:lol: "P" is true IFF P — Banno

So you're saying that for everything that happens there exists a verbal (or written, or signed) description of that event? How does that work? Is there some God describing everything that happens? Or are there "free floating" descriptions of everything that happens within some Realm of Ideas?

For a self-proclaimed realist you're starting to sound a lot like an anti-realist.

...unless you are an idealist, in which case for there to be multiple minds, the truth "there are multiple minds" must be a mental phenomena... to try to put this into your odd wording. — Banno

See above.

So you're saying that for everything that happens there exists a verbal (or written, or signed) description of that event? — Michael

No. I am proposing that the world is all that is the case.

You might have heard that phrase elsewhere.

No. I am supposing that the world is all that is the case. — Banno

Then I have no idea what you're trying to get at here. There are multiple minds if there are multiple minds. We don't need for one of these minds to express this fact in speech or writing for it to be the case. Just be your usual deflationist self about truth.

. "Both realism and idealism must posit something bedsides one's mind.
— Banno"

This is my issue (and this discussion is very enlightening, thanks). Descartes showed that there is ONE thinking thing, not multiple thinking things. To infer that "since there is one thinking thing, all the people around me must also be thinking things, or somehow "contain" thinking things" is to me unprovable.

Again - in my opinion, we can agree a round square is impossible, but disagree that a virtual reality world that we are unaware of is "absurd" or "incoherent."

It may never happen, but that doesn't mean it isn't LOGICALLY POSSIBLE, correct?

Then I have no idea what you're trying to get at here. — Michael

That is indeed apparent.

So, if you would continue, I'd suggest attempting to form an idealist argument against solipsism. Try it and see how you go.

So shifting the burden again. You're the one who claimed that idealism leads to solipsism so it's up to you to defend your claim.

"There are multiple minds if there are multiple minds."

Ok then - there are green elephants with tutus if there are green elephants with tutus.?

Isn't the job of philosophy PROVING something exists? Or did I miss something in my modest university courses?

And again, any argument I offer will be accused of being a homo paleas.

But if you insist that I am in error, try it for yourself. See how you go.

And again, any argument I offer will be accused of being a homo paleas.

But if you insist that I am in error, try it for yourself. See how you go. — Banno

So you don't have an argument to defend your claim. Good to know.

So you don't have an argument to defend your claim. Good to know. — Michael

Oh, come on. You are better than such trite shite.

Oh, come on. You are better than such trite shite. — Banno

It's not "trite shite" to refuse to accept your shifting of the burden. You made a claim and are refusing to defend it. Don't try to make me out to be the unreasonable one.

Descartes showed that there is ONE thinking thing, not multiple thinking things. — GLEN willows

Well, you've identified the source of the problem. Cool.

Try this for a line of reasoning. Descartes supposed he could doubt everything, and decided that he could not doubt that he was doubting, and hence that the doubter must exist.

Have a think about what it was he was doubting. To doubt is to doubt the truth of some proposition. But a proposition is an item of language. And there are good reasons to think that language must involve other folk - that there can be no private languages.

Hence in order to make use of propositions one must be part of a language community. The very doubting that Descartes made use of seem to already involve other people.

What do you make of that?

Cheers, . All I did was invite you to consider what arguments an idealist might offer against solipsism. You are not obligated to do so. But you might have enjoyed yourself.

Descartes showed that there is ONE thinking thing, not multiple thinking things. — GLEN willows

But I challenge this thesis. That Descartes assumes the unity of the 'I' is one of my objections to his system. As I've argued recently, this unity is best understood in terms of social norms. The "transcendental unity of apperception" is best understood/demystified in terms of reputational scorekeeping, to pick just one example. (Another is as a character in the conversation of others, invoked in explanations.) It's because 'I' have to account for everything this body does, that 'I' exist as (take 'myself' for) an 'I' in the first place.

I do think we can 'fix' Descartes. Inquiry almost tautologically starts with language, but it need not start with Berkeley or Descrates. Investigating meaning reveals, I claim, the necessary sociality of semantics.

All I did was invite you to consider what arguments an idealist might offer against solipsism. You are not obligated to do so. But you might have enjoyed yourself. — Banno

Then the same to you re. showing how idealism leads to solipsism.

Well, you've identified the source of the problem. Cool. — Banno

:up:

You and I are samesayers, it seems. :wink:

To doubt is to doubt the truth of some proposition. But a proposition is an item of language. And there are good reasons to think that language must involve other folk - that there can be no private languages.

Hence in order to make use of propositions one must be part of a language community. The very doubting that Descartes made use of seem to already involve other people. — Banno

:up:

Indeed. It's hard to make sense of what doubt or truth could mean apart from some community living in the same world. The solipsist can no more lie than he it can tell the truth.

