What serves as your stable foundation? — Tate

Practical skill, the manifest image, ordinary life. Of course, as mentioned, I embrace secular rationality, reject superstition. The Western Enlightenment is the big move. The rest is footnotes.

Practical skill, the manifest image, ordinary life. — Pie

So it's not just idealism you see as problematic. It's realism as well.

If it stands in a relation to a mind other than one's own, then that is profoundly problematic for idealism. — Banno

I don't understand why you would say this. Care to explain?

Not to you.

Am I the only privileged one around here, or are there other lucky members?

So it's not just idealism you see as problematic. It's realism as well. — Tate

Metaphysical realism is relatively harmless. But then so is idealism that grants the existence of other people.

Here's my metaphysical foundation: the only thing that philosophers can't doubt is the philosophical situation itself. This means that they must be in a world of some kind together, holding themselves and others as subject to the force of the better reason (norms of rationality.) To drop this is to descend into superstition, which many do of course. If I am not responsible for making a case for my beliefs, then I'm not a philosopher, just the usual sloppy believer in whatever I was told as a child, whatever peer pressure determines,... (I'm not saying any of us is ever completely pure of irrational influences, but some of us explicitly try.)

Plenty of folk have tried to explain how things work to you, no one has gotten through the wall. Cheers.

Solipsism may seem incoherent to you, but "multiple minds theory" seems incoherent to me. Can we agree on that? — GLEN willows

I ask you, friend, reflect on the bolded pronouns. How can we debate the multiple minds theory ? The notion of debate (and the notion of truth?) presupposes more than one player.

Berkeley"s table only existing when you're looking at it. — GLEN willows

I love the table that only exists when we look at it. It's a great target for pragmatism's insight. What practical difference does it make ? I'm a monkey exploiting regularities in the world. If the table is reliably there when it's time for lunch, I don't mind if it takes a little break from existing when no one is around.

That didn't answer my question. Evasion, Banno's MO.

The Matrix — GLEN willows

Some folk seem to take The Matrix as an argument for Idealism. I've not been able to follow this. The argument seems to go something like that we might be in a simulation, therefore all there is, is simulations. But a simulation runs on a computer. Therefore there are computers that are not simulations. Unless one posits an infinite regress of simulations... I can't see any appeal in that.

Neo was in a pod.

A good reason ought to bind others as well as myself. — Pie

Yes! Reason is public.

Therefore there are computers that are not simulations. Unless one posits an infinite regress of simulations... — Banno

And at this point the concept of 'simulation' has lost its contrastive force. (Saussure comes to mind, with meanings of words to be found in a system of differences without positive elements.)

Yes! Reason is public. — Banno

Indeed, and to deny it is absurd. "I will now prove/argue that we are not bound by a universal reason..."

Maybe there's a little wiggle-room on the 'universal' aspect, because a single community's norms are enough for debate. Still, this would be pre-philosophical, for surely we fancy ourselves cosmopolitans.

This circles back to Descartes not having grounds to "doubt everything" in the first place (Peirce, Wittgenstein). — 180 Proof

Peirce, not so much. His notion of truth approached asymptotically is as bad as anything in idealism.

For a statement to be true there must be a statement. — Michael

Indeed, but if this is what certain claims boil down to, then those claims aren't so exciting anymore.

What if certain 'discoveries' turn out to be mere tautologies ?

Indeed. Language not just on vacation, but on acid.

I realize the cogito isn't without it's problems....but I'll take a wack at this .

"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."

A proposition has to involve other people...this seems to me to presuppose your conclusion. If you start from the cogito without his other God arguments, there are no other people. It's all an illusion. Any language that exists is between the thinking thing (we're calling "me") and illusory non-humans. It's all an illusion you're experiencing. Could an entire language system be imagined? Why not? Because it's too complicated? Can an eye develop without a "creator?"

It could be a sophisticated drug. Or an extended dream. Could evolution be at play.?

These are the ideas that philosophy tends to scoff at - and I do too. I'm trying to find a way out besides without resorting to "cosmic consciousness" or God-minds.

"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"

I actually think Pie's point is more apt to de-solipsise me. That there must be a "something" creating the illusion, and many thought experiments made the cause....other people. That would be the death knell.

But a) that "cause" could be any of the options listed above. And even if my solipsistic world was created by Mark Zuckerberg the 35th, my world is still an illusory one..

Peirce, not so much. His notion of truth approached asymptotically is as bad as anything in idealism. — Banno

What's good about it though is that truths are sentences, so it's close to Wittgenstein. An objection might be that it still says too much about truth. Grammatically/conceptually, we can imagine an entire society having more and more warranted beliefs that were yet not true.

Could an entire language system be imagined? — GLEN willows

The imagination itself would be imagined. The contrastive force of real/imagined vanishes.

it still says too much about truth — Pie

Anything beyond a T-sentence is wrong.

It could be a sophisticated drug. Or an extended dream. — GLEN willows

This assumes something like 'real' human bodies reacting in a law-like fashion to molecules, or asleep somewhere in 'real' beds.

Anything beyond a T-sentence is wrong. — Banno

Yeah, that's pretty much what I think too. Or, if 'wrong' is too strong a word, 'not advised' or 'worth the trouble so far.'

I actually think Pie's point is more apt to de-solipsise me. — GLEN willows

:up:

I'll keep trying to pull you out of the K-hole.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I think too. — Pie

I'm concerned that if we can't soon find some basis for disagreement, ours is going to be a monotonous conversation.

Language not just on vacation, but on acid. — Banno

Nice!

"The imagination itself would be imagined. The contrastive force of real/imagined vanishes."

True - so let me rephrase...in my solipsistic world, all I experience is sense-data, including sense date of talking things and a communication method that could be gibberish. I have no reason to believe in a physical world, nor in other minds.

Of course I don't live this way, but it's logically possible,

I'm concerned that if we can't soon find some basis for disagreement, ours is going to be a monotonous conversation. — Banno

I like Derrida's critique of phonocentrism (his early stuff), and I think it fits in with Wittgenstein and Ryle. Not saying I love the style or all of the work, but he adds something to the Rylean attack on the ghost myth.

I mention this because it's maybe a point of difference ?

True - so let me rephrase...in my solipsistic world, all I can see is sense-data, including sense date of talking things and a communication method that could be gibberish. — GLEN willows

Are the sense-organs their own product then ? Are noses and eyes real ?

Are you sure we have brains in skulls ? Do you trust your eyes to tell you the truth about some brain 'behind' sensation?

If you start from the cogito... — GLEN willows

But that's the point. The cogito is framed in language, so one can't start just at the cogito without already being involved in a community.

Try a more general case, from On Certainty, and against scepticism generally rather than solipsism specifically. Our sceptics claims to doubt everything. But doubting anything means holding other things as indubitable. To doubt that you have shoes on is to accept that you have feet; or further, to accept that there are such things as feet and shoes.

So

If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty