Sadly true.
Erm… thanks? I think? Not quite sure what you’re trying to imply here.
This wasn’t my argument, I was just half-heartedly pointing out the absurdity of trying to claim certain things do not exist, whilst still claiming they exist in some way. Not that it has anything to do with Solipsism.
That said, my argument is that one can only know one’s own experience…
Women are too subjective to look at anything else but their ass. 
Our immediate perceptions and emotions, which are ours alone, may not be shared and passed on. However, once we express them or speak about them to others, be it our feelings or our ideas, they are passed on and are added to an accumulation of all that mankind has known, felt and experienced.
I undertand there are various perspectives.
“You are existence manifesting consciousness” is how I would put it.
Define “experience” (if you don’t want to use “existence”) and “to know”.
Although I still don’t see how you would get away from “exists”.
Wow!
Thank you very much for all your intellectually challenging, exciting, fantastic and interesting answers and your great commitment to this, to say the least from a philosophical (metaphysical) sense, difficult issue. I take all your answers very seriously and will take time for me to answer, because I want to be clear, and then I do not master the English language fully. Do not hesitate to correct me in terms of language. It makes me very happy. But I will with very high precision answer all your posts, each one separately, one at a time, in peace and quiet, but choose right now to just put in a dialogue that I’ve had in a Swedish Philosophy online forum, with one of the few who actually made interesting comments to the question of solipsism. I call her/him A.
I fully understand if you do not have the time or want to read through this post, but if you do, I would appreciate that you really criticize what I write as much as you can, and I mean really a tough review!
The dialogue with A:
Dialogue on solipsism on a Philosophy Forum
Solipsism
Created by Fredrik Tue, July 13, 2010 13:28:19
My question:
Can I get a really good arguments for and against solipsism?
Fantastic A!
Finally both a serious, thoughtful and interesting response to my question! Fun and exciting! It is this that is the philosophy for me to read others’ thoughts and ideas, arguments and counter-arguments about things. It warms my philosophy heart and stimulates my mind as the answers to the various interventions seem relevant, informed, thoughtful and interesting - obviously a subjective judgment.
So thank you so much for the post!
So to what you write:
A wrote:
Solipsism can neither be proved or disproved. But I can not logically refute that the cosmos was born when I was born there while I was there, and goes by when I pass away, and that what is happening in what I call the world is nothing more than reflections of various events at different levels, conscious and unconscious, in my own consciousness.
I wrote:
What an interesting perspective - otherwise it is usually just turn up lots of unfounded objections. Funny that you think differently and based on a “holistic approach”! I can not see it any other way than that it is precisely so that it is neither possible to prove or disprove on a logical level . . . would be interesting if someone has convincingly succeeded!
A wrote:
From a common sense point of view, everyday solipsism nonsense. When this approach is not for me makes my life more interesting and easier to live or increase my understanding of life, I’ll drop it. Solipsism may be true but it doesn’t interest me. I have no use for it. There is no theory that works well and it can neither be falsified or verified. In this respect, it can be called nonsense. In this matter, I am a pragmatist.
I wrote:
I can not but agree with you about “nonsense factor” based on a pragmatic and rational perspective and to have solipsism as philosophy or belief is perhaps unusual. So yes, you would think things emotionally for example solipsism or other philosophical problems. This makes the certainly not the ontological question less interesting, because philosophy function is well to question, find arguments and counterarguments, etc. What you then “think” or “feel” is another issue. But just as the ontological problems often become incredibly complicated because they are confused with the semantic problem, so also the same phenomenon occur with feelings related to the query scaffold actual nature. Whether a philosophical question is interesting or not for the individual, yes there is another issue and for me solipsism is interesting from one, partly metaphysical perspective (how reality is constituted), and from an argument analytical perspective (what we can rationally argue our way for etc).
A wrote:
It also requires a lot of ad hoc additions to explain such why I run into things I do not want to experience. Then I have to make the addition that it is something I deeply subconsciously inside me still wants to experience.
I wrote:
I disagree with you about ad hoc extensions. For, in the solipsistic state, there is no more than what is currently perceived. Nothing more. It is precisely the difference between solipsism and science/religion, in which we transcends beyond our direct experience (phenomenology) and just adds to phenomena (or noumena) such as, for example, the Andromeda Galaxy, quarks, places we’re not in right now, the future and the past, God, angels, creation stories etc. You write that you may encounter things you do not want to experience. That’s not an argument against solipsism. Think more on solipsism as a static state of being in a passive function where things just “happen”. . . like when you are watching TV (no similarities otherwise). That we call the I or the self has nothing to do with solipsism and can not affect the outcome of the solipsistic state. There is only one life that is experienced and thus lost all ad hoc supplements. Hummm. . . This can obviously not be explained in any simple way with every day language as the language has evolved in harmony with science and religion (if not the world is solipsistic, of cause).
NOTE! Passivity (the non-action structure of the solipsistic state) is my sharpening solipsism! [see text after this dialogue]. Without the sharpening, I agree with you that solipsism is weakened and may even collapse as a metaphysical idea. I also find it hard to see how any kind of “I” could shape the world as it would naturally, without being aware of it, etc. A dreaming person doesn’t control the dream world, but despite this, it is a private experience. This metaphor is not the best, but it still denounces the fact that you may well experience something alone and lonely without for that matter, control it, decide it or have created it.
A wrote:
Solipsism thus fall by applying Ockham’s razor on it because it will require a lot of ad hoc in order to be able to explain my and fate of the world fully.
I wrote:
For Ockham’s razor refers to the simplest explanation of a phenomenon, and nothing could well be a simpler explanation for a perceived life than it is solipsistic - all other theories (religion and science) adds noumena-complexity to the world. For example, God or superstring would exist, which none of them are included in the private phenomenological experience.
[i]Best regards
Fredrik[/i]
PS. Let me again clarify (for the sake of the discussion) that I personally isn’t a solipsist or think of it as my world view. What I like is to discuss philosophy and solipsism is for me an interesting platform to do it from outside - it weaves fact into ontology, phenomenology, and more on one of my intricate ways. The reason why I repeat this statement is because people tend to focus on that (my psychological state of mind) instead of the metaphysical question in itself.
Sharpening of solipsism
Solipsism
My thoughts on Solipsism and a reduction and/or sharpening of it
The idea of solipsism, as described generally (in encyclopedias and various philosophers and discussion forums), is that the only thing that exists is that what is generally called, “I” and that I’s experience here and now. I am alone and my experience is what the world is. Everything else is my assumptions about a world that actually can not be verified in real time, or at all. So if solipsism is true it can metaphorically be compared with a dream that is equal to everything and with the difference that there is no other “reality” to wake up to. What I experienced here and now is the world. Nothing more. The world is immanent, in other words, non-transcendent. Nothing is behind the current state. I want to sharpen the concept by adding the following provision:
The I has no intentionality but feel that “it” has this (an “illusion”). So anything that is normally considered to be real and true as time, space, consciousness of others, objects or historical events (and future) are specifically “parts” (elements) of this private dream. From an ultra-skeptical ontological approach can clearly say that no other existence than the solipsist state. This is what is called the world.
What happens to the ontology and its concept of if solipsism is true?
Again: My sharpening of the concept (the phenomenon of solipsism) does not mean that I (personally) is a solipsist, but it treats the ontological problem as such!
A priori truths
Then a priori truths such as “all bodies are extended in space,” “there are no round triangles” or “I exist” can really be said to be linguistic constructions or more describe our psychological approach to the outside world, they are not more than a component of the solipsist state (part of it). This in turn is rooted in both the language and the psyche is not any own objective quantities. If we imagine that solipsism is true and everything is one condition that manifests itself as an experiencing agent (although this agent does not really have its own mind), then it is a phenomenon such as language and psyche merely projections in this state. This position, about a priori truths, I have to some extent regardless of worldview.
Transcendence = when we assume things that can not be verified directly (noumena). For example, I guess right now the city of New York exists as a separate objective phenomenon in the world beyond my phenomenological experience although I sense in principle have any evidence for that.
This idea is only a state of the solipsist condition and not something that points to a real phenomenon in the world. Transcendence as such thus included as an internal object in the solipsistic state.
Objective / subjective
These concepts lose their meaning when there is no dichotomy of a world where both an experiencing subject and an objective independent world exists.
Morality
Morality is merely a projection, since there is neither a moral entity or a moral agent, etc. Reduced to a concept just like everything else.
Meaning (of Life)
Possibly intrinsikal, but somewhat ad hoc.
Free will
Free will may well be discussed regardless of the world order that applies. It’s really hard to get it to work in both a scientific approach and also a religious one. Because there is something other than the solipsist existence / state, there’s not even something to choose from. For this reason disappears possibility of free will in a solipsistic world. Additionally the experiencing agent the I is solely an illusion (it is a problematic term) in this experience and hence there is not anyone who can choose.
Time
The idea of time is based on the fact that something has preceded the present (past) and that something will be done after the present (future). These two phenomena is not something that is experienced more than memories and beliefs and therefore solely the existence of the way of the solipsist existence. When I refer to the phenomenal memory and future projection. For this reason, the time can not be said to exist as a single parameter or quantity. The sense of flow, and movement of Now transience is so even that only a part of the solipsist state. The condition is actually static, it is just simply (immanent from any perspective).
Birth & Death
The solipsist experience includes witnessing “other” birth and death, but not its own (note that these “other”, that animals and humans are part of the solipsist state). For this reason, no birth and death to be anything other than components of the solipsist life and neither the beginning nor the end of ditto (also is not time valid in a form other than as a solipsistic illusion, just as the external space and consciousness of others).
Unconsciousness, sleep
Permits only “witnessed” by the “non-existent” self as a delusional phenomenon of “other”. This reasoning is extremely advanced to explain because it easily slips into the thought patterns that refer to a casual, non-solipsistisk common-sense view of the world where time is a “real” factor.
Property
No properties exist in addition to the possibility that the solipsist state (somewhat ad hoc) could be considered to have the property of being with its complement of not being (nothingness). Note, however, that the term “nothingness” and “acting” solely are abstractions of the solipsist life and thus not valid from ontological perspective.
Authenticity
The only authentic is the solipsist state.
Self, psyche and body
What in everyday speech called the self, consciousness or psyche is the solipsist state specifically the illusion or perception of such. So when the self in the solipsist experience eg see their own hands in front of him, experiencing an emotional state or have a certain relation to the world around them, then it is only a part of the solipsist state and nothing else.
True and false
Is linguistic concept that refers to something that is or is not in a non-solipsistic world. In a solipsistic world lacks the significance which nothing can be true or false because it specifically is the solipsist condition which constitutes the world. Possibly the only true is the solipsistic state (“here and now”). Everything else false. (Debatable)
Religion
Construction (incorrectly attempted description of the state). God is considered to have created the world, and / or affect the world. None of this is valid for the solipsistic world. God can thus rejected or held equivalent to the solipsist state if one with God means what is.
Science
Construction (incorrectly attempted description of the state). Science requires an objective world outside of the conscious self. A world that can be understood by means of empirical studies. Since there is no such external world in the solipsist state is not the scientific model valid.
Q & A:s
When the solipsist state means the illusion of “someone” who experience a world and asking questions about this world is these issues, just like everything else, some of the solipsist state and nothing else. For example, if it is experiencing a life asking questions about this life in the belief that there are answers that transform either outside the actual experience (the current immanent amount of qualia, the phenomenal), this is also solely a state and nothing else.
Abstractions & thoughts
Ideas, dreams, consciousness (so also the reflexive consciousness) and symbols like the number 5 is just like everything else a phenomenon in the solipsist state and no objective independent.
Cause & effect
All forms of scientific laws, logical statements, “necessary conditions”, accepted norms, patterns and inductive conclusions are merely elements of the solipsist condition and has no ontological or objective meaning or solid ground.
Common to all the above phenomena and / or concepts is that they are in a solipsistic world loses its meaning and function like natural laws, and space-time in what scientists call the singularity.
The conclusion is that if the world is solipsistic so is everything that we normally refer to and which can be said to be part of the non-solipsistic common-sense world view only projections without any real substance, which together form a single state whose that is the solipsist existence, reality.
So why doesn’t I have a solipsistic world view?
Do I for my self have any arguments against solipsism? No, I do not have such arguments. But I’m all for “off tracked” of the vivid everyday clear phenomenal projections to feel that solipsism is true. You can compare it with the Necker’s cube (the one that can be seen in two ways). I’m inclined to see the cube in a certain way when I just look at it spontaneously. But if I sharpen myself, concentrate, I can, however, see it the other way. None of them is wrong. I relate myself thus agnostic to solipsism and can solely through philosophical and intellectual effort to get into a feeling that it is not at all impossible that the world is solipsistic.
“Mistakes” committed
A major error made when (philosophers and scientists) have treated solipsism of all time is that they have imagined it from a non-solipsistic common-sense perspective. Obviously it will be wrong to say that the world is solipsistic about the same time it is not. Of course it’s stupid and unthinking act as if the world were solipsistic because you can not know how it is.
