Thread 24733152

Books on Solipsism? And also, what are your thoughts on the topic?

>books on Solipsism
Wouldn't that defeat the whole purpose of it?

>>24733176
I'm not sure what you mean

>>24733176
there is no purpose to life... until you bring up solipsism and suddenly everything has to have le purpose and le meaning

>>24733672
>rationalize
Epistemology
I have come to dislike those words recently

>>24733686
why?

>>24733152 (OP)
its theoretically correct, but practically unpracticable.

ofc, all illusions are real, anything sensed is real, the only distinguishing factor is that illusion implies something signifigant beyond what can be sensed.

>>24733701
Read pic related. I initially disliked it but I later realized it is a brilliant piece of scholarship.

>>24733152 (OP)
Empiricism was a skeptical doctrine originally. It was literally designed by people who thought it was good to reason oneself into doubting everything so that one's dispassion would not be troubled by belief. When it became a dogma, it became impossible to avoid skepticism.

Nevertheless, such skepticism isn't wholly off base. Only God exists. If one predicates "exists" as one does of man and other contingent creatures, then God does not exist. God is nothing, but on account of excellence not privation. Everything relates to this ground as emanation, moments in a process of exitus et reditus that begins, ends, and subsists in God. As it says in the Upanishads, "thou art that."

You are the Entity.
http://digital-eel.com/blog/library/Fear.pdf

>>24733152 (OP)
Consider the possibility that you become solipsistic after death, but are not before.

>>24733152 (OP)
"I" is an external object to the Observer, equal to (You) or "Him"

>>24733176
I talk to myself all the time so no

>>24733152 (OP)
>thoughts
it's a thought experiment more than an actal school of thought. It's not really useful except as a tool for reasoning about other things, i.e. mainly skepticism/criticism. On that note though I also use it in my daily life as a bit of a consciously delusional cope to relieve my fear of people. It becomes way easier when you force yourself (or, well, when I force myself) to deny the reality of their presence

it’s not the sort of thing you need to learn is it? it exists innately in your baby brain. from birth. when your mum leaves the room she dematerialises. then at a certain age you start facing facts & it becomes only a background thing. we forget 99% of the people we see.

Wittgenstein already ended the subject in Tractatus.

>>24734608
the language argument? the public language argument philosophers can't agree on what Wittgenstein was even saying? yeah nice argument dude.
philosophers can't even agree on definitions

>>24734652
It's convoluted cope. Prima facie, language could exist without a language community in the sense they claim. You could raise a human around advanced android GPTs and they could learn English and have thoughts. Denying this because it messes with your philosophy just looks like dogmatism.

The linguistic turn is probably one of the most dogmatic areas of philosophy though. You drink the kool aid or you don't.

>>24733152 (OP)
Restaurant at The End of The Universe - Douglas Adams.

>>24733152 (OP)
Philosophical idealism is more interesting

>>24733152 (OP)
Solipsism is the narcissism of philosophy

>>24733152 (OP)
There is no answer to solipsism. All you can do is to cope. You can calm yourself by reminding that you have no knowledge and memories about everything.

>>24734586
it's a metaphysical possibility you can't deny. denying it on base of practical application is nonsensical

>>24734720
labeling something a metaphysical possibility doesn’t make it meaningful. there are infinitely many metaphysical possibilities. the universe could spontaneously disappear next second.

>>24733152 (OP)
why don't you ask yourself buddy? or imagine a book?

>>24734725
the universe disappearing next second is practical. metaphysical means beyond the realm of what you know and all of your perceptions

>>24734730
if it’s beyond all possible perception, it’s literally unknowable, so claiming it’s a ‘possibility you can’t deny’ is itself contradictory.

>>24734742
how does not being able to know contradict possibility?

>>24734750
something might exist beyond all perception, but calling it a possibility implies we can reason about it.

>>24734753
and implying we can't reason about it is itself a statement about it. so you're also contradictory when you deny the possibility

>>24734757
should distinguish talking about the statement from talking about the reality.

