How do we disprove solipsism?
We don't. We ignore it because it's useless in every sense of the word.
You can't. There's a tree right now falling in some forest and there's not a god damn thing you can do about it to make it exist.
>>533206
There simply isn't a solution for hard solipsism. Never going to be.
>>533206
You can try punching them in the face.
>>533220
>>533220
Then say "hahaha you can't even control your own figment of your imagination"
>>533259
Actually, since they're the solipsist, they're the one who can't control it. That's the funny part.
>>533191
This. This x1000. Solipsism is a dead end philosophy that adolescents play with for a few years and a few select idiots live their whole life believing. It is useless.
>>533289
>i'm a moron and should learn to read
>>533335
wow rude
>>533201
What about a fallen tree you find later?
>>533180
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_language_argument
In order to argue for solipsism, you must use language. If solipsism were true, then this language would only be comprehensible by one person, since they're the only one that exists; it would be a "private language". But the above argument seems to refute the possibility of such a thing. Therefore, it refutes the possibility of solipsism.
Now, if you disagree with the Private Language Argument and take a more Cartesian view, well, good luck disproving solipsism.
If solipsism is true how can more than one person believe in it?
>>534760
That doesn't really disprove solipsism, because it doesn't eliminate the possibility that other people are split personalities of the solipsist which would explain why they share the language.
But you have to clearly define solipism if you want to argue with it.
>>535035
If solipism is true those other "people" just appear to have belief in it, but they don't actually exist.
>>533180
If solipsism is real and I don't believe in solipsism then solipsism is no longer real.
>>535250
>other people are split personalities of the solipsist
This doesn't really make sense imo. If they're "split personalities" as in they have their own private mental space that the solipsist can't see, they can think on their own, and they have their own experiences, then doesn't that just make them another person? Think about it this way:
Difference between your mind and someone else's if solipsism is false:
>You can't see their mental contents, which are essentially private
>You can't have their experiences, which are inherently subjective
>They can perform rational thought and thus have the capacity to act logically/morally
Difference between your "personality" and someone else's "split personality", which are really just part of the same mind, if solipsism is true:
>You can't see their mental contents, which are essentially private
>You can't have their experiences, which are inherently subjective
>They can perform rational thought and thus have the capacity to act logically/morally
It's the same shit, just under a different name. "personality" instead of "mind". Only thing that's different is that the latter assumes there's some kind of overmind belonging to the solipsist that encompasses all "split personalities", for which there isn't really any logical basis or evidence.
And if by "split personalities" you simply mean that others are philosophical zombies whose mental processes, when occurring, are actually the mental processes of the solipsist, then that just means there's only one person in existence, which means your language would be private because you are still only communicating with yourself.
>>535266
Q and P implies not Q? That's retarded.
I know that God exists as surely as I know I do, because I experience him just as intimately. And since solipsism only argues against me, then that defeats its argument.
>>533206
Ignore them.
>>535298
I see your point in that split personalities are essentially different people, but why would it matter if your language was private?
>>535558
Are you for real or are you just trying to troll fedoras?
>>535558
Yeah but that just makes a softer version of solipism, where only God and you exists or perhaps even only God existing.
How do you go from there to proving that other humans exist?
There's no way to disprove it because there's no way to effectively prove to anyone that there's an external world. Any and all sensory input can be doubted as some manner of sensory deception.
>>533180
other fleshbags i sense in the universe are like me, they are probably sapient too
>>535565
He's a shitposter, though he may be genuinely Orthodox Christian as well. So I'd wager a little from column A and a little from column B.
>>535589
Does he get off on it? Where's the motivation?
>>535621
Fucked if I know, but he sure is prolific. It can't be attempted conversion, since he mostly just seems to piss off people who don't already agree with him (and even some who do).
If Solipsism is real, what are dreams?
>>533180
> I am conscious of my inner mental states as extended over time, with my memories and concepts and desires occupying moments that are cesaselessly being replaced by new moments.
> If this inner experience were primary, more fundamental than any other experience, then I would only have a constant flow of representations containing nothing permanent, nothing persisting, nothing to serve as a stable contrast to time's restless movement.
> If I wasn't conscious of any persisting, stable sense data shared among many adjacent bits of time, I wouldn't be conscious of objects at all; there would only be moments of time replaced by new, dissimilar moments without any connection to the moments that came before, which thus couldn't be taken together to yield consciousness of a determinate thing, thus not even of of my inner self.
> But since I am in *fact* conscious of my inner mental states, despite their ceaseless temporal movement, my mind must have access to some representation of persistence from some source other than my inner sense.
