I can be right or wrong about the world all by myself.....
— Mww

I don't dispute that rational agents can make true or false claims. — Pie

That I make empirical mistakes relative to the eternal world says nothing about a private language nor about whatever normative reports....or even internal rationalizing excuses.....I may offer following from such mistakes.

Do we not bark and hiss in these inherited norm-governed, sound patterns known as English ? — Pie

Sure we do, but it is never necessary that we do, with respect to the aforementioned minimally rational intelligible epistemic situations.
—————

The problem is when the solipsist tells me that I can't know there's a world beyond me. — Pie

We rational ones ought not care at all what lil' Rene smarty pants figures out just for himself. — Pie

Smarty Pants paved the way for disappearing the problem. Even if a good god or a bad demon rather than a merely foolish solipsist is the source of your apparent deception, there is recourse, and you are it. Nothing more than, hey!! I jumped the shark, so can you!!!

Can’t blame the late Renaissance or Enlightenment folks that removed the deistic impediment to human intellectualism, for the nonsense of the post-moderns who, in fancying their supposed progress, did nothing more than install a different one.

Sure we do, but it is never necessary that we do, with respect to the aforementioned minimally rational intelligible epistemic situations. — Mww

Do you believe in some kind of wordless angelic 'language' of 'pure' concept, unsoiled by the filthy outerworld ? I suggest that no particular language is necessary but that some language is.

Can’t blame the late Renaissance or Enlightenment folks that removed the deistic impediment to human intellectualism — Mww

I love the moderns, and I think some of them embraced the veil-of-ideas paradigm for good reasons, such as to escape 'inner lights' and innate ideas that 'proved God.' As long as sensations reports are kept in the same causal nexus as worldly objects affecting sense organs, there's no problem. But it's absurd to doubt the sense organs and our separate human bodies then babble about a 'self' that's made only of babble and sensations.

'Experience' is a ghost story (See Sellars' 'myth of the given.')

Independent of the subject might as well be 'external,' — Pie

I think there’s a difference between saying that something has an independent existence and saying that the truth of something is independent of what I say or believe. A mathematical antirealist will reject the independent existence of mathematical entities but can accept that we can get maths wrong.

The solipsist argues that we cannot know that anything exists independently. He doesn’t argue that claims don’t have a truth-value. In fact, the solipsist can accept that “there is a material world and there are other minds” is true; he just argues that it cannot be known to be true.

A mathematical antirealist will reject the independent existence of mathematical entities — Michael

He or she will say that such entities don't exist independently...which is true of or a fact about what world ? And for who ? Our world, for us, those jointly subject to the same rational-conceptual norms. And it's not just those who are contingently alive now, but also for those who might be here in the future or in a hypothetical scenario.

I don’t know what you mean by asking who it’s true for. It’s just either true or false. And then, as a separate matter, there may exist one or more conscious entities.

he just argues that it cannot be known to be true. — Michael

To me this is a claim about the very world that supposedly cannot be known to exist. 'All rational minds ought to assent to the logical/normative impossibility of their proving that there is something beyond them.' If epistemological solipsism is aimed at elucidating a self-transcending concept, what's it doing ? "If others exist, they are bound by such norms." This is a statement about the 'external' world, a claim that should be valid after the death of the philosopher making it. It doesn't matter if the others exist. The (external) world is such that, if there are rational agents in it, they are bound to acknowledge that they cannot be certain that there is a world.

The 'external' world here is basically a public concept or set of concepts, about which claims are made.

I don’t know what you mean by asking who it’s true for. It’s just either true or false. — Michael

My point has been that the minimal version of the world (of the 'external') as opposed to the self (the 'internal') is something we can be wrong about.

Is the 'self' understood as something that can believe things, make claims, or not ?

Does it makes sense, in your view, for a mathematical realist to deny an external world ?

As I keep saying, we can make claims about things that don’t exist, and about things that do exist but that cannot be known to exist. Your arguments just don’t seem to address the claim being made by solipsists, which is just about the limitations of knowledge.

