218 replies to this topic

[Nocturne]

So, I've seen a few topics on "religious" themes that really seem to be nothing more than discussions based on fundamentalist christian beliefs, and I decided to start this topic to talk about another belief system... Solipsism!

Now, I am a solipsist, which means (when taken to it's extreme) that I believe I am God. Don't get me wrong, I am not claiming to have created the world, the universe and everything (although I may have ), but, and this is the important part, I cannot prove that anything other than me exists therefore I am god!!!

You may say, "Ah, but I exist!"... to which the answer is "Prove it!", or "You are just a facet of me!", or "You are God too and we are one!". You see, the human mind is an isolated thing, completely separate from the "reality" it purports to experience and it has been shown time and time again that most of what we experience is a fiction created by the brain. How many times have you "heard" someone call on you only to turn round and find noone there? Or smelt something and then asked around yet noone else smells it? And what about optical illusions that work because they "fool" the brain and prove that it is actually "making up" what you are seeing based on incomplete information.

And believe me, the information you supposedly receive is very much incomplete! Can you see ultraviolet? Can you smell a drop of blood from three miles away? Can you feel the pores of your own skin even? No... So, your brain actually creates the world around you based on senses and experiences that may (or may not) actually exist and this means that what we perceive as reality is really nothing more than the imaginings of your brain as it tries to unravel it's own place in the universe. There has been a million tests done to prove that this is true... and, of course, common sense also dictates that it must be true!

This then, leads us to ask, what IS real? And of course the only possible, logical, answer is "me". I KNOW I exist. I feel. I see. I experience (or not). I. I. I. Which is where solipsism is born... it is based on the assumption that since the only thing that you can experience directly is yourself (remember, all external senses and experiences are false, created by your brain from incomplete or even imagined data), then YOU are the only thing you can actually prove conclusively to exist. Everything could possibly be a fiction and an invention of your brain.

So, what does this mean? Well, extreme solipsism (like most extremes) can be considered a bad thing, as it isolates the person from the world and other people as, since they may not exist, the extreme solipsist becomes egocentric and irresponsible and finally cruel and dangerous to those around them. However the more moderate solipsist like myself (my true belief is more spiritual take on Epistemological solipsism), do not deny the existence of others, but rather deny the ability to prove the existence of others.

On a more personal note, and straying from the true solipsist mind-set, my genuine beliefs stray more into eastern philosphy . For example Zen Buddhism teaches that the distinction between oneself and the reality that surrounds oneself is arbitrary... merely a habit of perception and a mechanism for realising oneself. And in Hinduism we have the concept of Brahman, where it is supposed that you and the universe are but one and the same. In fact, and this is where I think things get very interesting, the teachings of the Drishti-Srishti Vada state that :

"the 'seen' has no independent existence apart from the seer. In fact the entire Srishti (creation) is created from, is sustained by and goes back into - the seer."

It should be noted that this millenial world view has actually been proven by quantum physics...


To sum up :

1) The only thing you can have true access to is the contents of your own mind.

2) The only thing you actually KNOW are your own thoughts, experiences, emotions, and so on.

3) Just because you see/touch/taste/smell/hear "something" does not mean that "something" exists (it could be a dream or hallucination) and that there is no direct link between the mental and the physical.

4) Your experiences are by necessity private to you and the contents of your mind are the only things you have direct access to.



Obviously, as a solipsist, I should have no need to post and tell myself/you this, but it is possible that some facets of me(ie: you) are not fully aware of my/them selves and so I share this insight into my mind with me/them in the hope that I/you may encounter enlightenment discussing it!

[cantavanda]

Hmm you just broke my head lol
Good job

[mikee]

You may have just been joking, which would embarass me...

But I sorta believe in that as well I used to believe in it completely, but I guess I forgot about my belief over time and just became an athiest Thanks for reminding me of my religion XD

[Nocturne]

You may have just been joking, which would embarass me...

No joke. I firmly believe that I can prove nothing about reality other than I exist.

[Mercerenies]

I KNOW I exist

Do you now? But what if you are an illusion to yourself. Perhaps you are just imagining yourself when in fact nothing, not even you, exists.

Edited by Mercerenies, 26 June 2012 - 03:06 PM.

