Some questions about solipsism, omnipotence, omniscience

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

The solipsist claims there’s some ghost in his own machine, a sort of “observer” existing in there, somehow. This doesn’t mean its mechanism can be understood thru science, as it could be immutably hidden, sort of like light that falls outside what the human can see, except there are tools equivalent to those which allows ppl to see infrared, ultraviolet, etc light. Thus the mechanism allowing the solipsist to be conscious it would remain hidden, at least until the death of the solipsist. My 1st question is what makes the solipsist unique? If there’s a mechanism, whycan’t it proliferate, allowing for multiple observers? Sure, at one point there was only a single train engine or computer in existence, but as soon ppl knew how to make them, more were made. So 2nd question is, would an omnipotent being be able to nullify solipsism by creating more observers? My 3rd question is, would an omniscient being be able to confirm whether solipsism is true or not?

But non of this matters if omnipotence & omniscience are incoherent, impossible, etc. As a 4th question, can a being that exists temporally/within space & time be omnipotent &/or omniscient? I’ve been reading a bit lately about how omniscience is supposedly incoherent due to set theory, sth about barber’s paradox & set of all sets & cantor’s proof. I’m still reading up on it but in short it just seems to me like the ideas of omniscience & omnipotence are rather… problematic. & if one can’t be truly omniscient & omnipotent, then I don’t see how solipsism can be refuted.

The point of having those attributes would to be create an inescapable absolute, an upper ceiling which even solipsism can’t get away from. After all if you aren’t omniscient, there’s always the chance you’re just a simulation, ensuring solipsism remains coherent. So it could be turtles all the way down, an infinite regress. But could there be a way to stop the infinite regress? For example if our universe A is actually caused by universe B which is actually caused by universe C which is actually caused by our universe A then we come full circle. In a sense our universe would be self-caused, altho we wouldn’t know what’s going on in universe B or C. It seems to stop the infinite regress, but it raises my 5th question: so what? Does this ouroboros actually change anything or is it still all the same at the end of the day? I suppose an omniscient being would have to know the contents of universe B & C…

The 6th question I want to ask is about the divide of conscious/subconscious mind that solipsism seems to imply… like the subconscious is creating everything. But would this imply the subconscious has its own consciousness too, in a weird way? If there’s some kinda synergy, feedback process between the subconscious & the conscious, wouldn’t the consciousness of the consciousness sort of “echo” back into the subconscious? Or would any consciousness in the subconscious just be a “fake”, kinda like how a mirror reflects a similar image to the real deal?

7th, final question… If solipsism is true, then it is likely the solipsist has numerous lives, possibly even a googoplex of them… Which would mean even sad, pathetic, meaningless existences would be experienced by the solipsist, such as being born into a world where he only exists to be helplessly tortured for centuries on end before he finally perishes. If every single combination is to be explored, then we have a combinatorial explosion at our hands. After all, there doesn’t seem to be any “end” to time, so one could have reincarnations where the torture lasts 1 second longer, then the next lasts another second longer, ad infinitum… Is there any reason why absurd scenarioer like that are impossible, at least that we, who don’t know the contents of the subconscious, can tell? I have a hunch all those absurd scenarios would be impossible, cuz its like we’re viewing it from very high up, making it seem like a lot more is possible then it truly is. Like if we could get down to grassroots level we’d realize there are a lot of constraints.

2

If that were true then solipism is false, because everyone around you would be you (and therefore sentient) just in future or past part of timeline.

3

n0ki: we can only ever get correlation between mental events and physical events, for several reasons… which are worked out in the consciousness and neuroscience debate in philosophy. somewhere between eliminative materialism and some variation of Cartesian substance dualism lies the threshold of the debate. pure reductionalism is not demonstrable but neither is substance dualism. but the former requires less hypothesis than the latter and is therefore more parsimonious.

solipsism is nonsense and words like ‘omniscience’ and ‘omnipotence’ can’t be used unanthropomorphically, so there is a fork in the road where these qualities are talked about as if they were metaphysical.

think about what they mean; the superlative form of being able to act (omnipotent) and being able to know (omniscient). acting and knowing is something that humans do, not something we can be sure nature does (the part of nature that is not human). but we imagine a superlative form of a knowing and acting thing and then project that image onto a superlative form of being (a god, as it is usually called).

