Essentially you do it below.
But it seems like you are arguing from the way people think things are - a world where they dream of and imagine things based on things ‘out there’ to counter the solipsist. But to the solipsist such the world you are using as the baseline is imaginary to him or her. It doesn’t work as evidence for him or her.
No. I didn’t say anything about imaginings having to be as anything “out there”. I just stated that they might represent the proposed “out there” being argued, in response to the presumed argument against the definition that existence is that which has affect (an “out there” really isn’t a part of the issue any more).
The ball is in his court to deny the definition or prove it to be incoherent (which ain’t gunna hapn).
They represent the proposed out there to us, but not to him. To him they are like parts of a lucid dream. He doesn’t have to identify, the way we do, with a subject perceiving objects, but rather with the bracketed phenomenon. This universe/he is ‘this experience.’ Rather than an ‘I’ seeing ‘dream objects’ around itself.
Sort of like some mystics sense of unification with everything, though they tend not to say there might be other centers also.
I think that maybe you’re missing my point.
What they represent isn’t an issue. The issue is whether what they ARE and perhaps what they represent “has affect” and therefore exists.
Well, we’re likely writing past each other. In a solipsists world things just are. Or really ‘the thing just is’. This moment, then the next. And facets of that self that is all of that experience are or really ‘is the self in that moment’. There’s no affecting in that universe. Just this is(ing). The solipsist’s experience is not at all like ours with ideas of cause intermingled with our senses.
Let’s say there is a happiness and a beautiful woman ‘facet’ of the moment.
There is no cause or affecting or effect.
There are just these portions of that moments self, none causing the others.
Well, I think you are still missing it.
Or maybe I am missing your connection to it.
I think we need a typical solipsist. There have been a few on here. It is a popular promotion in these days of decline.
yes, though frankly, I think I can handle a defensive position as a solipsist better than most solipsists. And then many of them, if not most, go on the offensive, which is optimistic in the extreme.
“Solipsism (Listeni/ˈsɒlɨpsɪzəm/) is the philosophical idea that only one’s own mind is sure to exist.”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism
If this is how “solipsists” believe, I guess we can go a head and argue against the core belief of “sure to exist”, like James seems to be trying.
Since our own mind isn’t clear all the time, we can’t simply be sure that it exist all the time.
What we are dealing with might be something like a peace of floating (and fading, disappearing) image that reflect a portion of it and cause chain reaction so that one part recognize that it is recognizing.
I don’t see something very “sure”, in this type of thing, and not really “existing” especially in the way materialists would like to think.
I feel that We can put core beliefs of different types on the line like this:
God believers — Materialists (replacing eternal God with eternal materials) — Solipsists (replacing eternal material existence with eternal mind)
They believe (god, material objects, mind) are “sure thing”, absolutely undeniably unconditionally certain, and the reliable foundation to all their thoughts.
Materialists replaced god with material objects because they thought god isn’t so sure.
Similarly, solipsists may have replaced material objects with the mind as we can’t get direct information about material world.
But they all are doing the same thing of searching something sure and absolute, and clinging on the best option (for then, for the moment) they found.
So, we can probably argue against them all, that what they believe to be certain isn’t so certain, asking the prove for their cases.
Yeah, they use both concepts with the same word. I only run across the “all that exists is the mind” types.
But if anyone cares to get into actual proofs for or against any of those ontologies, I can provide that.
Moreno, maybe you could stand in as a true hearted solipsist with which ever concept is comfortable. 
The solipsist model has subject-subject perception: that we use different words is not relevant, there is perception of an other. It has some form of mental substrate that is every bit as complex as the physical substrate, keeping track of the position of the planets and the multiplication of bacteria, everything. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t have the same explanatory power and Occam’s Razor doesn’t apply. A vast subconscious mind as complex as the universe or a vast physical universe that complex is ultimately no different - you have a monist view, and apply different words to the ground substance.
Insofar as it’s identical in content and doesn’t affect one’s actions, it doesn’t work any better. If anyone thinks it feels great, I’d suggest that there is some effect on their assumptions and actions. If that improves people, good for them; I haven’t seen any solipsist charity drives or benevolent institutes. Insofar as there’s a danger of introversion and ignoring the people around one, it’s undesirable, whether I’m solipsist or not: if I’m not, then other people really exist and are potentially the poorer for ones lack of engagement (unless the person in question is such a monumental prick that everyone’s better off with them gazing at their navel than interacting with anyone 
), and if I am then you don’t exist and I’m right 
If the other is not real, why are you arguing with it? What is “real”, in that case, and why is “reality” even an important attribute if everything you experience and all the people you interact with are not “real”? I doubt you live your life as if your parents, friends, lovers are not real, so why philosophically argue you believe otherwise? It seems like sophistry gone wrong. If you do live your life that way, my apologies.