>>24734757
>>24734764
ie it’s not a statement about solipsism it’s a statement about our conceptual limits.

>>24734764
the metaphysical is beyong all perceptions and I just made a statement about it. how do you deny something without also making a statement about what that means? you deny denying my statement about reality by saying it's about the statement itself. not how it works I'm afraid

>>24734772
if i say that the claim ‘a square circle exists’ is not a meaningful possibility, that isn’t making a statement about square circles. do you see?

Consciousness is a figment of God's Imagination
Reality is God's Solipsism

>>24734780
but it is a possibility about square circles, and your categorization of "meaningful possibility" seems to be about the square circles existing. so you are making a statement about square circles and how you define meaningful possibilities. So I'm not seeing it

>>24734787
saying ‘square circles aren’t a meaningful possibility’ isn’t a claim about square circles existing; it’s a claim about the concept being incoherent. i’m not asserting facts about it, just pointing out the category error in treating it as a possibility at all.

>>24734793
and my point is exactly that you call a metaphysical statement a category error by saying it's unknowable but at the same time you are not taking into account how you are doing the same thing and putting it into the error as something that shouldn't be possible by your claim about unknowability being contradictory to possibility. you don't see that your claim itself does it as well so you can't use that at all, because you are claiming something about the unknowable by doing that.

>>24734809
you’re still collapsing two levels. i’m not making a claim about reality, but about discourse: that we can’t reason meaningfully about it.
whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

>>24734836
>we can't reason meaningfully about it
>I just reasoned about it.
heh

>>24734863
>i can’t describe a square circle
>heh, you just did - you said ‘square circle.’

>>24734868
>square circles are not real
>and I know this without making any statement about square and circle

>>24734874
when we say ‘square circles aren’t real,’ we aren’t making a factual claim about them. we’re saying the concept collapses into contradiction. that’s not a statement about an entity in the world, it’s a statement about language.

I went into a drug induced psychosis and had to deal with solipsistic delusions for about a month.

Determinism, simulation, solipsism they're all effectively the same idea with the same boring answer.
It dosent matter. theres still reactions to your actions and you still need to gather resources to survive.

>>24734888
in that way any statement using language is about language... but you just switch the contents around and you say things are what language describes. no shit! of course this is the case but that's trivial for this discussion

>>24734925
but there’s a difference between making a statement about objects in reality and making a statement about the coherence of a claim. solipsism, as a claim, is incoherent and unfalsifiable. it’s a pseudo-statement.

>>24734933
what is incoherent about solipsism? the main issue I had with your points until now is that you deny metaphysical being unknowable as a statement that destroys itself and if that's true than you can't make that argument.

>>24734941
in your own words it's beyond all perception - it is unknowable to you. you can’t define what it would mean for it to exist or not.
>if that's true than you can't make that argument
i think i mentioned a couple of times: that's not making a statement about the metaphysical object itself, it's a statement about the limits of reasoning/discourse.

>>24734962
>in your own words it's beyond all perception - it is unknowable to you. you can’t define what it would mean for it to exist or not.
solipsism is a clear philosophical idea, don't know what you mean about this.

what is incoherent about solipsism? state it

We are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves.

>>24735026
but I never know what you experience so it's only me

Even if Solipsism was true, wouldn't there have to be a creator God who created the dreamer in the first place? That was the conclusion I came to when I first started contemplating Solipsism

>>24735021
you’ve defined it as beyond perception. that makes it unknowable, so treating it as a meaningful possibility is a category error

>>24735039
you are the dreamer and you made your life gay to troll your self

>>24735026
i fucking hate this reddit guy.

>>24735072
Same. I used to idolize him when I was a dude weed lmao teenager, but now I think he's cringe and unfunny

>>24735080
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMz_fbHJysw

>>24735049
no, it's not a category error. it's a possibility.
>>24735039
this results in an infinite regression of creators

>>24735086
you can call it a possibility in words, but as a meaningful possibility (one that can support reasoning or inference) it collapses. that’s why it’s a category error.