As I keep saying, we can make claims about things that don’t exist, and about things that do exist but that cannot be known to exist. Your arguments just don’t seem to address the claim being made by solipsists, which is just about the limitations of knowledge. — Michael

Are the limitations of knowledge part of the (external) world ?

As I keep saying, we can make claims about things that don’t exist, and about things that do exist but that cannot be known to exist. — Michael

Indeed, sir, indeed. But claiming that X doesn't exist is a claim about something, about our 'external' 'world.' What is the target of the claim 'God doesn't exist' or 'the world doesn't exist'? What's it about ? If not our shared situation ? Which I claim is fundamental, however underspecified..for the rest is absurdity. "It is not the case that we are in a shared situation. (Our shared situation fails to include a shared situation.)" It's the nature of concepts and rationality to do target this 'space of reasons.' ES makes the claim about our shared situation that we should not assume we are in a shared situation.

ES makes the claim about our shared situation that we should not assume we are in a shared situation. — Pie

Again, it doesn’t say that we shouldn’t assume that there are other minds. It says that we cannot know that there are other minds.

If you accept that we can only ever assume that there are other minds then you accept the solipsist’s skepticism.

But claiming that X doesn't exist is a claim about something, about our 'external' 'world.' — Pie

It’s a claim about X. I don’t understand this external world concept of yours. It doesn’t seem to be anything like what is usually meant, which concerns the existence of objects that are independent of my mind. That’s the kind of external world that solipsism says cannot be known.

Do you believe in some kind of wordless angelic 'language' of 'pure' concept, unsoiled by the filthy outerworld ? — Pie

What.....you don’t? That can’t be right; you’ve already admitted to it, calling it “one and universal”.

'Experience' is a ghost story — Pie

Yes it is, as are all such abstracted explanatory devices regarding proposed speculative methodologies. So what? Must it be said, then, that there is no such thing as experience, simply because talking about it removes it from its occurrence which isn’t and can’t be talked about?

Even if there isn’t, as the cognitive neurobiologists are wont to insist, still we are predisposed by our very nature to call out by name whatever it is that seems to be happening in us, not to judge an obtained internal understanding, but iff such internal speculative mechanism is accompanied by a wish to promote an explanation of that judgement.

What.....you don’t? That can’t be right; you’ve already admitted to it, calling it “one and universal”. — Mww

Nice try !

I do believe that norms govern our claims, yes indeed, but neither of us is foolish enough to infer from this that the dove can fly in a vacuum. The possibility of translation from German to English need not force us to take 'meaning' to have (its only) existence in some ghost, 'behind' the signifiers.

The ghost story remark was meant to emphasize that it's superfluous. Inferences have assertions as inputs and assertions as outputs. To be sure, James can assert that "the stoplight was red," but the ghostly redness-in-itself does not appear in our reasoning, except as a sort of phlogiston.

It doesn’t seem to be anything like what is usually meant, which concerns the existence of objects that are independent of my mind. — Michael

I'm asking you make some kind of sense of this 'independent of my mind' that's better than 'something I can be wrong about, something I can misunderstand or perceive.' A philosopher making claims about knowledge in general and not just his knowledge seems to be talking about public concepts, external to his understanding of them.

The key part is that it’s about what exists. We can be wrong about maths and trees, but unlike mathematical entities (at least according to the antirealist), trees are thought to exist. It’s independent existence that solipsists claim cannot be known.

As for what it means for something to exist, presumably it means what it means when the non-solipsist claims that mind-independent objects and other minds can be known to exist.

If you think the very notion of existence isn’t clear then I don’t think you can claim that other minds exist and so you must be quiet on the matter.

This sounds a bit like 'if you think a thesis is incoherent or ambiguous, it's your fault! ' Please recall that I've offered a theory of the minimal epistemic situation. It does not make sense for a philosopher to assert, as a philosopher, that there isn't necessarily a world to make an assertions about, for this assertion is either about a world (ours) or just fundamentally confused.



Recall also that we discussed the ambiguity of 'exist' earlier. Do you not recall ?