4

Anekantavada
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anekantavada

This is exactly what your looking for in the OP.

As for Zoots… we’ve had this conversation before about Dualism and Non-Dualism, before you declared your undying grudge against me and I died of a bored sigh… you still haven’t done your research. We are still in our basics here.

When you see someone project an idea, with conditional sequences to it, try to figure out what parts of the mind would be necessary for it to work, and what philosophies correspond. You can index most philosophical concepts this way, quickly connecting ideas from dispersed eras and civilizations.

Your always arguing within a philosophy. The mind is always bigger than one persona, one philosophy, and every philosophy, if it asserts something, has to have weak points. Its why eclectics usually start combining different philosophical schools I’m a give and take basis once the schools mature and mutually seek to annihilate one another.

You shouldn’t outright reject a philosophy of consciousness because it conflicts with your own views. Instead, work on the diagnostic characteristics, and from this structure a hermeunetics of assumptions on the part of the asserted.

Once you grasp this, you can apply English terms to the ideas, Google it, and find theories historic and modern that correspond to it. This guy above in the OP wasn’t aware he was paralleling Jain ideas… now, a smart philosopher would probe him, to see where he diverges with Jain assumptions, and pinpoint that particular point of consciousness (or interdependent complex) and study it more indepth. Commentaries on classical works from past philosophers will oftentimes diverge… you can grasp this phenomena a lot easier if you approach guys like noki the right way in the beginning,and advance your own understanding farther than others with exposure to very minute amounts of information. Stuff that would stump and confuse experts become child’s play to a philosopher doing a glancing review.

The Jain, surprise surprise, have a lot of differing views in regards to how Anekantavada works. Its simple to know this theory exists, not simple to know the divergent traditions and how they interrelate. How much can I actually know being a Westerner? Not all of it, doubtful most, but much more than you would expect.

The first rule of philosophy isn’t to refute, but to identify. This is that. This poor guy in the OP is probably stumbling around thinking he is uniquely wrong cause everyone nailed him. Our theories of relativity, from the monads of Parminides, of point space of Boscovich, Liebniz’s Kingdom of Final Causes and Kingdom of Efficient Causes, to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, couldn’t exist without substantial overlap.

Its a fetish in Natural Philosophy, to split hairs on naming conventions and claim wide, farflung divorces between preceding theories and new theories. Our mathematics more or less still stick to old Babylonian presumptions, our capacity to think dialectically is pigeoned hole, and when we declare in triumph against the old, it usually remerges as a necessity of making logical connections in the new. Your in a rush to collapse theological mathematical constructs… don’t be surprise if the universe was to blink out of existence if we began to take modern ideas at face value of science overcoming religion… it next to never does, scientists just trade terms or make up new ones. The universe as it is perceived fits our cognition, not the other way around. It shouldn’t be surprising very ignorant people in ancient times walked around with rather advanced philosophical concepts. Our species has always had philosophers, we have never ceased to think, and there has rarely been an region of mind neglected in our development. Only think lacking was remembrance of exposition, and time for igenius individuals to explore until our technological records surpassed our rememberence in song and myth. Our first recordec philosophers we’re mathematicians and astronomers, working in clay tablets and Neolithic structures marking the solstices, but the impulse to think as philosophers had to of had a terribly long preceeding history to it.

5

Do we need to start over Ferg? Your post, again, is like a plate of scrammbled eggs. You haven’t said anything about solipsism or why you think the doctrine is true. Don’t give me another INTJ wall of text. Slow the fuck down and summarize your argument.

