>Only 100% irrefutable branch of philosophy
>Completely negates the point of philosophy existing
You are too stupid for all of reality to exist in your head.
There, solipsism debunked.
>>608952
>You are plugged into a computer simulation
Your move.
>>608980
You are too stupid to be plugged into a simulation.
>>609019
What if I am the computer simulation?
>>608930
There are multiple ideas about what the 'purpose' of philosophy is. One of the ideas is that philosophy is supposed to construct models of thinking which allow us to better control the world (usually through understanding it better). In this regard whether something is true or not isn't necessarily important, if it results in more control than it's good philosophy. If it makes you lose control or arguements that control is a non-concept than it's bad philosophy.
In this case solipsism would fit into the 2nd category. It would be bad philosophy because it doesn't lead to more power. It dismisses power over environment as an impossibility by denying the environment.
>>609037
Well that is kind of the point. It is completely airtight, but it is useless because it does not actually help us with anything. Philosophy is about finding meaning, or figuring out why, or any number of things that help us in the world we live in, and solipsism is almost a satire of it, because it is the only logical conclusion when you start to question free will and reality.
>>608930
Much like anarchy, it only exists in a vacuum. Monism immediately overrides solipsism by the nature of its postulation.
>>608930
Look up Wittgenstein boyo
>>608980
That's not solipsism, because then not everything in existence is produced by your lone mind; the computer exists, along with at least one intelligent being who designed and programmed the computer, and these remain independent of your mind.
You're thinking of external world skepticism, which doesn't entail solipsism, but is entailed by it.
>>608930
>irrefutable
>bundle theory
>>609710
Global skepticism prevents even knowledge of solipsism. Checkmate.
>>609710
>the computer exists, along with at least one intelligent being who designed and programmed the computer, and these remain independent of your mind.
prove this then
>>612350
It's presupposed by the very premise of >>608980
That premise is taken for granted in an argument, and it's this argument that attempts to prove the solipsistic conclusion that nothing exists except one mind and its illusory perceptions of other things.
My point was that this can't succeed as an argument for solipsism, because that very premise requires things existing apart from the programmed mind. In other words, if I'm being given the options A) you're experiencing a non-illusory real world of things existing apart from your own mind, or B) you're a programmed mind experiencing an illusory simulation that you mistake for a real world, then neither of those options count as solipsism.
My point wasn't that we can prove we're not in a computer simulation; only that such a computer simulation is incompatible with solipsism.
>>608930
>>Completely negates the point of philosophy existing
No it doesn't. It would just mean all philosophy is merely an attempt at understanding yourself.
Self discovery is an important thing anon.
Philosophy is more than just metaphysics. (Although, I'd be happy to grant metaphysics is dumb.)
Alert! Alert! Machine spotted!
>>609019
>>612536
The computer thing was a bit of a joke. But seriously, why can't everything be an illusion in my mind? If I can dream of new and complex things, why can't I create this world? And even then, if the whole point is that the current world doesn't exist, how can we base our understanding of the mind on the limits within this world?
>>612600
I'm happy to grant philosophy is dumb
DUDE NOTHINGS REAL LMAO
I wish I could dump water buckets on people through the internet.
>>608930
>irrefutable
God exists.
>>613491
The response to these question will vary greatly depending on who you ask. The most rigorous response I can personally give comes from Kant. In whatever ways it might be flawed and obsolete, I find it totally fascinating and worldview-shattering.
Short version:
> why can't everything be an illusion in my mind?
Because the external world is as intimately known to you as the internal world of your introspective experience. That is, physical objects appearing in space are bound by the same degree of law-governed certainty that your inner stream of consciousness displays, so you can't assume that the former is totally doubtful while the latter is totally reliable; rather, since the latter is reliable, so is the former.
>If I can dream of new and complex things, why can't I create this world?
You can and *do* create the real world in a fundamental way; your mind automatically generates the basic, inviolable forms by which your inner and outer experience is constituted and regulated. But there are aspects of this world that don't come from within your mind, and thus indicate that something is independent of it.