OK, but debating what 'exists' means is fair game, no? — Pie

Yes. — Michael

It's seems absurd to forbid philosophers the further clarification of fundamental concepts. Indeed, your solpisist makes claims about (further clarifies) the limitations of (the concepts) knowledge and reason...which either exceed him into an 'external' world, lending his claims their force...or fail to concern us, because he's not talking about you and me and any potential rational agent ?

If the non-solipsist claims that other minds and mind-independent objects can be known to exist and the solipsist claims that they can’t be known to exist, and if they accept that their positions are incompatible, then they accept that there is some shared understanding of what it means to exist, whatever that is.

So as I said, if you think that the meaning of “exists” first needs to be explained then you must be quiet on the debate between solipsism and non-solipsism.

But it seems to me that you want the solipsist to explain what it means to exist whilst simultaneously claiming that other minds and mind-independent objects can be known to exist, which is clearly special pleading.

The ghost story remark was meant to emphasize that it's superfluous. — Pie

What’s superfluous? Experience? The remark? Doesn’t matter; I’m not interested in the superfluous.

I do believe that norms govern our claims..... — Pie

What norms; what is a norm and from whence do they arise? And for that in which you merely believe, what governance can there be?

Solipsists have trouble sharing.

What norms; what is a norm and from whence do they arise? — Mww

That's a good question, and, as you might expect, philosophers haven't forgot to speculate. But as philosophers, their speculations are already subject to the very norms they make explicit. Our minimal situation seems to include, along with us of course, shared conceptual and inferential norms (language/logic) and a 'world' or shared situation we can be wrong and therefore right about.

I'm on a Brandom kick lately, and I'm hoping you'll enjoy what he makes/takes of Kant.

As I understand his work, Kant’s most basic idea, the axis around which all his thought turns, is that what distinguishes exercises of judgment and intentional agency from the performances of merely natural creatures is that judgments and actions are subject to distinctive kinds of normative assessment. Judgments and actions are things we are in a distinctive sense responsible for. They are a kind of commitment we undertake. Kant understands judging and acting as applying rules, concepts, that determine what the subject becomes committed to and responsible for by applying them. Applying concepts theoretically in judgment and practically in action binds the concept user, commits her, makes her responsible, by opening her up to normative assessment according to the rules she has made herself subject to.

The responsibility one undertakes by applying a concept is a task responsibility: a commitment to do something. On the theoretical side, what one is committed to doing, what one becomes liable to assessment as to one’s success at doing, is integrating one’s judgments into a whole that exhibits a distinctive kind of unity: the synthetic unity of apperception. It is a systematic, rational unity, dynamically created and sustained by drawing inferential consequences from and finding reasons for one’s judgments, and rejecting commitments incompatible with those one has undertaken. Apperceiving, the characteristically sapient sort of awareness, is discursive (that is, conceptual) awareness. For it consists in integrating judgments into a unity structured by relations of what judgments provide reasons for and against what others. And those rational relations among judgments are determined by the rules, that is the concepts, one binds oneself by in making the judgments. Each new episode of experience, paradigmatically the making of a perceptual judgment, requires integration into, and hence transformation of the antecedent constellation of commitments. New incompatibilities can arise, which must be dealt with critically by rejecting or modifying prior commitments. New joint consequences can ensue, which must be acknowledged or rejected. The process by which the whole evolves and develops systematically is a paradigmatically rational one, structured by the rhythm of inhalation or amplification by acknowledging new commitments and extracting new consequences, and exhalation or criticism by rejecting or adjusting old commitments in the light of their rational relations to the new ones.
...
But the minimal unit of responsibility is the judgment. It is judgments, not concepts, that one can invest one’s authority in, commit oneself to, by integrating them into an evolving constellation that exhibits the rational synthetic unity of apperception. Accordingly, in a radical break with his predecessors, Kant takes judgments to be the minimal units of awareness and experience. Concepts are to be understood analytically, as functions of judgment—that is, in terms of the contribution they make to judgeable contents. To be candidates for synthesis into a system exhibiting the rational unity characteristic of apperception, judgments must stand to one another in relations of material consequence and incompatibility. So if one is to understand judging also as the application of concepts, the first question one must ask about the contents of those concepts how the use of one or another concept affects those rational relations among the judgeable contents that result. This methodological inversion is commitment to the explanatory primacy of the propositional.
...
I read Hegel as taking over from Kant commitment both to a normative account of conceptual doings, and to a broadly pragmatist approach to understanding the contents of our cognitive and practical commitments in terms of what we are doing in undertaking those commitments. I see him as taking an important step toward naturalizing the picture of conceptual norms by taking those norms to be instituted by public social recognitive practices. Further, Hegel tells a story about how the very same practice of rational integration of commitments undertaken by applying concepts that is the synthesis at once of recognized and recognizing individual subjects and of their recognitive communities,
is at the same time the historical process by which the norms that articulate the contents of the concepts applied are instituted, determined, and developed. He calls that on-going social, historical process “experience” (Erfahrung), and no longer sees it as taking place principally between the ears of an individual. — Brandom

