Why the sudden appearance of Solipsism?

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blase6 said:
Reading a book? I’ve read lots of books. They are often less convincing than what I sense directly.
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Do you recognize a legitimate difference between you knowing the truth and you being known by the truth?

The first presumes your competency and adequacy. The second does not.

The first places the onus entirely on you to define the terms and set parameters. The second places you in a position of receptivity and humility.

The first, contrary, to its own inference denies there is truth to be known because the ground for determining truth is you as subject - the very thing that denies that you possess the truth. You claim to have the capacity to recognize the truth at the same time as denying that you have it - self-defeating AND the cause of your frustration.

The second, makes no assumptions except that the truth **is what is **and by that you can be known in light of the truth without predetermining what the truth is.
 
Peter_Plato said:
Do you recognize a legitimate difference between you knowing the truth and you being known by the truth?

The first presumes your competency and adequacy. The second does not.

The first places the onus entirely on you to define the terms and set parameters. The second places you in a position of receptivity and humility.

The first, contrary, to its own inference denies there is truth to be known because the ground for determining truth is you as subject - the very thing that denies that you possess the truth. You claim to have the capacity to recognize the truth at the same time as denying that you have it - self-defeating AND the cause of your frustration.

The second, makes no assumptions except that the truth **is what is **and by that you can be known in light of the truth without predetermining what the truth is.
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I don’t know what you mean by “being known by the truth”.
 
Aloysium said:
Reading your reply, I am frustrated too, but I will try again.

First of all, in this business there is no demanding.

God is Love.
To know God is to know about giving of oneself.
One gives of what has been given to oneself, to those who are other.

It is about surrender - surrendering of oneself to God.
If you want to know the Truth, you will surrender your mind to the Truth.
One can’t keep going on trying to piece together what is nonsense and expect the Truth.
You do not know God, ergo your premises are wrong.

I would say that God is calling you and you are frustrated because your understanding of the world prevents you from knowing Him.
He is telling you, you are all caught up in your own self - hence all you get are bizarre solipsistic ideas.
Seriously, what are you thinking? Do you work? go to the store? speak to people? What do you think is going on here right now?

Again, it is all about love.
Read the Bible. Pray. Do good works. Attend Masss. Participate in the sacraments.
Do you spend time praying and in contemplation of the Blessed Sacrament? Try it; it works.
Coming to know God isn’t like mathematics, solving some problem, memorizing the facts or proofs.
It comes about hrough participation in His Church; this is how you will know Him.
Pray - speak to Him.

That’s the easy way.
Don’t worry. If He continues to call and you are interested in finding God, ultimately, your frustration will mount and burn out all that is not love, beauty and truth.

:twocents:
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This isn’t intellectually knowing God. It is something else. Even if I can pray to God without certainty and experience a sort of “reality” of God, I still do not know intellectually that God exists certainly. And that is why I am frustrated.
 
yppop said:
Here is a rational thought:

[snip]

Were you to pick up the apple and look at it, you would be compelled to conclude that, in a sense, the apple and your hand constituted a single configuration of quarks and electrons and therefore if your hand is real so too must the apple be real. If you still contend that the apple is merely a subjective object in your mind and not objectively real, then so too must your hand not be objectively real. An unreal hand must lead to an unreal brain so if the apple doesn’t exist subjectively, neither does your brain. Now that conclusion may seem insulting, but believe it is not because if you believe reality can be reduced to solipsism, and you are not certain that I exist except in your mind so you must be having a discussion with yourself.
Yppop
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Yes, this is valid reasoning and a conclusion I have already reached.
 
Partinobodycula said:
Thank you

If I may, I have another question, are you more certain about the veracity of Catholicism, than a Muslim is about the veracity of Islam?
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A Catholic will say yes. The reason is because faith is assenting to revealed truth because of the authority of God who reveals. Now, assuming I have correctly understood Catholic teaching, both recognizing that it is God who reveals and assenting to the revealed truths are possible only by grace. So the certainty faith gives is supernatural.

As for someone who assents to Catholic teaching because of what they have picked up from their natural reason (w/ motives of credibility and the preambles to the faith), and not because of grace, they have a purely natural faith. This certainty would not necessarily be more certain than the faith of a Muslim, but this situation is not what is meant when it is said that faith is certain.
 
All this talk about not knowing the external world for certain certainly shatters the reality of love. Which is a pretty big deal.

But solipsism also tries to argue using reason. And the rationality of the world (or yourself) is something you have to take for granted. How do you know that your ability to reason is legitimate? If the world is fundamentally irrational, couldn’t you just be fooling yourself?
 
CrossofChrist said:
All this talk about not knowing the external world for certain certainly shatters the reality of love. Which is a pretty big deal.

But solipsism also tries to argue using reason. And the rationality of the world (or yourself) is something you have to take for granted. How do you know that your ability to reason is legitimate? If the world is fundamentally irrational, couldn’t you just be fooling yourself?
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I started another topic for that.
 
blase6 said:
I started another topic for that.
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An analogue for solipsism would be finding yourself in utter darkness with only a flashlight to help you “see.” By turning on your flashlight, things “come to light,” so to speak. Now you might be drawn to conclude that turning on the flashlight is just what makes things exist or come into being because their availability to your senses completely depends upon the light being held on them.