> if the whole point is that the current world doesn't exist
It does "exist" - but to understand what this means, you have to be willing to abandon popular views of what it means to "exist," what it means to be "real," and whether we can think of a kind of being that we could never experience as existing, because such being isn't a kind with all the necessary features to qualify as "real." The popular views are in fact the ones that lead into unavoidable illusions.
> how can we base our understanding of the mind on the limits within this world?
Because the limits of this world, inner and outer, are the very limits that human minds impose to produce this world; by understanding the latter, we can understand the former.
Long version:
When you reflect upon your experience, you notice that it is spread out over time; in your consciousness of things appearing in the external world, events constantly lead to newer events - and even in your consciousness of your inner train of thought, each moment is ceaselessly replaced by the following moment which itself is replaced as soon as it arrives. This isn't some groundbreaking discovery, of course - the temporality of your experience has been immediately obvious to you for as long as you've been conscious.
This temporal aspect of your experience is a way in which your experience is orderly, law-governed; you've experienced time as moving ever forward, as each span of time connects with each adjacent span of time with regularity. Time is a structure in which all temporal units find their place in relation to other temporal units, a way in which our outer and inner consciousness takes form.
In fact, you can perform a mental experiment to see how indispensable time is to your consciousness; you can imagine removing all particular objects from the externally appearing world - and can imagine removing all particular desires and memories and fantasies from the introspectively known world of your inner mind - but you cannot imagine removing time itself. At bottom, as long as you're conscious, you're at least imagining an empty flow of time, coursing onwards even without linking any states and changes of any determinately sensed objects.
This shows that time is an aspect of your mind itself; you can't willingly discard a function by which your conscious mind is your conscious mind. Time is simply a way in which human minds automatically impose order on whatever raw data they receive through sensation, and thus time wouldn't remain if all human minds ceased to exist.
Space is also a form that structures your experience - but unlike time, it only applies to outer sense, not also to inner sense. Everything that appears externally to your apprehension - even your own physical human body - is ordered according to spatial relations, in which each location occupies a set place in relation to all other locations. Physical objects can move through space, filling different locations, but space itself does not move; and you can imagine removing all particular objects from the external world, but you cannot imagine removing space itself; at bottom, there is still an empty domain of pure extension that objects could fill. Space is an indispensable network of relations that provides outer experience with structure, shape, form - so like time, it's revealed by reflection to be a way in which the human mind imposes order on the raw sense data that the mind receives. That is, space and time are a priori forms of sensibility.
This probably requires you to redefine "real." The most intimately known aspects of experience (that you undeniably have sensations that are united into the perception of, say, an externally appearing object with a spherical shape, a red color, a warm temperature, and a smooth surface; and your inner feelings of pain and pleasure, desires for food or friendship, and imaginings of winged horses or of places you once visited, all known privately and immediately to you by introspection) are themselves given form by time, and sometimes also by space; it's fair and true to say that these outer and inner experiences are real. But since space and time are not aspects that apply to things independently of human minds (that is, time and space don't apply to things-in-themselves), but are only functions of human awareness that would perish with human minds, then it's also true that everything within time and space are only appearances within human minds, and what it is that underlies these appearances is not directly accessed.
So it's true that your direct, immediate inner and outer experience is really occurring - after all, you can't deny that you're conscious of it - and it's *also* true that such experience does not give you knowledge of any thing-in-itself. We can no longer define "actual reality" to mean "that which is independent of human minds," as we might have naively done before reflection. Instead, "actual reality" means "that which is bound up within human experience" - and experience is of phenomenal appearances, not of any noumenal things-in-themselves.
One reason you have to think of such a thing-in-itself that does not appear in experience, but rather grounds the appearances that you experience, is because of the sensory qualities you can discard in imagination, and can't know without experience. As in the examples above, you can imagine away all of the sensory data that's given form by space and time, but you can't imagine away pure space and pure time, because they are forms of the human mind's faculty of imagination itself. For that reason, you can know that whatever begins to happen in time must have been preceded by more spans of time, and whatever ends in time will be followed by more spans of time, even though you can't know a priori what particular sensory qualities these beginning and ending events will have; whether you are confronted by the arrival of loud sounding event or one that is silent, or whether the occurrence will grow visually bright or dim, or will have a sweet or acrid smell or no smell at all, are not qualities that you can know for sure before the experience itself reveals them to you - but you can know in advance that time will move forward throughout the experience, and that an event that begins and ends will be situated between past and future spans of time. This knowledge of the form of time tells you that time is contributed by your mind, while the unpredictable sensory content points to some extra-mental, thus unknown, thing-in-itself.
Likewise, you have a priori knowledge that for any object you experience in space, you can imagine dividing that object into many quadrants of smaller spaces, and you know that the object will be enclosed within borders, outside of which is more space; but this doesn't let you know a priori whether you will encounter a blue or red or transparent object, or one that is five inches away in a given direction or five light years away, or an object that is four sided or five sided or symmetric or irregular; to have knowledge of these more particular qualities, you have to wait for a posteriori experience to instruct you.
You only have a priori knowledge of your mind's pure, innate structuring functions; what's not mentally innate, but rather received by your mind, are the disparate sensory qualities that will be unified by these forms to yield perceived objects. You have direct access to these mind-internal consequences (sensations), but have no knowledge of their mind-independent ground (thing-in-itself); yet you must think that there is some inaccessible ground of appearances if your reflection upon experience is to be rational.
But merely thinking about a being-in-itself isn't enough for it to be a real object of experience, to be known. Rather, for something to "exist," to be "real," simply *is* for it to be directly known in outer or inner experience, or to be indirectly perceived but connected with such experience (as are phenomena like magnetic fields and distant celestial objects known by the effects of their gravity), with all such objects constituting the complex of connected appearances called "the world."
>>608930
that's part of the problem, anon. It IS 100% irrefutable, because it's unfalsifiable. The concept is formulated in a way such that even if it were false, we would have no way of knowing. That makes it an untenable concept in principle.
>>613879
God doesn't have a coherent definition. You mean "I believe that what I interpret to be what God is exists".
>>612313
> knowledge
> Global skepticism
Could you define these terms?
There's other solipsists?
Wierd, I thought I was the only one.
>>608930
>Only 100% irrefutable
explain the other beings I am sensing that are almost exactly the same as me, some of which have an interest in philosophy and religion and ask the same questions as I would, as you might expect of a sapient being
>>613869
But that would implicate one standard of thinking for everyone - if I'm a troubled person and start considering existence of God, how does skepticism "help me control the world better" if it instigates that I should avoid irrational beliefs? I'm pretty much taking words out of Lévinas' mouth about what he had to say to Heidegger, but it seems relevant. What if I'm naive?
>Philosophy after the scientific method was achieved
>>615253
>>615260
>>615272
>>615299
>>615307
>>615312
Damn, this is really good.
>>617153
underrated
>>615803
Does this "interpreting" work for "truth" as well?
>>618049
>methodology
>not philosophy
Pick one
>>615770
But do you think that the reality of the external world, or the existence of anything independent of your own mind, is falsifiable? How might we falsify that the physical world is really there?
If we can't, then is it untenable to conceive that it's real?
>>608930
>irrefutable
Except you don't know that your own consciousness is any more "real" or "reliable" than your sensory perception.
>>617148
Are you just trying to be a dick, because this is just an internet forum. You should "know" damn well I can't define knowledge here. Whatever you think "knowledge" means, that's how I'm defining it. As to "global skepticism" (also known as absolute skepticism or universal skepticism): the view that one cannot know anything at all. The dream/brain-in-a-vat/omnipotent-Descartes-evil-demon argument is the one truly irrefutable. The demon is omnipotent, it can even twist your sense of logic. You couldn't know anything in this situation, and despite what Descartes tries that includes even knowing you exist.