Descartes was probably tempted into the private experience language trap by his excellent studies of vision, but (as Nietzsche saw) folks tend to forget that this makes the sense organs and the individual skull a product of the sense organs and the individual skull...so it becomes less intuitive as the thesis is developed. 'Idealism' seems to be parasitic on some notion of the real world (in which there is a vat of some kind) even as it attacks this notion. A round square, though not so obviously.

Isn't the job of philosophy PROVING something exists? Or did I miss something in my modest university courses? — GLEN willows

The job of philosophy is continually modified and debated by philosophers. We should also consider that philosophy wasn't always professionalized. Hobbes, for instance, was basically an anti-philosopher, who mostly wanted to sweep nonsense from the path of science.

In my view, the key development is secular rationality, escape from superstition. The details of an epistemology freed from theology are comparatively minor. Ideas that there is no world and therefore no truth in the first place are basically absurd curiosities, an opportunity for play. I take serious doubts about the existence others to be mental illness...so I don't want to be cruel about that here.)

You and I are samesayers, it seems. :wink: — Banno

Our positions seem close. I also think we agree that there's not much to be said about truth, though it is useful to talk about what makes assertions warranted or not.

"Hobbes, for instance, was basically an anti-philosopher, who mostly wanted to sweep nonsense from the path of science."

There's part of me that identifies with this.

It's a special case of Wittgenstein's argument in On Certainty. it's a good answer to the skeptic and to the solipsist.

The choice between realism and antirealism is the choice between a bi-valued and many-valued logic.

Again - in my opinion, we can agree a round square is impossible, but disagree that a virtual reality world that we are unaware of is "absurd" or "incoherent."

It may never happen, but that doesn't mean it isn't LOGICALLY POSSIBLE, correct? — GLEN willows

I can relate to the intuitions you invoke. I've seen The Matrix and other excellent sci-fi. It seems to me that all such fictions depend 'grammatically' on some actual world existing. There's no left without right or true without false or illusion without reality. If you fear or speculate that you are living in an illusion, this seems to imply that you already embrace some notion of the real, some contrast to your current experience. How does it make sense to care about whether one has the truth or not without already assuming there is a truth to be had ? "Is there such a thing as the truth?" already implies something that is the case or not, something worth establishing.

In my view, the key development is secular rationality, escape from superstition. — Pie

:100:

'Idealism' seems to be parasitic on some notion of the real world (in which there is a vat of some kind) even as it attacks this notion. — Pie

:fire:

:up: This circles back to Descartes not having grounds to "doubt everything" in the first place (Peirce, Wittgenstein).

Can you not imagine any situation wherein a person is living a life within his mind, seeing only a pre-set program, and is not aware of it. — GLEN willows

I can imagine it, yes, but the program has to be situated within some reality that's deeper or realer than the dream or illusion. The evil God or the vat has to be 'real.' You need contrast. The theory assumes the very notion of the true and the real that it tries to wipe away. A round square. Let 1 = 0, then [all else follows, and no one cares, for everything being true is as good as nothing being true.]

There's part of me that identifies with this. — GLEN willows

:up:

Let me add that I think the human situation is pretty weird. We do have individual nervous systems, so I understand the temptation of the 'enclosure' theory, but it's unstable as a foundation. Once we drag the implicit assumptions into the light, we find surprising incoherence.

but it's unstable as a foundation — Pie

What serves as your stable foundation?

And there are good reasons to think that language must involve other folk - that there can be no private languages. — Banno

Including perhaps the very notion of the good reasons which a solipsist might claim to have for his its solipsism.) A good reason ought to bind others as well as myself. To make a (rational) case for this or that is to embrace/manifest self-transcending norms.

"I can relate to the intuitions you invoke. I've seen The Matrix and other excellent sci-fi. It seems to me that all such fictions depend 'grammatically' on some actual world existing."

Great point, and point taken. But outside of Hollywood, I guess we're saying there's always a cause. But the "world" creating my solipsistic world could be anything - even a very sophisticated drug. Social discourse with other minds could be a mute point - since there's only one mind - yours,

Again to be clear, I would never claim that solipsism is "true" in any sense of the word. Just that by MY definition of absurd, it's as sound a logical argument as Berkeley"s table only existing when you're looking at it. I'm open to all theories, as long as there's a logical argument to be made.

So I'm saying solipsism is as sound an argument as idealism, empiricism, or monads. I'm also questioning the social concept of the word "absurd." Solipsism may seem incoherent to you, but "multiple minds theory" seems incoherent to me. Can we agree on that? Just as "round earth" seemed absurd at one point, quantum mechanics etc.