https://sites.pitt.edu/~rbrandom/Texts/From_German_Idealism_to_American_Pragmat.pdf

But it seems to me that you want the solipsist to explain what it means to exist whilst simultaneously claiming that other minds and mind-independent objects can be known to exist, which is clearly special pleading. — Michael

I grant the possibility of the last actual rational agent, dying of radiation poisoning, deciding not to bother writing a sad poem about his self-annihilating species.

I don't expect philosophers to ever finish clarifying what it means for something to exists. I have suggested that a minimal, neutral understanding of 'external world' is that which (the) 'I' can be wrong about, and this is basically the appearance-reality distinction. The epistemological solipsist says that it is wrong for any rational agent to assume this dichotomy,for things might be different than they appear. Despite appearances, there might 'really' only be appearances.

I take it that you don't accept my 'translation,' but what else could a solipsist be denying of any interest ? Isn't the appearance distinction itself the target ? And is it not absurd to be cautious about this distinction ? Be careful ! One can be wrong about the possibility of being wrong...

Yep, it doth not make any sense at all! — Agent Smith

:up:

I'm hoping you'll enjoy what he makes/takes of Kant. — Pie

Not bad. Don’t agree with much of it, but then....I ain’t got no letters after my name, so what ta hell do I know.

Some time later: it’s actually pretty good. First I read only the posted excerpt, hence the disagreement, only later the whole link, which helps the context of the post.

Some time later: it’s actually pretty good. First I read only the posted excerpt, hence the disagreement, only later the whole link, which helps the context of the post. — Mww

:up:

Nice to hear !

If the non-solipsist claims that other minds and mind-independent objects can be known to exist and the solipsist claims that they can’t be known to exist, and if they accept that their positions are incompatible, then they accept that there is some shared understanding of what it means to exist, whatever that is.

So as I said, if you think that the meaning of “exists” first needs to be explained then you must be quiet on the debate between solipsism and non-solipsism. — Michael

Is it not inconsistent for the solipsist to acknowledge that they share an understanding of what it means to exist with another person/mind, and to claim that other minds can't be known to exist? How can the solipsist acknowledge that a shared meaning can be known if they don't acknowledge a shared world with other minds can be known? The solipsist's position appears to be contradictory, saying: I can know that we both understand the meaning of the word "exist", but I cannot know that there is any "we" who both understand this meaning.

You can share an understanding and not know that you share an understanding. And at least on the non-solipsist's end he must admit to a known shared understanding. So it would be hypocritical of the non-solipsist to demand of the solipsist what he won't demand of himself.

The solipsist's position appears to be contradictory, saying: I can know that we both understand the meaning of the word "exist", but I cannot know that there is any "we" who both understand this meaning. — Luke

:up:

The 'we' is 'deeper' or more 'primordial' than the (linguistic) 'I.'

The 'we' is 'deeper' or more 'primordial' than the (linguistic) 'I.' — Pie

I doubt that. If we look to non-human animals, and perhaps babies and people with certain developmental disabilities like autism, I suspect that they have a greater difficulty in understanding that other animals/people have minds and thoughts and feelings like their own. The notion of "other minds" requires a degree of inference that comes after self-recognition. To understand that other people have minds you must first understand that you have a mind.