>>618017
Skepticism leading to the scientific method (is really your only chance at) help because
1. Skepticism is in fact irrefutable, so you have to deal with it somehow to call yourself rational.
2. Past events do seem to be related to the present, so you might as well give science a shot. This doesn't mean everyone has to think the same thing, see also Thomas Kuhn. (Or lord forbid, Paul Feyerabend is right...)
>>619504
>Are you just trying to be a dick
Uh, no.
> this is just an internet forum. You should "know" damn well I can't define knowledge here.
I disagree that we should never expect people to define their terms on an internet forum, especially in a thread dedicated to an epistemological/metaphysical topic. But you act as if you're simply echoing common sense.
> The dream/brain-in-a-vat/omnipotent-Descartes-evil-demon argument is the one truly irrefutable. The demon is omnipotent, it can even twist your sense of logic.
So then I can't even trust the logical inferences connecting the premises of the argument, and the argument seems to undermine itself - no? Maybe this internal inconsistency shows that it can't effectively argue for any conclusion, solipsistic or otherwise?
> You couldn't know anything in this situation, and despite what Descartes tries that includes even knowing you exist.
If you assume that "exist" means "exist as a substance" or "exist as a simple, immortal soul" or something like that, then yes I agree. But the fact of consciousness is unavoidable and immediate to you, whatever it may be that's producing the consciousness. And even if we can't prove that the concepts "whatever it may be" are defensible here, there is at least the undeniable presence of the colors and textures and other sense data and thoughts that you're conscious of; you don't have to know whether they're present outside your consciousness to know that they're present to your consciousness. Or am I mistaken?
>>608952
11/10, convinced me
>>619159
I don't think you're right. I think your claim contains an ambiguity, where it isn't made clear whether "reliab[ility]" of "sense perception" means: A) we can't doubt that we are conscious of some sensory data like an object's shape or color or temperature; or B) we can't doubt that our consciousness of sensory data proves that what we sense exists independently of our consciousness of it - that is, we can't doubt that there is some thing that has the color, shape, temperature that we are conscious of, and that this thing would have these attributes whether we are conscious of it or not.
I would defend A, but not B. In other words, I don't think I can doubt my consciousness in the same way that I can doubt a correspondence between my consciousness and what might be independent of my consciousness. When I am conscious of a patch of red, or a tone of sound, or an intensity of temperature, I can't doubt that I'm conscious of a sensory feeling. What I *can* doubt is whether this sensory quality - the red I see, the B flat I hear, the 80 degrees fahrenheit I touch - also exists outside of my consciousness, inhering in some object exactly as I would perceive it, only without being perceived by me or by any other consciousness. Many people would agree that colors and temperatures don't inhere in mind-independent objects, but are merely a result of how humans sense such objects; yet I think the same rationale ultimately leads us to conclude that even spatial shapes and sizes, physical masses, chemical properties, and *all* merely experiential qualities can be doubted of whatever might inhere in beings independently of our consciousness.
So even if I reject that these qualities characterize beings-in-themselves apart from my consciousness of them, I cannot reject that I am conscious of appearances. Such appearances are immediate before my consciousness; such undoubtable consciousness-of-data establishes the criterion of what it means "to know" anything at all.
>>619504
>You couldn't know anything in this situation, and despite what Descartes tries that includes even knowing you exist.
You don't exist. There is nothing happening. There is no need to be skeptical, because there is no dream to awake from, no illusion to get rid of, no situation to escape from. Nothing exists. There is no external world, and there is no you to think there ever was.
>>620950
>and that this thing would have these attributes whether we are conscious of it or not.
this is false.
and conciousness does not exist independtant of its object
and object do not exist independently of the conciousness having for object this one in particular.
and to each conciousness-object of conciousness, there is also a feeling of pleasure/displeasure/neutral.
it means that you can choose to speak of what you experience in realist terms of You+ reality(not you), but it remains a choice.
and the more empirical you become, the more you arrive at a state where there is no ''watcher'' nor ''doer'', but just ''things''.