[Nocturne]

I KNOW I exist

Do you now? But what if you are an illusion to yourself. Perhaps you are just imagining yourself when in fact nothing, not even you, exists.

Hmm... So I am the embodiment of the Ouroboros? An illusion that imagines itself making an illusion that imagines itself making an illusion that imagines itself...

Nice...

[mikee]

I KNOW I exist

Do you now? But what if you are an illusion to yourself. Perhaps you are just imagining yourself when in fact nothing, not even you, exists.

How could he imagine himself when he is not there to imagine himself?

[Erik Leppen]

I think this whole idea of "maybe everything is just an imagination" to be nothing but an extra layer of complexity.

It is my experience that gravity exists, for example. Now I could do two things. 1. continually remind myself that it is merely my experience, and may not be the truth. Or 2. pretend that what I see is actually there, since that wouldn't induce internal contradictions, and just say "gravity exists".

Of course you're right that you can't prove the existence of anything (not even yourself), but what you do have is a life-long experience consisting of internally consistent events that together form the world around you, and for convenience's sake, call that experience "the truth".

My post is so long and full of repeatings because I find it difficult to explain this in a non-native language and I'm not sure I'm clear, but when viewing the world, the assumption that it's actually there keeps the thought process the least complicated.

[Nocturne]

I think this whole idea of "maybe everything is just an imagination" to be nothing but an extra layer of complexity.

It is my experience that gravity exists, for example. Now I could do two things. 1. continually remind myself that it is merely my experience, and may not be the truth. Or 2. pretend that what I see is actually there, since that wouldn't induce internal contradictions, and just say "gravity exists".

Of course you're right that you can't prove the existence of anything (not even yourself), but what you do have is a life-long experience consisting of internally consistent events that together form the world around you, and for convenience's sake, call that experience "the truth".

My post is so long and full of repeatings because I find it difficult to explain this in a non-native language and I'm not sure I'm clear, but when viewing the world, the assumption that it's actually there keeps the thought process the least complicated.

Yes, but your experience is incomplete. You cannot experience gravity entirely... you experience a recreation of what your brain is telling you gravity feels like. And even then that is different depending on your state of mind! if you are depressed, I bet gravity is more powerful, and if you are happy I bet it feels less. AND your internal representation of gravity my very well be different to that which others may have... even though you call it the same. The only fundamentally true thing you can actually state as ABSOLUTE truth to yourself is that you exist.

[cantavanda]

Possesion is an illusion. All things belong to the cosmos.

[Nocturne]

Exactly. See that's where I really find myself.... I am a spiritual solipsist in that I can only prove that I exist, but I do not deny that I (and you) may be a facet of the TRUE ME which is the universe as a whole. Maybe my/our only purpose is to know my/ourself?

[flexaplex]

Well here is where I say that there is no purpose, that our conciousness is nothing special. Like everything else our minds our comprised of materials found in the universe and these materials behave under the standard laws of physics. The materials just happen to have been shaped by the process of evolution in a way which gives them the properties of the conciousness which we are perceiving.

The idea of a 'meaningful' purpose makes no logical sense, millions of other species of animals and organisms have a conciousness or something like one and yet they will not have any sort of cognitive ability to grasp the concept of 'meaning'. The very large majority of humans that have existed were also born and died without having the cognitive ability to do this either, ie people that existed before we had proper education or those nowadays that have just not received education or do not have the ability to learn. Pretty much all religious views derive around the idea that we are special, this is the most common flaw to logical reasoning we exhibit.

[cantavanda]

Even feelings can be an illusion
Maybe the world is just me in a brain cabine that the world is virtual.
All feelings and all people are just illusions, maybe life is just a big dream.
Maybe there is nothing in the world, but our feelings and ourself is also an illusion...
M I N D E X P L O S I O N

[Nocturne]

Well here is where I say that there is no purpose, that our conciousness is nothing special. Like everything else our minds our comprised of materials found in the universe and these materials behave under the standard laws of physics. The materials just happen to have been shaped by the process of evolution in a way which gives them the properties of the conciousness which we are perceiving.

The idea of a 'meaningful' purpose makes no logical sense, millions of other species of animals and organisms have a conciousness or something like one and yet they will not have any sort of cognitive ability to grasp the concept of 'meaning'. Pretty much all religious views derive around the idea that we are special, this is the most common flaw to logical reasoning we exhibit.