6

Solipsism is false since everybody else is not a construct of your mind but is actually mind independent
Also if it was true you would only be restricted by self imposed laws as society would not actually exist

7

Anekantavada dumbass, it’s one word. I can’t go slower than that.

Here is the link, again, compare to OP. This is what happens when you try to research philosophy while high.

Anekantavada
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anekantavada

Ask Zinnati, I didn’t just invent this philosophy, it’s been around for a while. Both this, and solipism is part of the Dualism - NonDualism dichotomy in philosophy. Pops up all over the world.

Your marijuana isn’t helping you grasp the simple stuff. Just one word, clearly relates to the OP… and I get accused of going too fast.

Don’t ask for further reductions or simpler or Ill just start answering back in paradoxical koans. There isn’t a royal road to this kind of philosophy, you just gotta sit down, and learn it the hard way.

And refuting me on frivilous grounds doesn’t make the OP go away, or the Jain wrong. I know you well enough to know your gonna try to cop out that way. I didn’t start the thread, and wasn’t a archarya in a past life, so can’t take the blame either way. All I know is, the author of the OP wasn’t the first to come up with his viewpoint, it’s actually quite ancient.

8

I was thinking about this last night. If I will never encounter you in this life, or a past or future life, then you are not real. If I will never become you in a past or future life, then you are not sentient. Anything else is untruth, paradox.

9

Trixie: but wouldn’t that be true for the person you are referring to, as well? If yes, then you don’t exist.

Turd: a neck in Nevada (or however you pronounce his name) doesn’t explain anything and only makes the issue more confusing. I got one paragraph into it and it already fell apart.

A ‘view point’ isn’t true or false. Statements are true or false, and a view point isn’t a statement. Regardless of what someone says about the world, the world is still what it is… which does not depend on its being perceived. Moreover, if “no single point of view is the complete truth” then the point of view that “taken together they comprise the complete truth” is not the complete truth either, in which case maybe some single point of view is the complete truth… but that can’t be right either, because a ‘point of view’ is neither true or false.

Nothin’? Here, hit this then:

10

A thought bender, isn’t it? I’ve been thinking about this same thing since I was 4.

If you are real Zoot, that means I am necessarily you in a past or future life, otherwise you are not real, because I am the only thing that’s real right now.

11

Here is the where the ‘paradox’ steals in…
By virtue of a unfounded fracture, everybody surely,
cannot share a connective potential, but everymind can. There is a pre-existing notion which defies bringing up that difference. Realism, after all prescribed it. This is why the notion of mind as a function of the brain holds up with such tenacity.

12

Everett Many Worlds hypothesis in which all possibilities are simultaneous though only one is experienced
Parallel universes where the laws of physics are slightly different for each you has a different experience
Both of these far more plausible than metaphysical afterlife just because some think that they deserve it
And slipping in God Of The Gaps because science cannot answer ontological questions is not good enough
So if you think that the afterlife is real then you have to do a bit better than committing a logical fallacy
But why not just let the universe decide because unlike you it is not compromised by right brain thinking
It could be that the afterlife is true but that has nothing to do with you wanting it to be true now does it
Do you interpret reality as it is or as you want it to be for if it is the latter your thinking is utterly wrong

13

I would think you hit the nail on the head. The many worlds scenario, is precisely one, where both become near identical at a conceptual point of near necessity, whereby the ontological necessity for Creation become available only to the totally phenomenally reduced, per the minutest available sense of data. This absolute minimum, is solipsistic.

14

Now if you were really smart you’d argue that my assertion that only statements are true or false implies that objects and processes about which those statements are made can’t be established as values in a statement like this: the truth is that x is such and such and that statements about it are representations, mirroring the way they are… or the facts that they are or are a part of (since there are no things, really).

And you would say: if points of view have as their objects the experience of facts, then they can be true or false insofar as they are not spoken about clearly. That is to say only a statement can be senseless and meaningless and nonsensical, but not the world or that facts.

So hopefully this is what the neck at Nevada is on about. A pluralism of this kind is workable and your attempt to combine radical empiricism with scientific realism (17th century realism, not platonic realism) would be more affective to this end.