>>615260
>This temporal aspect of your experience is a way in which your experience is orderly, law-governed; you've experienced time as moving ever forward, as each span of time connects with each adjacent span of time with regularity.
this is false. you speak of time like a good little realist-rationalist, whereas you explicit say that time is at best, to say it like a realist, a succession of objects perceived by the conciousness.
>>615260
>In fact, you can perform a mental experiment to see how indispensable time is to your consciousness; you can imagine removing all particular objects from the externally appearing world - and can imagine removing all particular desires and memories and fantasies from the introspectively known world of your inner mind - but you cannot imagine removing time itself.
1- a thought experiment is modern-thinkers tier. just pure rubbish.
2- you can get rid of time easily since time is just a fantasy. stop moving your body, stop moving in your mind[=do not produce ideas], stop moving your breath[=make your conciousness in sync with the in-breath and out-breath]=> no time and no other deliriums that realists love to speak about.
>>615299
>you can imagine away all of the sensory data that's given form by space and time, but you can't imagine away pure space and pure time, because they are forms of the human mind's faculty of imagination itself
indeed, space and time are pure products of your imagination, also known as mind or spirit. and as any speculation, they are so disconnected from the phenomenon form the other senses, that taking them seriously, in saying that they connect back to the other senses, shows how nihilistic you are. life is not inside your fantasies. kill you fantasies and life is seen.
the conclusion is that it is a faith to be a realist. and as any faith, it is nihilistic.
>>620605
1) ok, good.
2) Sorry, I thought you had actually studied the topic. "Know" just isn't any term. It is one that has been argued about unproductively for at least 3000 years. 4chan isn't the place to publish a book on epistemology. How about: know, "to comprehend a truth with 100% certainty"
3&4) We don't know if it is inconsistent, we can't use logic. We can't even know "something exists", because we can't be sure words have meaning.
>>621004
> this is false.
Or at least not knowable - which is why I said it could be doubted, and why I rejected B. We seem to agree on this, and on much else - maybe a difference in terminology is what's obscuring the agreement between our points of view.
> and conciousness does not exist independtant of its object
Also, I agree, which is why I only defended consciousness in relation to the data that it is conscious of.
This data constitutes the object of my consciousness, the appearance immediately present to my consciousness; if we think of some separate object-independent-of-my-consciousness, then I agree that I agreed that I cannot know (be conscious of) such an object. So again, from what I can tell, I agree that
> object do not exist independently of the conciousness having for object this one in particular.
> to each conciousness-object of conciousness, there is also a feeling of pleasure/displeasure/neutral.
Though I didn't mention this, I agree.
> you can choose to speak of what you experience in realist terms of You+ reality(not you)
Again, agreed - but this isn't how I define "real" - as shown by some of my previous posts: >>615253
>>615299
>>615312
> the more empirical you become, the more you arrive at a state where there is no ''watcher'' nor ''doer'', but just ''things''.
I'm open-minded to this claim, but I wonder if it requires an impossible task: that we dissolve the distinction between subject/object, thinker/thought, knower/known. I currently believe that both elements of this relation are required, and are mutually dependent, to yield what we call "consciousness."
>>621047
>you speak of time like a good little realist-rationalist, whereas you explicit say that time is at best, to say it like a realist, a succession of objects perceived by the conciousness.
The term "realist" can be defined in several ways, so I don't know exactly what you mean by it here. If you mean "someone who thinks that time must apply to anything independent of human consciousness," then my posts were pretty clearly arguing *against* such realism.
> a thought experiment is modern-thinkers tier. just pure rubbish.