>>24735084
Lmao, seriously, Norm has a point, and I've heard people say that before that "comedians are modern day philosophers" and it makes me cringe

>>24735086
>this results in an infinite regression of creators
Yeah, but at least the Bible or gnosticism kinda explains that you can't understand the creator because I think Jesus said to Nicodemus something like, "if you don't understand the earthly things I tell you, then how can you hope to understand the heavenly things I tell you", meaning like, it's hard for us to understand exactly how God works

>>24735090
there are only a couple possibilities like solipsism, materialism, idealism etc because going into the details is hard when you can't use your perceptions to define or explain things. none of these are category errors, they're all possibilites of the metaphysical

>>24733152 (OP)
Wittgenstein. Solipsists love that neurotic kike as well as Kierkegaard

>>24735107
materialism and idealism preserve the frameworks needed for reasoning; solipsism doesn't.

>>24735117
LW firmly rejects it in philosophical investigations

>>24735142
>solipsism doesn't.
explain why

>>24735155
to consider solipsism, we must rely on the very frameworks it denies: language, logic, and external reference. in doing so, it destroys itself

>>24734922

Finally! Light at the entrance of this philosophy cave.

Molyneux doesn’t like psolipsism.

>>24734922
What kind of drug? A psychedelic or amphetamine or what?

>>24735184
thank you! this is my thing. the umbrella term 'drugs' is kind of useless isn't it? eg cocaine and weed are worlds apart, doesn't make sense to say 'doing drugs', the drug has to be specified if you ask me.

>>24735163
solipsism doesn't deny language and logic and external reference. it just questions how much can we claim things to be external, and why should external things to one's "dream character" be thought as independent and transcendental

>>24735198
Yeah, true
I was just curious though, because I could easily see a psychosis like that happening from amphetamine usage, like from staying awake for a week or two. I could also maybe see it happening from LSD or mushrooms too. I remember hearing Rick Strassman talk about how he did LSD one time and entered a kind of psychosis where he believed he was insane and had always been insane, but it took one of his close friends to convince him that he wasn't insane

>>24735202
>why should external things to one's "dream character" be thought as independent and transcendental
could be proven quite easily in a court of law.

>>24735221
no arguments left then? ok. solipsism remains unrefuted

>>24735233
congrats.

If we see the speech in Hamlet as a struggle between his dream character (psolipsism) and another philosophy: what would that other philosophy be? And is psolipsism to be or not to be?

Meh fuggit. You try psolipsism. Maybe it’s fun to ponder your naval.

At least it’s not nihilism.

>>24733152 (OP)
Schopenhauer calls it an untakable fortress from which its garrison can never leave, and can thus be safely walked past. He refers to it as theoretical egotism in the World as Will and Representation and something which is only seriously affirmed in madhouses.

>>24735319
beautiful!

>>24735319
like I give a shit what he thinks

>>24735360
lmao

>>24735360
convenient!

>>24735366
>>24735375
what was his argument again?
>d-don't think about it
lmao

>>24735391
that solipsism can’t be disproved on its own terms, but it collapses in practice - no one can live by it without abandoning reasoning, language, and communication. that’s why he says it only survives in madhouses. a polite way of calling it a padded cell.

>>24733723
Doesn't he say that the idea of cosmic uniformity was simply incomprehensible prior to the christian faith? Because I call massive bullshit on that one.

>>24733726
>When it became a dogma, it became impossible to avoid skepticism.
Which it never became. Empericus did not deny the possibility of knowledge. His position was like Camus' absurdist position but with the goal being peace of mind.

>>24735399
>no one can live by it without abandoning reasoning, language, and communication
How so? How are these things incompatible with solipsism?

>>24735399
>in practice
not this shit again. it's irrelevant. you are searching inside the dream

>>24735467
because language, reasoning, and communication all rely on stable reference points and other minds. imagine a green tree, then look at a green tree.