Next time you have an argument, i better not be able to do it better than you. If I can, I’m putting you on ignore until I see some improvement.

15

There are no sets of totally untrue statements, or true ones, since clarity is a function of mirrored, successive stages of the objects themselves, whose values depend on the boundaries of the objects within that stage. Radical empiricism is the most
peripheral stage, within which common sense can be contained. Thereafter, literally prescribed lines of meaning have to be postscribed.

16

Truth and Falsity are subjective values, applied to objective phenomena, post hoc (after the fact).

Reality is not affected by what humans, or any life deems as true or false. If you see a train approaching while your car is stalled out on railroad tracks, no amount of “wishing it away” and deeming the train a falsity, a delusion, unreal, will make it go away. Objectivity trumps Subjectivity. It is a fact, not a matter of opinion. However modern day liberalism obfuscates language, claims that “science is on our side!” and uses this rhetoric to persuade others that they “only speak the fact”. This is another lie.

Truth is organic, in this way. Truth is reflective of the wills of individuals or groups of people. For example, if a person has the power to derail the train to another track, or stop it in time, then this would be an example of humanity “exerting its will” upon the “objective universe”.

Truth is a function of power, whether or not you can render your ideals, what you want, your wishes and desires, into reality.

If you want something to be or become real then it is your personal responsibility to change existence to suit your desire: this is the ideology of Idealism.

Reality is about not trying to change the world, “letting it be as it is”. A human adapting to the world.
Idealism is about changing the world according to personal preferences. The world adapting to a human.

17

Seems like a rather simplistic analysis on your part, Wizard. You can do better than this.

Truth, in the scope you provided, is not subjective in the manner you describe it. For example, a textbook saying “A train will run you over if you sit on the tracks” is not a lie, because it doesn’t say “A train will run you over, no matter what and even God cannot stop the train if you are on the tracks you are a dead meat and that’s final.”

So, for instance, a community of people sacrificing themselves and ramming the train with their cars and knocking it over, is still truth. The laws of physics are not violated. Until either the day that humans can develop a machine that alters the laws of physics, truth is still truth.

Like, your post started out good

Then it went south, when it went like this.

Also, truth is the objective phenomenon, it is not a subjective value experienced after the fact (memory and therefore fantasy). The subjective value is the Newtonian laws (ie. allows us to try to render the objective phenomenon in our minds, allowing us to match and confine fantasy, to emulate the boundaries set forth by Reality.) Truth is experienced directly (externally), (internally) the subjective value is what we put on our memories to help organise our comprehension.

18

One plus one equals three is a totally untrue statement and there are an infinity of others
Two plus two equals four is a totally true statement and there are also an infinity of them

19

One plus one can equal three, where the second one equals two of a different kind. As in 1X+1Y~where X=1’ and Y=2. In this case there is a separation, or differentiation between and simultaneously an integration, as in types, and kinds.

Let’s say types signify things like different objects,
say apples and oranges, standing for X and Y . We
are justify them algebraically, to point to this, and still use ‘legitimate’ arithmetic to count them, as it
were.

Now here You may object on some ground, that it’s not the same thing, etc, that is where the
differentiation comes in.

There may be 1+1baskets containing 1 apple in one,
and two oranges in another. There is one type of
container, but two kinds of fruit in either. These are conditional statements. Numbers are conditional as to what they signify. Non significant or, pure numbers
Are conditional as to what the signify. In that sense, no absolute statements can be made about them.
In that sense, they have no truth value about them.

Numbers are nothing except in their application of ‘things’ numbered. This is how they were first derived. How were they derived? Such a simple, yet short cutted assumption.

20

One plus one equals three is in its purest and simplest form a false statement since the value of the two ones is actually identical
That is because each number occupies a certain place on the horizontal number line so cannot have more than one specific value
And so talking about x and y and apples and oranges is all beside the point as those variables do not exist in the original equation