If the world is solipsistic it means clearly that there is an experience of a non-solipsistic (everyday) life. Another mistake is to think that the solipsist experience (state) is created by an agent, it is a subconscious function, or a fantasy in the mind of someone (me, the experienced I or self). All these concepts are included only in the solipsist life and is not the actual process behind it. If it is at all possible to speak of cause solipsistic “experience” it is certainly not something external or underlying, but the state itself that is all. Equally difficult to explain as a Qualia (eg how it is to experience red), but certainly not more opaque or crazy than all ideas of God, or for that matter, string theory, or any multi-dimensional universe. Maybe even more likely? Moreover, there is no reason to see solipsism as an egocentric worldview. However, it becomes an egocentric effect by acting as if solipsism was true in case it is not, ie if it actually is that we believe in everyday life as a convinced solipsist (which also acts accordingly) perceived as egocentric. But it has nothing to do with the ontology and metaphysics of solipsism.
It is instead a total reduction of self (agent, subject) to a mere projection in a static state. A me who actually does not exist more than a static mode of existence.
Solipsism and society
Important to add is that if solipsism as a philosophy or idea has no function in society. Religion and science can be used both constructively and destructively in both economic relations as well as in power relations. Both world images can also give hope and meaning of life. Acts may be exercised in the name of God (religion) or in the name of science, acts that have both good or bad effect on society and its citizens. Solipsism is no such thing, which somehow makes it slightly more credible (?), because it is just a pure theory of the world of existence and does not claim otherwise.
Is there reason to believe in solipsism?
Have we (read: me) good reasons to assume that solipsism is true? First, one can start by taking a look at the world views which are most common in virtually all societies, namely 1) the belief in religion and thus God, and 2) the belief in science and materialism. These two approaches to the world’s nature can of course be further broken down into categories and subcategories, but it is not necessary for the discussion itself.
Both of these world views are based on aggregating the information to what we can directly know or direct experience (called epistemological transcendence).
1) Religion adds phenomenon as God, angels, heaven, hell, souls, creation story, paradise etc. These will, as previously stated, in different packaging depending on the religion, but can be broadly summarized in the above manner. In other words, based on religious worldview on an explanatory model where, in order to understand the world, you must add the phenomena that can not be verified directly.
2) The scientific worldview does exactly as religion, which adds phenomena: the theory of evolution, the Big Bang, galaxies, quasars, the universe itself, DNA, elementary particles, different natural laws, extra dimensions, relativity, etc.
Although we have no direct knowledge of these phenomena without drawing conclusions about its existence by studying the world through our senses and so-called rational thinking. Example: We have seen the images of various phenomena, but not the phenomena itself, eg Andromeda Galaxy.
Note that both 1 and 2 really requires to cross beyond the phenomenal border to be verified as true from an objective view (note, the risk of confusion). I refer to this absolute knowledge! Maybe what Kant would call the things in itself.
Most people believe that any of these, or in some cases, both world pictures (1 and 2) are true. Why is that? Well, partly because they alone (and to some extent together) appears coherent and provides answers to many questions, that is epistemologically elaborate. In addition, “fit” the more or less well with a common-sense understanding of the nature of the host where the individual does not need to question the most fundamental experience of the world. This is actually good reason to believe both of them, and even to be convinced that the world is in one of these ways. Epistemology of religion and science can be axiomatic questioned (here I speak of an absolute knowledge), which can quickly come to when, as the incredibly inquisitive, continue to ask questions in an infinite regress.
As you quickly discover that all knowledge about the world (whether religious or scientific) is based on an epistemological “castle in the air” without roots in something, an epistemological loop. It may be reasonable to assume that there actually is nothing outside the direct experience and that everything that is added in the two aforementioned world images are only projections (cross) in this experience. If this is accepted, then you go on to the stage of explanatory models based entirely on the direct experience that can not convey more information than what is included in it and the curious can get a single clear answer to all questions: Solipsism.
[i]Yours sincerely
Fredrik [/i]
PS. I will answer all post as soon as I have more time, I promise. Sorry for my poor English.
Hummm thanks!
Ah, interesting. What fun that you want to share this. Is it a feeling you have or is it your conclusion, by your rational thinking?
Yes it is indeed tricky and somewhat of an abstraction level, difficult to manage, but like you say, maybe the essence of ontology.
Ok, thanks for the information - I will check them out.
Best regards
Fredrik
Thank you!
I have no specific person in mind, but the mere intellectual and linguistic challenge and have a great curiosity about the answers that come up. These answers might as well be a kind of immantent condition and there is no clear evidence that they have their origin from something outside the phenomenological experience. This is what is puzzling.
But how do you decide that this is not just a private experience not related to any external, beyond your phenomenology?
Absolutely! This is a theoretical philosophical topic and not something that has a direct effect on the everyday pragmatic life. This everyday existence may occur without obvious to include how the world is constituted. Many acts on different assumptions about all kinds of strange things. One can very well imagine that we live our lives along the way we think the world is, while the world is in a completely different way. But the question remains. Is there any argument totally refutes solipsismen?
Best regards
Fredrik
Why would that someting that feel like an I have control of it state which is this I? In a control situation it requires the two systems: The controlling and controlled (not solo). The solipsist state is only an experience of being that which constitutes the feeling of I (me) being in the world, but not the self and the world itself.
Ok, so if everything is merely mental objects in a sea of non-objectivity and non-subjectivity, what proves that you share this sea of other mental systems other than your own?
Best regards
Fredrik
Yep, it’s a big difference to decide whether solipsismen is true and to meet the one that says it is true. Both are challenging in their different ways.
best regards
Fredrik
Are you saying that what children perceive, think and say in principle, can not be correct?
Best regards
Fredrik
How do you know?
Your immediate perceptions may be that of someone telling you they have been shared and passed on.
How can you have access to a passed-on-perception in order to definitely know it, except, again, through your own immediate perception?
Experience is the entirety of one’s sensory perceptions. Everything you directly see, smell, hear, touch, taste and feel: whether emotionally, to do with temperature, body position, pleasure/pain, balance, hunger, thirst, tiredness, whatever.
Knowledge is anything you can confirm by the appropriate use of the above, nonexhasutively listed perceptive faculties.
Knowledge precedes anything that can be said about existence. To say anything about existence that you cannot know is to speculate, which means that existence cannot yet be attributed to such things. I define existence as a product of knowledge, which is a product of experience. Therefore existence is that which can be confirmed by direct experience/sensory perception.
Non-existence is therefore that which cannot be confirmed by direct experience/sensory perception.
All this necessitates a limbo state between existence and non-existence for things that appear to be confirmable, yet have not been confirmed: the possible. This means knowledge and existence are very closely related, but the latter depends on the former and not the other way around.
Okay, so experience involves sensing “something” or “being affected by something” (thus “something must exist”). No problem.
Hmm… you have said that “knowledge” is the thing itself that has been confirmed. I don’t think that is what you intended, but then, that wasn’t my question either. I had asked what “to know” means, not what “knowledge” is.
Several issues in that.
What “can be said” or what “cannot yet be attributed” isn’t of concern in this, because we are talking about “what is” regardless of any inherent ability to be said, attributed, or even confirmed.
The definition that you offered, “existence as a product…”, seems a bit presumptuous and preemptive for circular reasoning.
The entire issue is actually whether existence is the product or the mind experiencing it is the product.
What is history? Experience or will to power?
Mathematics are a priori knowledge… there is pure reason…
Not everything is experimentally provable.
An abstraction; your understanding and knowledge of the past. Nothing more or less.
It seems that solipsism is a form of determinism, it’s for people that feel choice and control is beyond them.I feel that I have degrees of choice and control, don’t you?
More accurately, it would be better to say that instances of knowledge are the things in themselves that have been confirmed.
This is a trivial syntactic rearrangement, the semantic meaning is the same.
To know is to be able to confirm by the appropriate use of one’s perceptive faculties.
“What is” can only be attributed to something that is known to “be”, by virtue of it being directly perceived. And in order for it to be known by being directly perceived, it has to be able to be known. Ability to be known, and thus to be known to exist, precedes existence in terms of importance.
I would have the opposite of this quote be true. Imagine reasoning that could not end with what it began with! - that would certainly be a concern and an indication that something had gone astray. I understand the preference for the feeling of “getting somewhere” and folly is brilliant for exploration, however if truth is the concern then I would recommend the desire not be misled.
What is your distinction here, other than perhaps an implication that the latter would be akin to illusion? I think concepts such as “the mind” are unnecessary for Solipsism as there is no “not-mind” to give “mind” any meaning.
No. It’s not.
anyone who can stomach discussing it will never truly understand it
You “would have”???
I certainly believe that.
But we aren’t talking about what you “would have”.
Logical validity requires that you not get your wish and not begin with an axiom that is merely your chosen conclusion.
Else what is the point in even discussing anything or claiming anything to be “true” or “false” or “what is” or “what isn’t”?
The discussion concerned “proof”.
Proof requires reasoning.
Reasoning requires non-circular logic.
Else I can declare proof merely be asserting that Solipsism isn’t true because since it isn’t, it can’t be.