I think it depends on what the thought experiment attempts to demonstrate. If a mere thought experiment tries to demonstrate a law of the physical universe, I think that it's insufficient; it needs, for example, empirical observation and experimentation for support. But if a thought experiment attempts to demonstrate something about my mind that is more fundamental than my mind's empirical experience of the physical universe, then such a thought experiment might be educational - since it can show me something about thought itself, and whatever my thoughts-in-general can be about - if that thought experiment is performed carefully.
>you can get rid of time easily since time is just a fantasy... stop moving in your mind[=do not produce ideas]
I don't agree that I can consciously do this. If my mind stops, without any ideas or data or anything to be conscious of, then I'm unconscious. I'm in the same state (or perhaps non-state) as in dreamless sleep, or as before I was born, which doesn't educate me at all, since without consciousness there would no longer be a "me," a conscious "I," to recognize anything at all. There wouldn't even be an "I" to be deluded, or an "I" to recognize that "I" had been in a delirium but was no longer in a delirium. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but at least I'm being more humble in my assertions.
>>621047
>indeed, space and time... as any speculation, they are so disconnected from the phenomenon form the other senses, that taking them seriously, in saying that they connect back to the other senses, shows how nihilistic you are.
If you can give me an example of any non-spatial and non-temporal sensation I can have, I would be very impressed. Again, we might use the term "sensation" differently, and this terminological difference might make it seem that we disagree when we actually don't. I think I made it clear enough in my first series of posts what I mean by the term "sensation," "sense data."
Also, I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "nihilistic," since that term can be used in several different ways.
> life is not inside your fantasies. kill you fantasies and life is seen.
If you use the term "fantasy" in the way that I use the term "real" - meaning that which we experience in time, or in space and time - then I disagree. I am conscious of a temporal, physical, biological, emotional, social life-process in which my consciousness is bound up with consciousness of the external world. I agree that there can be some life-in-itself independently of the empirical life that I am conscious of - and if it is this more fundamental life-in-itself that you're referring to, then again we largely agree. But I'm not so quick to agree that if we "kill" our conscious perception of reality, there will still remain something to be conscious of, something remaining to "see" or to be "seen."
> the conclusion is that it is a faith to be a realist. and as any faith, it is nihilistic.
Again, I don't know how you define terms like "nihilistic" and "faith," so I can't be sure whether we agree or not. But I did say in >>615307 that these conclusions result from the search for a *rational* account of my conscious experience - not some arbitrary choice to trust in something that I can't understand (if that's what you mean by "faith"), but rather from using my reasoning.
>>608930
>String theory
>Only 100% unfalsifiable physical model of reality
>renders physics useless
How do we gain new knowledge and are aware of vast fields of study that we lack knowledge in, if reality is mental?
>>621053
> Sorry, I thought you had actually studied the topic.
If I hadn't studied it, I wouldn't have posted as I did. You act as if my disagreement with you about this topic and this forum amounts to my ignorance of both.
> "Know" just isn't any term. It is one that has been argued about unproductively for at least 3000 years.
"Unproductively" is an exaggeration, I think. Thinkers have made progress in refining the questions about what would count as knowledge, how it might be generated by the human mind and how it might require some relationship between the mind and a non-mental world. There might never be any universally accepted epistemic viewpoint; but this doesn't mean that we've merely spun our wheels in the mud. Intricacies have been clarified, implications drawn, and paradoxes encountered over the course of those millenia - and this counts as productivity, in my opinion.
> 4chan isn't the place to publish a book on epistemology.
A book? More exaggeration.
> How about: know, "to comprehend a truth with 100% certainty"
I like the 100% aspect; I think that to have "knowledge" of X should at least mean we're aware that we can't be mistaken about X.
As for "certainty," I think of the degree of confidence we have in what we believe, rather than whether that confidence is misplaced or not. The way I use the word "certainty," a person can be completely certain that they know X, without a doubt, yet can still be wrong about it - so I don't think "100% certainty" is sufficient here. But I also don't believe that certainty is always fallible, even if it's usually fallible; when I'm certain that I'm having a tactile and visual experience of a keyboard and illuminated screen, I can't be wrong about those immediate sensations.