> This example of permanence can come from my outer sense of spatially extended and enduring objects, each with colors and shapes and textures and temperatures and other sensory qualities that can persist while other of its qualities arise and perish.
> Thus, consciousness of the external world of physical objects is required if I am to be conscious of the internal world that includes my introspective mind. This introspective mind can be tricked by solipsism into thinking that it is more primary than the representations of the external world, thus tricked into thinking that it can be real while the outside world is illusory - but in truth, my experiences of the outside world and of the inner self are both equally real, and each reveals that it is mutually dependent on the other; my consciousness of subjectivity is reciprocally bound up with my consciousness of objects.
>mfw I wrote this "Refutation of Idealism"
>>534624
>Wheredoyouthinkyouare.jpg
>>534760
Solipsism is an existential condition and can not be disproven through logical argumentation.
ITT: My own mind tries to trick me into thinking that other consciousnesses exist.
Nice fucking try.
>>535717
The state you achieve through analysis and rationality is not the ground of existence, but a set of metaphors to which you abide to give account of experience
>>533220
My fucking sides
>>535571
I trust God.
>>535558
Troll or...??
>>533180
You can point to the fact that it is virtually impossible to really act as if solipsism is true, because they will be forced to confront reality in some way, i.e taking a shit, eating food, breathing, or else they die.
Also, you can relate to them the ethical consequences. If you honestly believe that your mind is the only thing that exists, your behavior will be indistinguishable from that of a socio/psychopath.
>>536212
Solipsism is telling me that only I exist. If I can be as certain God exists as I exist, then does that not defeat solipsism? And if solipsism says I need to prove this to people other than myself, does that not defeat it even further?
>I refute it thus sir
>>536241
Johnson is pretty based
>How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?
His dictionary is also a masterpiece, it's a shame contemporary dictionaries aren't as beautiful.
>>533180
You don't. Solipsists are basically the equivalent of SJWs in their thought process and logic.
>>536249
>Johnson said he would write his dictionary in three years
>someone remarked that it took 40 French academics 40 years to do the same thing
>"as three is to 1600 so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman"
>dualism
>>536273
Dull: Not exhilaterating; not delightful; as, to make dictionaries is dull work.
>>536280
>Oats: A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland appears to support the people.
>Patron: One who countenances, supports or protects. Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery.
>Tory: One who adheres to the ancient constitution of the state, and the apostolical hierarchy of the church of England, opposed to a Whig.
>Whig: The name of a faction.
BANTZ
>>536133
Kant might largely agree; philosophy sometimes borrows words and imagery from the world of experience in order to describe conditions that are more fundamental, deeper, than that world. But that doesn't mean we're being deluded by mere metaphors; we can still understand those deeper conditions of reality, those grounds, by use of those metaphors and analogies, as long as we don't confuse the metaphors for the grounds they describe, which would be to confuse the sign for the thing signified.
>>536986
This sounds latter than Kant. Do you have any specific reference from his works you are making this claim from? I don't think I've seen him remark on this topic, as such, in terms of our lingual capabilities. That sounds much closer to late 19th early 20th century to me
>>533180
The fact that something can and will kill you.
>>537603
I have a cautious confidence that he'd have to agree with what I wrote, given how he often uses some terms to illustrate the parts of his system and their interrelations.
For example, he'll use spatial terms like "outside" even when he's not writing about strictly spatial relations: the predicates of a synthetic judgment, rather than all being "contained within" their subject, can be "outside" their subject, even though these are merely logical relations of concepts, not necessarily physical relations of space.
But maybe even more fundamental than his metaphorical descriptions of analyticity and syntheticity - central as those tenets are to his thinking - is the imagery Kant uses to convey his vision of the totality of his idealistic metaphysics. Proper philosophy, he says, yields a system of thought that is a self-consistent whole, and such a system requires that we view the physical universe, and our knowledge of it, as within "bounds" of reason; that is, similarly to how a physical body has a boundary, which is connected to the empty space/other objects adjacent to but separate from that body, so too is there a relation between the phenomenal world and what is not the phenomenal world. Kant has us think of this relation between phenomena and noumena as the "boundary" of the world - though it is not a spatial boundary. Rather, it's one that results from how our mind is constituted, separated into faculties of sensibility and understanding and reason and (reflecting) judgment; it is a transcendental division that distinguishes what we can know from what we can merely, yet must, think in correlation to what we know, and he uses the metaphor of a spatial "boundary" to describe his concept of such a division (as section 59 of the Prolegomena makes pretty clear).
