittgenstein set his face.

Ray Monk, Wittgenstein's Forgotten Lesson.

You would never learn that, reading what is said about him (here, for example).

Reply to Banno You had a go at me once for posting the same joke twice.

Quoting Wayfarer

I can’t see how ‘the unity of self' can be treated as 'an object of experience'.)

If "unity of self" is something more than merely a trivial matter of definition, how could we know there is a such a unity if we did not experience it?

Reply to Janus I'm not saying we don't experience it, I'm saying it is not 'an object of experience'. I mean, it is a characteristic of the nature of the subject, isn't it? When we hit our thumb with a hammer, we observe the hammer as an object, but the pain is irreducibly first-person. So it's more that the unity of self pertains to the constitution of the subject; we can think about it in a third-person way (as we're doing now) but it always appears to us as the ground of experience.

Reply to Wayfarer

I don't follow you here; if we experience something and can talk about it as something we have experienced then it qualifies as an 'object of experience' according to my understanding.

Reply to Janus Do you think the 'unity of the subject' is amenable to empirical scrutiny? Is it something you can empirically measure or sense? I mean, a hammer is an object - it has mass, location, colour, size. Does the purported 'unity of the subject' display any of those attributes?

Reply to Wayfarer

The answer to those questions is obviously 'No', but I can't see what relevance they have. Not only physical objects are objects of experience; sensations, pains, emotions, thoughts may also be; in fact they must be objects of experience if we can speak sensibly and truly about them.

But a pain or a sensation is not an object in the same way that a hammer and a nail is, surely. We can deal with them in an objective way, but I can give a completely third-person specification of a hammer or a nail. But I can't do any such thing with a pain or sensation. And I think that is highly relevant.

Reply to Wayfarer

It is only insofar as objects are visual that one can give "completely third person specifications" of them. Sounds, smells, tastes and tactile 'feels' cannot be precisely specified in the same ways. All this seems to indicate is that there are different kinds of objects of sense and somatosensory awareness with the visual being the most precisely determinate.

Reply to Janus You can give specifications of plenty of things you can't see, like software algorithms, or the chemicals that simulate flavours, and so on.

Generally speaking, an object is a 'that' to us - something we can relate to as object. I mean, all of the natural science are concerned with objects, and objective analysis, so we're talking at a very high level here. But the point about 'transcendental apperception' is that this process proceeds and lies behind all such judgements, which is something that therefore eludes objective specification.

Quoting Wayfarer

You can give specifications of plenty of things you can't see, like software algorithms, or the chemicals that simulate flavours, and so on.

All the specifications you can give are predominately given in visual terms. If not it would be spoken. Also, of course chemicals can be seen and can be tested which requires sight.

All objects are "thats" to us; that pain, that thought, that emotion, that sense of subjective unity, and so on. To me it seems that you are making certain assumptions about 'transcendental apperception', counting them as absolute truths and then drawing tendentious conclusions. Do you experience transcendental apperception? If so, the why does it not count as an objects of experience along with all the other less determinate objects of experience? If not, how do you know it exists? Can you define it into existence?

Quoting Janus

Not only physical objects are objects of experience; sensations, pains, emotions, thoughts may also be; in fact they must be objects of experience if we can speak sensibly and truly about them.

True, but there are certain experiences which do not consist of a first person point of view perceiving, sensing, or understanding something other—other relative to itself as the first person point of view which apprehends percepts, sensations, or understandings/meanings (e.g. abstractions). In these limited set of experiences the object of awareness / subject of awareness divide break down so as to no longer be. These experiences can include those of being happy and of being certain—among others, naturally including unhappiness and uncertainty.

Here it is the “I” which both is happy or certain as a subject of awareness and also, simultaneously, experiences its own happiness or certainty as the objects of its awareness. But, this latter sentence is only a poorly phrased linguistic expression. Experientially (which I intentionally differentiate from our modern understanding of “empirically”), in being happy or certain the object/subject of awareness no longer exists as a dichotomy. And it is this unified awareness of self - always changing in form in some way while likewise always remaining unchanged in being unified - that can be happy or certain which, then, cannot be an object of awareness. Again, experienced happiness or certainty is neither the object nor subject of awareness, while simultaneously being both in an undifferentiated manner while taking the form of :"that which experiences objects of awareness".

Re-expressed, happiness and certainty are examples of experiences which are not objects of awareness but, instead, constitute that which is the subject of awareness which apprehends objects of awareness.

So to say that the unified self which can experience itself to be happy/certain, etc. is itself an object of awareness/experience is a category error—for it is that to which objects of experience (including those of thoughts and imagined objects) pertain which, of itself, can be happy or certain (for example) in its so being.