>>621053
>We don't know if it is inconsistent, we can't use logic. We can't even know "something exists", because we can't be sure words have meaning.
Yet you're attempting logical argumentation, and attempting to convey meaning through word use, are you not? Why do you think you're doing this if you don't accept that anything can come of it?
I think you could equally use this extreme Cartesian skepticism to argue in another direction; you could also use it to show that when you try to doubt the basic laws of logic and math, you try to abolish the very means you'd need to prove that the basic laws of logic and math are doubtable. You're confronted by the impossibility of such a procedure, and you see that the laws of logic and math are known to you - you can't doubt them any more than you can doubt the immediate sensations that you're conscious of.
>>621611
There would have to be some mental source of all those discoveries - but a source that is at least initially unconcious, confusing the conscious part of the same mind into believing that the discovered data originated wholly extra-mentally.
I believe this is a line of thought that Fichte and Hegel pursued.
>>624451
Reminds me of Leibniz.
>>624556
Spinoza's natura naturans was more of an immediate influence, I think - especially on Hegel.
So I wasn't thinking of good old Gottfried, but you're right - there is a (probably not coincidental) similarity to Leibniz's idea of each monad unfolding its nature from within itself, blooming with all of the attributes that were contained in its concept all along, but that would only become apparent over time.
Solipsism is incorrect because it can't account for the consistency over time of experience.
Is God a solipsist?
Phenomenological non-cognitivism is irrefutable.
Solipsism is a possiblity within this branch, but is refutable because there is no evidence supporting it.
Just speaking objectively here.
>>624916
Dude
>>615272
Mr. Smart guy over here.
>>615272
Really though, good stuff.
>>615272
You into Heidegger?
I love solipsism. It's the only philosophy that is paradoxically certain yet uncertain. It also poses the important question of how we define things versus what they are defined as; and if those are indeed of our perception and not that of others. Otherwise they would not exclusively be our thoughts to begin with.
>>621248
Hahahahahahaahahhahahaa
>>625136
Not yet, and not for a while - looking forward to him though, and I expect Kant to be a help. Appreciated!
>>625226
He's a solid read.
>>623297
>If I hadn't studied it...
>apparently only read continentalists.
>4chan: a great place to be serious
>Thinkers have made progress in refining the questions
Pretty much everything about absolute knowledge from this thread is probably a translation from some ancient greek graffiti. Certainly mine and your arguments are. Probably same thing was also written somewhere in ancient china and india too.
>A book? More exaggeration.
Yeah, we're gonna answer an age old question in a internet forum with a character limit.
>As for "certainty," ...
I realized the definition just passes the buck. I thought that'd be obvious. I'm not going to define all the way down the rabbit hole. It was just a quick hack job.
>Yet you're attempting logical argumentation
And I already sacrificed logic so I can be contradictory if I want to. A equals not A. Sure, could be true, we will never know.
>Why ... doing this if you don't accept that anything can come of it?
Things might come of it. I just won't know if they do. Of course it isn't a great epistemological problem of the ages to not know what anonymous message board posters go do with their lives. I suppose I'd hope they go study further from metaphysics.
>I think you could equally use this extreme Cartesian skepticism
No, just regular Cartesian skepticism. To disallow the demon omnipotence is disingenuous to the original project.
>you can't doubt them any more than you can doubt the immediate sensations that you're conscious of.
It's all good dude, A == not A. (You can doubt qualia too!)
>>625226
I've tried to get through Critique of Pure Reason several times now, but get so bored so fast. Heidegger's complicated but entertaining and charmingly parochial in spite of his depth.
>>608930
>>Only 100% irrefutable branch of philosophy
Only to morons.
>>Completely negates the point of philosophy existing
Only to morons.
Look at your wall. Imagine it turning red. Try really hard to make it so.
Oh, the wall resists your attempts? Looks like the color of the wall is not part of you.
Oops. Proof of an external world.