Interesting take on it. I think there is a clear tendency to believe oneself to be something other than the universe, and to believe mankind is something other than nature, and that this leads to unclear and potentially harmful thinking. Seeing oneself as a part of a continually changing continuum of existence is subtly different from saying that you are existence, though.
Occam’s Razor only applies to the decision between two equally true things.
The simpler one is the one to accept and use. It doesn’t have anything to do with deciding which is false.
Not necessarily. Simplicity can be sacrificed for explanatory power.
So basically you are saying that the self is everything…why the fuck would I want to believe that (given the stupidity of the premise…I am not the same thing as the hedge in my garden) .I sense that there is separation between things …even though we all exist in the same “gloop”.
I am a witness to reality, not the cause of it. I know I am not the cause of it unless I am willing to believe that the mind can be utterly removed (unaware of) from its own production. Now I can obviously invest (believe) in that idea, but as someone else points out, that would be childish.
What other people think I am only has a loose connection to reality…some looser than others.
Agree 100%.
Not if death ends in nothingness. If death ends in nothingness, then “existence” proper ends at your death. If “existence” ends at your death, you = existence insofar as death of you = end of existence. What ends at the end of existence? Why you do, of course. The terms are not as distinct as you seem to think, I don’t believe. The idea that the “continually changing continuum of existence” continues to exist after my death means it too is synonymous with nothing, as nothing exists after my death (and even in the context of this discussion strikes me as a figment of your imagination: “that thing that will still be here after you’re dead”; “oh? what might that be? tell me what it looks like”).
Now, if death ends in something other than nothingness, there are different possibilities here.
But he said “as part of”, presumably meaning existence includes, but extends beyond, you.
Perhaps you missed the opening line of my other post on this thread.
I’m not quite sure how you can assert that declaring oneself as a Solipsist is popular, when the only people who even know about the concept are going to be philosophers, this is one of the biggest philosophy forums on the entire internet, and yet only one person outright “promotes” themself as a Solipsist… me.
Bertrand Russell once received a letter from an eminent logician, saying that she was a Solipsist, and was surprised there were no others - which invoked a terribly predictable response from BR that her surprise surprised him. It is absolutely no contradiction for one Solipsist to exist beside another, since there is no imperative for everyone’s accounts of their perception to be compatible in order for them to make most sense by themselves, nor is there any imperative for them to be consistent in order to reflect any notion of “truth”.
As I have already said, the irrational social instinct is so very strong in humans that even their desire to fit in with others overrides their own internal logical consistency.
One can only know one’s own experience. Period.
It sounds like you’re having trouble with the notion that a Solipsist can distinguish between “real” and “imaginary”, presumably because you’re partly trying to conflate “real” with “exists” yet simultaneously conceding that there is existence to mental representations or symbols etc. that are commonly said to not exist.
Even to the non-Solipsist, non-existence is a problem. Either stance has to make your same conflation in order for existence to have any meaning - being that only “real” things are those that “exist”, which are identified as being real because they fit in with the narrative that we learn to accept as the real one. More accurately, it’s democratically decided as “real”, because you yourself could be the “insane” one when everyone else does not regard your perceptions as real - or having the necessary “affect”, as you say, to qualify as such. Needless to say, when dreaming, people often lose track of whether their perceptions are real, because everything else seems to match up just as it does when you’re awake, except then you wake up and feel stupid.
In short, such problems are not specific to either Solipsists or others.
So because a child can accept it, it is childish. Not an argument.
So creationists are also childish. I am not a creationist, nor do I regard anti-Solipsists as being immune to the “childish” tendancy of disregarding all evidence to the contrary of their belief(s), for example (as I just said earlier in this post) one can only know one’s own experience(!)
Most solipsists, just like other drones, don’t know what they are.
You are unusual in that you admit to many things that most people wouldn’t even if they knew.
THAT is going to be your argument??
You’re kidding right?
IF not (shaking head)… please distinguish “real” from “exists”.
I would say seemingly equally and seemingly equally true. If we know they are both true then we can use either one.