Reply to javra

I agree with you that there is experience which is prior to subject/object analysis of it. In this connection and in relation to my discussion with @Wayfarer I would say that the notion of "transcendental apperception" is a very sophisticated example of an attenuated analysis founded on the notion of the subject/object divide; and not something experienced prior to it.

So, I think it is only the living actuality of pre-reflective, pre-subjective/objective experience that allows us to make the reflexive move of talking about things in terms of subjects and objects. But then we often make the mistake of projecting the entities of our analysis (such as "transcendental apperception" back into our pre-reflective experience and imagining them to be primordial and a priori 'substantive processes' as opposed to being merely conceptual modes of understanding. Whitehead calls this the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness".

Quoting Janus

the specifications you can give are predominately given in visual terms. If not it would be spoken. Also, of course chemicals can be seen and can be tested which requires sight.

There are blind scientists.

Quoting Janus

To me it seems that you are making certain assumptions about 'transcendental apperception'

I am simply discussing it, and I regard it as an important insight on the part of Kant.

Quoting javra

And it is this unified awareness of self - always changing in form in some way while likewise always remaining unchanged in being unified - that can be happy or certain which, then, cannot be an object of awareness.

Agree with your analysis.

Quoting Wayfarer

There are blind scientists.

Sure, but they must use Braille or some means of connecting with the predominately sighted community of scientists.

Quoting Wayfarer

I am simply discussing it, and I regard it as an important insight on the part of Kant.

Sure, I don't deny that it was an original and important idea at the time that Kant presented it, and that it led to further developments in philosophy. Idea are ideas, and conceptual understandings are conceptual understandings, useful or not in their contexts; even wrong ideas have led to further advancements of thought, obviously. If you don't believe that "transcendental apperception" has any substantive metaphysical provenance then I have misjudged your position.

Quoting Wayfarer

Agree with your analysis.

So do you think @Javra is saying that the unchanging unity of apperception is experientially and/or metaphysically real, as opposed to being merely a formal stipulation?

Quoting Janus

In this connection and in relation to my discussion with Wayfarer I would say that the notion of "transcendental apperception" is a very sophisticated example of an attenuated analysis founded on the notion of the subject/object divide; and not something experienced prior to it.

Then I’ve misunderstood some crucial aspect of transcendental apperception. I was previously thinking it was, in part, a way of addressing that process in which experiences of being and being are undifferentiated. Again, that awareness which is not of an object/subject divide but to which objects of awareness pertain. I’ll read on to see what unfolds. Curious to find out.

I would want to say that the unified self—“the first person point of view” as I name it—is not so much before the object/subject divide as it is at the very center of it. Taking the form of subject whenever objects of awareness are apprehended—which is pretty much whenever we’re aware of things other than those that are constituents of us as the unified self/ves (I can't stand the thought of solipsism, and that some entertain it). Words get in the way, but, for example, the moment we think of ourselves being happy/certain we then make this thought an object of our awareness—and at its core is the subject which is happy/certain in manners that do not differentiate the experience from the being which experiences. But this now seems to be somewhat tangential to the issue.

Quoting Wayfarer

Agree with your analysis.

Cheers :grin:

Quoting Janus

So do you think Javra is saying that the unchanging unity of apperception is experientially and/or metaphysically real, as opposed to being merely a formal stipulation?

Oh, to me the first person point of view is as real as anything else.

Quoting javra

Oh, to me the first person point of view is as real as anything else.

Yes, but is the first person point of view really as it is usually characterized, or is that too a reification of an abstract conceptual understanding?

Quoting Janus

Yes, but is the first person point of view really as it is usually characterized, or is that too a reification of an abstract conceptual understanding?

I’d go with the latter. In this situation, there something of the Buddhist thought that I rely on (to the extent my interpretations even come close to what was meant): The first person point of view holds real being and therefore is, yet the reified thoughts it very often ascribes to its own being—making itself an entity which, like physical objects, persists in unchanged ways over time—is erroneous. For example, I imagine the Buddhist notion of Nirvana to be the non-temporal instance wherein the first person point of view is no longer “constrained” so to speak by objects of awareness … and, somehow, gains a fully awareness of Being as foundationally being non-dualistic (or something like this). So, “neither is there a unified self nor is there not a unified self” sort of thing.

Quoting Janus

So do you think Javra is saying that the unchanging unity of apperception is experientially and/or metaphysically real, as opposed to being merely a formal stipulation?