>>24735482
if everything collapses into inside the dream, then the distinction between perception and imagination is lost. that makes language and reasoning impossible, because words like ‘tree,’ ‘dream,’ or even ‘inside’ can’t mean anything.

>>24735484
>>24735491
where does the tree go when you wake up?

>>24735491
but isn't the idea that it's your unconscious psyche that's constructing the dream?

>>24735592
asking ‘where does it go?’ assumes a framework of perception and external reality.

>>24735645
no bro, you are assuming that when you say solipsism makes language and reasoning impossible and nothing can mean anything if solipsism is true.

where is the tree in your dream?

>>24735626
therefore an imagined tree is the same as a perceived tree

>>24735654
nowhere, neither is the question.

>>24735656
but there is no tree because the unconscious psyche is constructing the tree

>>24735667
then the tree in your head right now is identical to any tree you encounter IRL outside your control. if solipsism held, they’d be indistinguishable.

>>24735656
>>24735689
solipsism never claimed that you are the ego or the dream character. the imagined tree and the real tree are different as they are appear in perception. your imagined tree will have the qualities of an imagined tree not the qualities of a perceived tree

>>24735703
so your imagined tree now has different qualities from the perceived one - you’ve just abandoned solipsism

>>24733152 (OP)
At certain moments, I fervently wish for solipsism to be true. The rest of the world seems overwhelmingly characterized by suffering, misery, and death. My life, on the other hand, has been great, I am happy, and I haven't died yet. Solipsism basically turns a dark and depressing universe into a joyful and living one. Just one small price of everyone else's consciousness. A small price to pay, when you think about it.

>>24735815
I'm basically a schizoid as far as I can tell, but if I realized one day that my consciousness is the only one and everyone else is an illusion, then even I'd feel pretty lonely I think

>>24735733
not really. they have different qualities but everything happens inside my mind... I'm perceiving and I'm imagining, either way I can't say for certain of anything beyond it. the different degrees of perception are irrelevant

>>24735827
green tree imagined, green tree perceived - if you can tell them apart (any honest to god soul here can), solipsism collapses, taking reasoning and language with it.

>>24735848
so how does a difference in experience collapse solipsism?

>>24735868
without reference points why wouldn’t it be identical. green tree imagined, green tree perceived - if you can tell them apart - solipsism that devours that, no?

>>24735886
because solipsism never denies that which you are claiming

>>24735890
moving goalposts.
looks like solipsism in its very weak form its almost meaningless and in its strong form it’s wrong.

>>24735903
you don't bring any strong points. I'm perceiving the imagined tree as I'm perceiving the tree with my vision, as I'm perceiving my thoughts and my body. where is this groundbreaking point against solipsism coming from?

>>24735919
the tree you imagine and the tree you perceive should be identical. since we clearly tell them apart, think that version collapses.

>>24736043
>people can picture things in mind, your move solipsist retard
Embarrasing. My 12 y/o nice could come up with better arguments if pressed.

>>24736087
put your niece on the phone

So solipsism remains unrefuted? I'm not buying that whole imagine and perceived tree thing

>>24734687
this.

>>24736187
you love to see a reddit immigrant ‘this’-poster agreeing with someone you’re arguing against.

Pic related is one of the best works on the matter from recent years. It won't help directly refute or support the claims of solipsism, but it will help if one means to discuss the topic clearly, without getting caught in logical or linguistic traps.

>>24736195
never read it but i’d bet my mother’s life that this book is awful.
also cover looks exactly like a cigarettes after sex album cover.

>>24736200
>never read it but i’d bet my mother’s life that this book is awful
What are you doing on this board? You don't even read. Get the fuck out.

>>24736209
yep this is an accurate reading of what was said
no reading comprehension issues here

>>24736194
Restaurant at The End of The Universe is a masterpiece you illiterate nigger.

>>24736286
well i’m convinced

>>24733196
think harder anon

>>24736704
So if reality is a dream, and I'm the dreamer, then the dream probably wouldn't want me to learn that it is a dream, so there wouldn't be books or people explaining that reality is a dream, right?