In these cases, I think we see Kant using metaphors to point at concepts that, he believes, can be understood completely, despite the imperfection of words derived from experience.
>ctrl+f
>no Cavell
This board is garbage.
a lot of you are being retarded and not really understanding solipsism ("other people are my imagination everything is ME bla bla")
so let's make this easier for you dummies. let's frame the question as
>how can other people prove (in response to my doubt) that they aren't philosophical zombies?
well firstly you have to clearly set out what is the difference between a p-zombie and 'real' humans?
what's the difference?
it appears to me that there is no difference
what's the difference between my mother being a p-zombie and my mother being a real-humanbean mother?
>"whilst they are perceptually indistinguishable, the difference is that there exists in some realm transcendent to your own conscious experience, the first person experience of being your mother (eg a visual field, seeing her own body, feels, etc), and this experience existing in the transcendent realm is in some sort of relationship (even though it's transcendent...) with the realhumanbean mother you experience before you. this transcendent experience makes no difference to the way you experience your mother and it's existence or non-existence is irrelevant to the person you experience as your mother. whereas with the p-zombie mother (which is completely perceptually and logically indistinguishable from the realhumanbean mother) there does NOT exist in a transcendent realm a first person experience of etc, which is NOT in some sort of realtionship with the person you've known interacted and loved all your life.
So basically, the difference is the existence or not of a transcendentally existing posited experience which you can never grasp, confirm or interact with, ever?
but, wait. the difference between a p-mother a beanmother is a difference between a concept which I myself posit exists independent of my experience of my mother? my very own concept?
then, the difference is nothing more than the particular way I experience my mother - whether I posit the concept in my mind or not.
Solipsism is true because really you and I are one in the same, logic is a universal and emotions are ubiquitous.
If you're stupid enough to buy into solipsism it is only because you're stupid enough to believe you somehow knowingly and unknowingly made yourself and the whole world you're in, yet not seeing that realizing this still doesn't confer you any power and hence is just a stupid mind game you're playing with yourself to not get shit done.
>>535558
>I can think of absolutely no reason to doubt God because of reasons
>>536239
>If I can be as certain God exists as I exist, then does that not defeat solipsism?
And how the fuck can you be as certain that God exists? The reason that you're so certain that you exist is because who the hell would be doubting your own existence if not you? God doesn't exactly factor into that exact same nature, unless you want to apply a bunch of random features to God that are either incredibly easily doubtable, or which render us conversing about an entity that might as well not even be called God.
>inb4 muh special snowflake entity that I'm just going to call "God"
Because unreasonable and unsubstantiated assertions can be dismissed.
>>535558
>>541770
I, too, would like it explained how you know God as immediately as you know your own subjective, inner self.
>>537744
> pretty retarde views
Not to say you're incorrect, necessarily - but views such as?
>>541833
And yet boldly proclaiming an idea to be unreasonable and unsubstantiated without engaging in clear analysis of it is itself the very paragon of an unreasonable and unsubstantiated assertion.
>>537614
This makes a good point. How can you believe that you are the only conscious in existence when a man stands over you ready to kill you? In some instances it may be what you want, or at least you may say that when thinking of a hypothetical situation, but when it comes down to it, would that really be what you want? In the actual moment would you not be begging for your life? Nonetheless, in that situation it isn't your choice to make, it's the choice of the other conscious.
>>533180
there's no way of knowing. if it worries you, you could try being a solipsist every other day until you realize solipsism and non-solipsism are the exact same thing.
>>544935
If the solipsist already accepts that all outer appearances - even those of other human bodies that behave as if they had their own conscious minds - are merely constructions of the solipsist's own, solely-existing mind, then I don't think it's too much of a stretch for that solipsist to also believe:
This appearance of another person killing me is, like everything else besides my own introspective mind, nothing more than an experience generated automatically by my own introspective mind, and if this illusory person manages to kill my illusory earthly body, my mind will continue to exist, but will either generate another similar experience in a new earthly body, or my mind will generate an entirely new experience of some non-earthly, though still illusory, afterlife.
>>535558
>>536239
>>541770
>>542377
Come on, dude.
Why is it that when I wake up every morning, I'm not in the body of another person?
How is my self-awareness 'stuck' to the same body, and how do I know millions of other people have their own self-awareness like mine?
>>549226
> I'm not in the body of another person?
Also indeterminable.
>>533206
Private language is a very convincing argument against solipsism.