Or, you could read Kant, Fichte, Hegel and one of the many other philosophers who give damn good arguments against moronism.
>>625317
>not going out and buying red paint
>>625361
>missing the point
>>625388
Not really. You have successfully turned the wall red. The entire chain of events of you going to the strore, buying paint and painting the wall could all have happened in your own imagination.
>>625467
That doesn't change what the wall actually is.
Clearly you can distinguish between imagination and non-imagination. There are things that impose themselves on you. You can't deny this.
>>625490
Those things are all in my own imagination.
>>625518
Liar.
If you're speaking of low-level idealism, there's a huge amount that isn't solipsism. Try reading Fichte/Hegel.
>>625531
Why should I listen to you? You're probably a figment of my imagination anyway.
>>625553
ebin
>>625573
My imagination is awfully cranky today.
>>625317
> Look at your wall. Imagine it turning red. Try really hard to make it so.
>Oh, the wall resists your attempts? Looks like the color of the wall is not part of you.
>Oops. Proof of an external world.
Interestingly, this doesn't seem to be a reliable way of differentiating dreamworlds from the real world - after all, there are many dreams in which we can't control and change our surroundings at will. Sometimes even when I know I'm dreaming, I can't use dream magic to bring about effects at a distance or fly around or make a beautiful girl or guy appear; dreams in which I do have such knowing control are pretty rare, which I think is common among most people who don't develop a skill for lucid dreaming.
Kant's tactic for distinguishing the real natural world from dreams was to look at the degree of formal regularity that A) connects dreams (or rather, largely fails to connect dreams) with the waking world of reality, and B) holds dreamworlds together internally. For example, over the course of days and weeks of being awake in the real natural world, there is a continuty of events and memories; I can recall how what I did two weeks ago led up to and connected with what I did three days ago, and I can connect my activities and plans from three days ago with results they have on today. But dreams rarely have such connection and unity with one another - more often than not, I'm in an entirely different dreamworld without historical continuity with any previous dreamworlds, sometimes several different times over a single night's sleep. Also, when I look back on what I remember from my dreams (and sometimes when I'm lucid in them) I recognize that many particular natural laws that are constant in the real waking world are, in my dreamworlds, violated in bizarre, irregular ways; the general law of causality holds within those dreams (or else I couldn't have conscious experience of those dreams at all), but it connects dream objects in much less predictable ways.
>>625361
>>625388
>>625467
Buying paint and painting the wall red *does* miss the point of the anti-solpisistic argument, because that argument was trying to show that the only way to change the wall's color would be by acting in accordance with the very natural laws that you can't violate, even if you try - and this inability to control the external world at whim is exactly what we'd expect from a non-solipsistic real world. In other words, this argument is saying that you could demonstrate solipsism (demonstrate that all beings are only manifestations of your subjectivity, of your mind) if you turn the wall red by merely wishing it, rather than by some other means that is perfectly in line with what's allowed by a non-solipsistic real external world - a world whose laws confront and often resist your subjective wishes rather than being controlled by them.
So you misunderstood the argument. I happen to think the argument is flawed anyway, though: >>626905
reminder that the lack of control on the world applies also to the whatever the solipsist (and realist) consider as the ''self''.
>>626955
This is a good point!
Would anyone here argue that the contents of our introspection arise and replace one another without any reason at all, without explanation at all, whether knowable or unknownable? Rather, it seems that one memory will cause us to be reminded of another, or will cause in us a desire, which will itself lead to another desire or inner plan or imaginary fantasy, and on and on. In this way, new states of inner sense will constantly be brought about by the inner states that preceded them - or inner states will be caused by objects and events in outer sense, leading us to automatically react with imaginings or memories based on what we perceive in space, or feel attracted or repulsed by what's in front of us, leading to new chains of inner representations connected deterministically over time.
Or is there some example of us starting up, totally uncaused, some state or chain of introspection? Wouldn't this be impossible to conceive, though? Wouldn't it be absurd to have a state that comes about without any cause, without any reason?