The transcendental is 'always already the case'. All of Kant's transcendental arguments show that experience is not simply 'given' to us, that the conceptual apparatus which interpret experience must be there already before we can even experience anything whatever. Why that's important is because today's instinctive naturalism likes to think the world simply is as it is, and would be the same whether we're in it or not. But Kant shows that this can't be true. And the amazing thing is. all these centuries later, how few people understand that point. David Stove, who lectured me on Hume and positivism, among other things, was quite a well-regarded teacher of philosophy, but I don't reckon he ever got it. It takes something like a gestalt shift - speaking of which, and not that I know for sure, gestalt theory must have developed from some form of Kantianism.

Quoting javra

I imagine the Buddhist notion of Nirvana to be the non-temporal instance wherein the first person point of view is no longer “constrained” so to speak by objects of awareness

I think that's more like a description of the jhana states of 'neither perception nor non perception' and the like, which are part of the Buddhist path, but not the final aim of it.

Quoting Wayfarer

I think that's more like a description of the jhana states of 'neither perception nor non perception' and the like, which are part of the Buddhist path, but not the final aim of it.

Good to know.

----------

Edit: Maybe I was too laconic with my answer. As to Nirvana being the end of samsara, I’ve read of this, naturally. I’ve also read of many who claim to have obtained, or actualized, Nirvana … this while still in samsara, still getting hungry/thirsty ever now and then, still hurting occasionally from pains, still getting old and dying. Which to me seem rather hypocritical, if not dishonest—as compared to professing, say, “he’s gained an awareness of what Nirvana is; or of Nirvana as an aim”. But I don’t want to turn the thread into a discussion on what Buddhist notions of Nirvana entail ... a topic on which you're much better versed.

Quoting Wayfarer

the conceptual apparatus which interpret experience must be there already before we can even experience anything whatever.

I don't agree with this at all; there is pre-conceptual experience; there must be, otherwise conceptually shaped experience would never be possible. If we assume that there is no pre-conceptual experience, then we would have to say that animals cannot experience anything; which is patently absurd.

You seem to assume that those who do not agree with your interpretation therefore must not "get it"; a little confirmation-biasy and self-serving, don't you think?

Quoting Wayfarer

How could it not be?

What about enlightened self-interest? Would that qualify as something that leads to the same conclusion, although via different means?

Reply to Posty McPostface My point about compassion being an antidote to solipsism, is simply that the essence of compassion is 'feeling-with' - seeing yourself in others and others in yourself.

Quoting Wayfarer

My point about compassion being an antidote to solipsism, is simply that the essence of compassion is 'feeling-with' - seeing yourself in others and others in yourself.

I understand that much. I just was positing that it's possible to be a solipsist and be ethical under the guise of enlightened self-interest.

Reply to Posty McPostface I can't see how.

Quoting Janus

You seem to assume that those who do not agree with your interpretation therefore must not "get it"; a little confirmation-biasy and self-serving, don't you think?

It wasn't at all meant in that spirit. I don't think that Einstein really had the insight that Kant said was his 'Copernican revolution in philosophy' and I certainly don't think I'm cleverer than Einstein. I do think that Heisenberg and Bohr were likely to have that insight, based on their philosophical writings (although I'm also not nearly so clever as them, either.)

Quoting Janus

I think it is only the living actuality of pre-reflective, pre-subjective/objective experience that allows us to make the reflexive move of talking about things in terms of subjects and objects. But then we often make the mistake of projecting the entities of our analysis (such as "transcendental apperception" back into our pre-reflective experience and imagining them to be primordial and a priori 'substantive processes' as opposed to being merely conceptual modes of understanding. Whitehead calls this the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness".

So clearly there is a need here. How do we determine which parts/entities of our analysis are pre-reflective(what parts/entities could be prelinguistic and/or happen pre-reflectively)?

Reply to Wayfarer

I was not suggesting that you were claiming to be smarter than those who allegedly "don't get it". I also don't deny that people who have had certain kinds of experiences may be more inclined to think in recognizably 'spiritual' ways about issues such as the reality of transcendence.

But to characterize those who don't think these ways as 'failing to get it' is an unjustifiable move in philosophical discussion because you cannot establish the truth of such a claim by logic or empirical evidence any more than a Christian who claims that those who do not place their faith in Christ don't get it could establish their claim.

Reply to creativesoul Simple answer: we can't because no parts/ entities of analysis are pre-reflective. If you think they are, then you have committed a fallacy of misplaced concretenrss and/or succumbed to a transcendental illusion.

