I tell myself this all the time, but no one listens. And by no one, of course, I mean me. — Fooloso4
Sorry Shawn, I was joking. Taking the position that I can only be sure of my own existence, everything I said, beginning with the fact that I responded to you contradicts solipsism. — Fooloso4
Makes no sense. If only your mind is real nothing could count as evidence for or again any claim or belief. Thus, a solipsist can only suspend judging as true or false (i.e. doubt) or simply ignore any prospective counterfactual. A solipsist is a metaphysical neurotic. — 180 Proof
solipsist cannot believe in anyway distinguishable to herself from disbelieving; she only daydreams without cognitive or epistemic content. — 180 Proof
Except solipsism is a commitment to a 'metaphysical fantasy' and not itself a mental state. Perhaps REM sleep / lucid dreaming "seems" solipsistic but they need not "seem" so in every case. — 180 Proof
"Epistemic solipsism?" I refer you again to Witty's "Private Language Argument" which makes the case that any discourse which is not public – not accessible by others – is nonsensical (e.g. babytalk), which includes "epistemic solipsism". The eye is not in its own field of vision, the hand can grasp anything except itself; other eyes and hands are entailed respectively in order to see eyes and to grasp hands. Touching involuntarily touches back – "solipsism", as Samuel Johnson quipped, it's refuted thus. — 180 Proof
Yes. Neither the solipsist nor the realist have any notion of "perspective" (other than in the sense of 'wrong/faulty', as in "People who see things from their own perspective don't see things as they really are, but only from their narrow, wrong viewpoint").And something else that's pretty neat from the Tractarian:
5.64, Wittgenstein asserts that “Here it can be seen that solipsism, when its implications are followed out strictly, coincides with pure realism. The self of solipsism shrinks to a point without extension, and there remains the reality co-ordinated with it.” — Shawn
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