I don't think this is a flaw... I think that this is a fundamental reason for life. We have to GIVE meaning to ourselves and the universe that we are a part of (because we are very much a PART of this universe)... you cannot state that there is no purpose to life just because you do not know it. You cannot state that there is a purpose to life just because you need it. You can only say "I exist" and "I choose to give meaning to the universe".

[flexaplex]

Ok I do actually have difficulty expressing a view on purposefulness because I have never really grasped what exactly the idea of 'meaningfulness' is, the very concept itself makes no logical sense to me from a cosmological view. And if 'meaning' can actually be described then I am curious about what exactly the 'meaning' of anything being 'meaningful' would be.

You are saying you can apply 'meaning' to yourself and I agree, I am perfectly fine with this but what is the 'meaning', 'purpose' (whatever you want to call it) of this meaning you are applying? You can give yourself meaning but there is no overall meaning or purpose to it.

I've just remembered actually that I came up with this motto myself a while ago when thinking about this:
"You're just as real as the reality you find yourself in. Life is just as meaningful as the meaning you assign to it."

However I recognised that this 'meaning' is only 'meaningful' to myself and has no overall 'meaning' to anything since I have no 'meaning' to anything.

[ugriffin]

If you are the only thing that exists (dang, and here I thought I was real ), then I have some points:

1) If you're alone, what created you? Or have you been of eternal existence?

2) If you've been around forever, how come you have no evidence of that?

3) If there's no evidence that you've been around forever, then logic suggests that you were created, which leads to:

3a) There's at least someone else, your creator.
3b) Since there's at least someone else, and the evidence that you're alone is inherently flawed, then all evidence that I am not real is also inherently flawed.

[Erik Leppen]

1) If you're alone, what created you? Or have you been of eternal existence?

You cannot know what created you.

2) If you've been around forever, how come you have no evidence of that?

Because solipsism, by definition, states you cannot know.

3) If there's no evidence that you've been around forever, then logic suggests that you were created

How does logic suggest that? I'd say that if there's no evidence, you can draw no conclusions either way?


The idea (if I understand it correctly) is that you cannot know. So asking questions about it, has no point.

[flexaplex]

From your concious perspective you do always exist, you never consciously experience any point in time that you are not concious. But also you can only consciously perceive the moment where that specific conciousness is existing in that point in time. If you want to assign what you can prove from a solipsist view then you can only prove that you exist at the point in time in which you are currently consciously thinking within, you cannot prove that you existed at any moment before the present moment or that you will exist at any moment after it.

Every memory you currently think you have experienced could be fabricated in a way which makes you think that those memories have actually occurred when they haven't. If you want to take the solipsist view that we create the entirety of our own existence then maybe you could view that this 'consciousness' which we perceive as experiencing throughout our whole life is actually just the process of us fabricating a perceptive continuous flow of memories into ourselves and none of them 'actually' happen. This would mean that what you currently think of as yourself, ie your conciousness, wouldn't actually be you.

[Overloaded]

I also believe that I am my "God", my savior.

[yokcos700]

You may have just been joking, which would embarass me...

But I sorta believe in that as well I used to believe in it completely, but I guess I forgot about my belief over time and just became an athiest Thanks for reminding me of my religion XD

Solipsism is a branch of atheism. If only oneself exists, a god cannot exist. Unless said god is oneself, but if the entirety of the universe is in one's imagination (I'm just going to say right now that I know that I exist and that nothing else's existence can be proven. Therefore, I am the most important thing in the universe.) that one has full control over every single thing that happens. However, some other things have to exist, as the human brain does not have the processing capability to calculate every event in the universe at such a high framerate, and with such consistency. Therefore, it is possible that right now, the only thing really in existence is a giant brain at the end of the universe, which is me or, from your perspective, you. This brain locked itself in when a catastrophic event happened and created a fictional universe which it retreated into. (Also, you need to wake up.)
Think about that.

EDIT: @Ugriffin: Consider this: What if the universe at its origin had 1 quintillion atoms, exactly. Then if aforementioned brain was formed of exactly one quintillion atoms. The brain is the only thing in the universe, yet the paradox is solved.

Edited by yokcos700, 26 June 2012 - 06:02 PM.