Regarding Solipsism

[Rye]

I was just thinking of something I read on DW's creationism site, about how we can only be certain about our own thoughts. I've been thinking about this for a while, and whether it should be extended to the ability to percieve, or rather, the a priori acceptence of senses.

Anyway, the concept is that awareness of one's own thoughts is in the same class of mental stimulus as sensory information. Additional to this is the concept that one could not become self aware without sensory input initially in order to distinguish yourself from anything else. To be aware of your own thoughts requires preceding concepts; the concepts of self awareness and ownership, and the concept of a thought as distinct from sensory information.

The solipsist takes things like self awareness, the "sense" that relays information that it's detected a thought, and artificially distinguishes this as a concept from the other senses. I think that's unjustifiable, and is even unaccomplishable without other senses in the first place. How would one achieve self awareness with no ability to percieve anything distinct from one's self? What would inspire thought with no information coming in in the first place. Inspiration cannot exist in a vacuum.

I put it then, that solipsists are undermining their own assertions by neglecting the hierarchy of mental stimuli, concept-building and knowledge gaining that allows them to formulate their ideas in the first place.

Additional to this, if they honestly believed the crap they shovel, why would they evangelise it?

Any thoughts?

[bekeleven]

This may not be accurate, but it think you only need to know two things about this:

1) our brains could be in a lab, matrix-like, somewhere.

2) It's used as a cop-out.

[Rye]

This may not be accurate, but it think you only need to know two things about this:

1) our brains could be in a lab, matrix-like, somewhere.

And we might not have brains at all, just a simulated sensory detection of sensory detection.

2) It's used as a cop-out.

Obviously. I'm just saying we can be as certain of our own thoughts, awareness as we can our other senses. Solipsists argue that we can only know absolutely our own thoughts, self awareness, to the exclusion of our senses. I disagree, I think we can only know our own thoughts like we know our senses, and that self awareness and thoughts can only arise if there is an initial sensory input.

I mean think about it, let's assume there's a brain that gets no sensory input whatsoever. It's not going to know that it exists. It's not got anything to get that concept down with. It's not going to think of anything. It can only achieve that if it learns associations of "I think therefore I am" after it has the concepts of "I" "think" and "am". It needs sensory input for those, and therefore should acknowledge "I think therefore I am" is genetically dependent on sensory input originally.

I think also, therefore, that since self awareness is "all we can be certain of" in the solipsist mindset, they should argue that they can't really be certain of that. IF sensory information is not authentic, then why is the awareness of self authentic? Would it not be just as much of an illusion as your senses? If the senses are electronic, and electronic signals become self aware from those signals, are those senses not authentic to that self awareness?

I dunno, I've kind've lost myself.

[Kuroneko]

An epistemological solipsist does not have to deny having knowledge of the other senses, just the claim that those senses are genuinely reflective of objective reality. A metaphysical solipsist would be forced to hold that the sense information is actually generated fully inside the mind; it is not a logical contradiction to hold that the mind's awareness of self is not the only area of the mind.

[Rye]

An epistemological solipsist does not have to deny having knowledge of the other senses, just the claim that those senses are genuinely reflective of objective reality.

But how could they come to that conclusion? They'd have to use their sesnses first, right? How do they know of their own awareness if not through another "sense" which is how I'm trying to describe self awareness.

A metaphysical solipsist would be forced to hold that the sense information is actually generated fully inside the mind; it is not a logical contradiction to hold that the mind's awareness of self is not the only area of the mind.

I suppose that one gets away with it. Of course, it still seems to have the problems: how did they become self aware, where did they get the concept of the mind, and where did they get the concept of everything being "within" the mind?

[Kuroneko]

But how could they come to that conclusion? They'd have to use their sesnses first, right? How do they know of their own awareness if not through another "sense" which is how I'm trying to describe self awareness.

I suppose that even under your criticism, a possible reply would be that sensations qua sensations are genuine by definition. A particular sensation, say of a color, would be a 'genuine sensation of color' because the mind implictly defines a particular class of sensations to be considered color, so when confronted with it, it is impossible to rationally doubt that one is experiencing a sensation as such. This is independent of any particular language, need not be a conscious decision, and says nothing about what caused the sensation. Thinking construed as a sense could be the same way.

Interestingly, Zen-Buddhism could be considered solipsism, but of a very unorthodox kind--it erases the distinction between self and non-self, rather than emphasizing the certainty of the self.

I suppose that one gets away with it. Of course, it still seems to have the problems: how did they become self aware, where did they get the concept of the mind, and where did they get the concept of everything being "within" the mind?

The metaphysical solipsistic answer would be that self-awareness is facilitated by the sensation-generating faculties of the mind. As to how rational such a reply is, no more and no less than the rest of solipsism, so in this sense it is perfectly in character.

[Surlethe]

Why should self-awareness (or awareness of one's thoughts) be categorized with other sensory stimulation? Presumably, the mind is constructed of thoughts; thus, in detecting itself, the mind requires no third party to convey the information.

[Kuroneko]

Why should self-awareness (or awareness of one's thoughts) be categorized with other sensory stimulation? Presumably, the mind is constructed of thoughts; thus, in detecting itself, the mind requires no third party to convey the information.

This is sensible, but unavailable to a true solipsist, since the existence of a 'third party' for the other senses is denied as well, and so the solipsistic mind should be constructed of far more than thoughts in order to be capable of reproducing the normal wordly experience (although to some extent this is true even for the non-solipsist, unless 'thought' is extended to include the unconscious). For the solisist, the functional difference between thought and other senses is blurred, particularly for metaphysical solipsism--the mind detects itself in all sensory experience under that doctrine.