Quoting Janus

Simple answer: we can't because no parts/ entities of analysis are pre-reflective. If you think they are, then you have committed a fallacy of misplaced concretenrss and/or succumbed to a transcendental illusion.

That would explain some things...

Are you claiming that we cannot use complex analysis as a means for acquiring knowledge of that which existed in it's entirety prior to the analysis?

Reply to creativesoul

Of that which existed prior to any conceptualization or analysis at all, yes.

Trees?

Synapsis?

Reply to creativesoul

What knowledge of trees as existing prior to any conceptualization can you arrive at through "complex analysis"?

Pavlov's dog and it's correlations/associations between the bell and the expectation of being fed?

Are you claiming that none of these things existed prior to our analysis? That none of these things are rightfully or properly called "pre-reflective" things/entities?

Surely I've misunderstood?

Reply to creativesoul

You were speaking about knowledge of the things weren't you?

Yes.

Reply to creativesoul

So why are you, irrelevantly, asking me whether they existed prior to any conceptualization, rather than dealing with the question of whether we can preconceptually know anything about them?

Quoting creativesoul

How do we determine which parts/entities of our analysis are pre-reflective(what parts/entities could be prelinguistic and/or happen pre-reflectively)?

Quoting Janus

...no parts/ entities of analysis are pre-reflective. If you think they are, then you have committed a fallacy of misplaced concretenrss and/or succumbed to a transcendental illusion.

Quoting creativesoul

Are you claiming that we cannot use complex analysis as a means for acquiring knowledge of that which existed in it's entirety prior to the analysis?

Quoting Janus

Of that which existed prior to any conceptualization or analysis at all, yes.

Quoting Janus

So why are you asking me whether they existed prior to any conceptualization, rather than dealing with the question of whether we can preconceptually know anything about them?

I'm asking that because it is the crux of the issue, as is shown here...

The question is you ask here is irrelevant. Our knowledge of non linguistic thought and belief is existentially dependent upon language(concepts). I've never claimed otherwise.

You, however, clearly stated that no entities of analysis(which I took to mean posited within) are pre-reflective. That's quite simply not true. Seems we've misunderstood one another though.

How do we determine which parts/entities of our analysis are pre-reflective(what parts/entities could be prelinguistic and/or happen pre-reflectively)?

Try again?

Quoting Janus

What knowledge of trees as existing prior to any conceptualization can you arrive at through "complex analysis"?

I know that trees existed prior to our conceptualizations of them. My knowledge of that requires language. The trees did not. The same holds good of non linguistic(pre-reflective) thought and belief.

Reply to creativesoul

Yes, and this is utterly trivial; something merely stipulated; the trees are already taken for granted in asking what you know about them.

Not trivial at all. Quite remarkable actually given this...


Quoting Janus

...we often make the mistake of projecting the entities of our analysis (such as "transcendental apperception" back into our pre-reflective experience and imagining them to be primordial and a priori 'substantive processes' as opposed to being merely conceptual modes of understanding. Whitehead calls this the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness".

Now, to be clear, I certainly agree that we can mistakenly project the entities of complex analysis back into our pre-reflective experience. However, it is also clear that we can become aware of that which is pre-reflective solely by virtue of complex analysis.

Thus, I asked...

How do we determine which parts/entities of our analysis are pre-reflective(what parts/entities could be prelinguistic and/or happen pre-reflectively)?

Reply to creativesoul

No, the pre-conceptual existence of an entity is something merely stipulated on account of the apparently very plausible assumption that what, for example, we call a tree appears to us because of pre-conceptual conditions. What, exactly, those pre-conceptual conditions are we cannot know, since the only conditions we know are post-conceptual, or to put it another way, we know, in the sense of 'can knowingly think and speak about' only that which has been conceptualized.

So it is really inappropriate to say that the entities of our complex analyses exist pre-conceptually. Whatever it is that gives rise to our complex analyses exists pre-conceptually to be sure, but cannot be as entities for us pre-conceptually, beyond their being merely stipulated as such.

I hope that clears up your confusion, because this has been my last attempt.

Reply to Janus

That is to conflate what our knowledge of pre-conceptual entities requires with what the existence of those entities requires.

Reply to creativesoul

The absolutely independent pre-conceptual existence of entities is something illegitimately extrapolated from their necessarily conceptually shaped existence for us. If you can't see that subtle distinction in thought which is so obvious to me, then I don't believe I can help you.

Conceptual analysis led to knowledge of black holes. Black holes are pre-conceptual. Conceptual analysis led to knowledge of all sorts of mental ongoings that are prior to language, and thus pre-conceptual.

Thanks for the offer, but it seems I do not need your help.