>>535562
Not that guy, but if language was the soul creation of one mind it would be meaningless. Language is used to describe and give meaning to sensations occurring externally and internally, without a second, independent mind to compare and contrast descriptions of various sensations with you'd never be able to adequately describe any sensation internal or external. Since language does not act as a purely independent aspect of a single mind, but rather a communal exchange of ideas leading to common agreement on designations, the notion of having a language based entirely off of only one mind would be a language that didn't meaningfully describe anything at all.
It's like trying to prove today's date by buying some newspapers, only you don't buy several different newspapers, you buy the same one several times.
>>549267
>if language was the soul creation of one mind it would be meaningless
everything is meaningless so that's fine
>>535632
If solipsism is real, what are horses?
>>536117
But who was phone?
>>549267
You're begging the question. If solipism is true, then there is no external world. You're assuming solipism to be false in order to prove that solipism is false.
>>536215
Would you really act any differently if you thought solipsism was true?
>>544935
>>544935
Well you can do it several ways. If solipism is true, having man standing over you to kill you is no different than a hurricane killing you. In both cases the solipsist must wonder if the universe is ending or whether he will exist beyond his own death. It's not very different from how most people would see it.
1. My brain gives rise to phenomenal experience.
2. The construction of my brain is essentially the same everyone else's.
Conclusion: Everyone's brain gives rise to phenomenal experience.
>>533180
How do you prove it?
There was a pretty popular paper awhile back (cant remember any of the details) explaining how people have intuitions that should generally be trusted, and it made that case strong enough that people should assume other people exist UNLESS PROVEN OTHERWISE. I don't want to sound like an Angry Atheist, but the key was that the burden of proof (what to believe in the absents of evidence) got shifted from non-solipsism to solipsism.
Can anyone help me figure out what I'm remembering? It was maybe ten years ago? (though I found it more recently)
>>552107
>what is the brain in a vat
>>533180
Bundle Theory.
Now how do we reconcile ontology when you out Bundle up against the methodological skepticism?
>>552739
>what is jet fuel can't melt steel beams-tier conspiracies
>>552974
> when you out Bundle up against the methodological skepticism
What does this mean?
>>533180
You can't prove/disprove it, just like can't prove/disprove god.
Solipsism might be real, it just isn't useful to me, because i cannot seem to control other people and happenings at the moment anyway.
>>535298
So people in dreams are real people too? Because i cannot See their mental contents? Because they SEEM to perform thoughts and to act logically/morally?
>>554148
>Solipsism might be real, it just isn't useful to me, because i cannot seem to control other people and happenings at the moment anyway.
more important, you cannot control your self
>>540525
nice try but nobody cares about proofs, and nobody know what a proof is anyway. to say that you want a proof of others not being whatever fantasy you try to refute is already saying that it is worth asking for such a proof and admitting that you have faith in the notion of proof.
also, the solipsist is the guy who believes that he is more alive than others, precisely because he has no certainty that other people are like him.
>>553707
Descartes said the only thing he could know was that he existed. Bundle theory states there is no actual object there, just it's properties. For example, try thinking of an apple. You imagine something small and red with a sweet taste. Now think of an apple without the properties; you can't. Then apply this to the self and what you have is sense data colliding to create the illusion of the self. If you can only know the self, what happens after you refuse it? What happens after as far as what we can know about existence and knowledge?
>>554506
who is this lewis ?
>>554540
A Christian apologists whose best known argument, the trilemma is a blatant logical fallacy
>>554219
is this just a shitposting (if so mods ban this faggot pls) or are you actually contributing to the discussion (if so elaborate please)?
>>554664
you think that mods will follow the opinion of a random troll when this one cannot even say for himself if he is trolled ?
and the point of the message was probably that you hardly control your emotions, desires, tastes, fantasies.
>>554699
>you hardly control your emotions, desires, tastes, fantasies
you can't control all of these in a dream either, but I doubt you would argue that anything happening in the dream is real or that other consciousnesses exist other than my own? that people in the dream are real instead of being a projection of my own mind?
I think you missed my point entirely. I wasn't saying that whether or not solipsism exists depends on whether or not I can control everything.
I was just saying that solipsism has no practical use for me. it might be just as real as god is though. (or not).
>>554506
> What happens after as far as what we can know about existence and knowledge?
>>536239
You cannot know that god exists unless you are god. If you aren't god you can only believe he exists.
And of course solipsism and the existence of god could co-exist. if you are god and everything else in the world is a projection of your mind.
>>535565
>what is devil's advocate
>>534629
it must have something to fall from in order to have fallen
you do not know that that tree was ever standing