However, wouldn’t it be more reasonable to conclude that things do exist substantially and the light merely makes it possible to see them and that is all?

So, our consciousness of things is more akin to having a kind of multi-modal light that allows each of us as individual agents to “see” the world around us rather than being what creates that world.
 
CrossofChrist said:
A Catholic will say yes. The reason is because faith is assenting to revealed truth because of the authority of God who reveals. Now, assuming I have correctly understood Catholic teaching, both recognizing that it is God who reveals and assenting to the revealed truths are possible only by grace. So the certainty faith gives is supernatural.
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A Muslim will say yes. The reason is because faith is assenting to revealed truth because of the authority of God who reveals. Now, assuming I have correctly understood Muslim teaching, both recognizing that it is God who reveals and assenting to the revealed truths are possible only by grace. So the certainty faith gives is supernatural.
 
Peter_Plato said:
An analogue for solipsism would be finding yourself in utter darkness with only a flashlight to help you “see.” By turning on your flashlight, things “come to light,” so to speak. Now you might be drawn to conclude that turning on the flashlight is just what makes things exist or come into being because their availability to your senses completely depends upon the light being held on them.

However, wouldn’t it be more reasonable to conclude that things do exist substantially and the light merely makes it possible to see them and that is all?

So, our consciousness of things is more akin to having a kind of multi-modal light that allows each of us as individual agents to “see” the world around us rather than being what creates that world.
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Solipsism is admitting that you can’t know for certain what the flashlight is showing you, or what it means.
 
blase6 said:
. . . you can’t know for certain what the flashlight is showing you, or what it means.
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So, stop using a flashlight.

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” - C.S.Lewis
 
blase6 said:
Solipsism is admitting that you can’t know for certain what the flashlight is showing you, or what it means.
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That depends upon whether your solipsism is metaphysical or merely epistemological. You seem to wander into the territory of the former in a couple of your posts.

Solipsism (sɒlɨpsɪzəm; from Latin solus, meaning “alone”, and ipse, meaning “self”) is the philosophical idea that only one’s own mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one’s own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind. As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism
 
Peter_Plato said:
That depends upon whether your solipsism is metaphysical or merely epistemological. You seem to wander into the territory of the former in a couple of your posts.

Solipsism (sɒlɨpsɪzəm; from Latin solus, meaning “alone”, and ipse, meaning “self”) is the philosophical idea that only one’s own mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one’s own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind. As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism
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I say that the idea that “only one’s own mind is sure to exist” is correct if that includes the experiences which are part of the mind. The conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist sounds like a poor unreasonable response to doubt. It sounds more like idealism.
 
There are psychological disorders and there are intellectual disorders like an unreasonable and stubborn attachment to an ideology. In either case discussion is pointless. Only prayer and fasting will suffice.

Linus2nd
 
Linusthe2nd said:
There are psychological disorders and there are intellectual disorders like an unreasonable and stubborn attachment to an ideology. In either case discussion is pointless. Only prayer and fasting will suffice.

Linus2nd
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So trying to be perfectly reasonable in what I can say I know certainly is a “stubborn attachment to an ideology”. I get it.
 
blase6 said:
I say that the idea that “only one’s own mind is sure to exist” is correct if that includes the experiences which are part of the mind. The conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist sounds like a poor unreasonable response to doubt. It sounds more like idealism.
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So let me get this straight.

You can only be certain that your own mind exists. You cannot be certain other minds or the world exists, but to, therefore, CONCLUDE they do not exist is unreasonable in your view, because that sounds more like idealism.

Okay, so I have to ask you this:

If you are uncertain that other minds exist as other minds, what is the warrant you have for following the commandment to love others, since love essentially means caring for the well-being of others AS OTHER or doing unto OTHERS as you would have done unto yourself?

And this…

How is it possible to love others as OTHER when you have no certainty about them or whether they even exist?

OR…

How is it possible to treat others as you do yourself when you are absolutely certain you exist but are completely uncertain as to whether they do?

Another question (or two)…

Could it be that a lack of love for others as OTHER is essentially what undermines knowing for certain that they exist?

Doesn’t love presume that solipsism has been transcended since we can’t truly love what we don’t know?
 
Peter_Plato said:
So let me get this straight.

You can only be certain that your own mind exists. You cannot be certain other minds or the world exists, but to, therefore, CONCLUDE they do not exist is unreasonable in your view, because that sounds more like idealism.

Okay, so I have to ask you this:

If you are uncertain that other minds exist as other minds, what is the warrant you have for following the commandment to love others, since love essentially means caring for the well-being of others AS OTHER or doing unto OTHERS as you would have done unto yourself?

And this…

How is it possible to love others as OTHER when you have no certainty about them or whether they even exist?

OR…

How is it possible to treat others as you do yourself when you are absolutely certain you exist but are completely uncertain as to whether they do?

Another question (or two)…

Could it be that a lack of love for others as OTHER is essentially what undermines knowing for certain that they exist?

Doesn’t love presume that solipsism has been transcended since we can’t truly love what we don’t know?
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I don’t know if they are real or not, so it is still best to love them.
You could think of it as being trapped in a dream. Best to make the most of it by being loving towards the people in your dream, out of hope that they won’t hurt you.
 
blase6 said:
I don’t know if they are real or not, so it is still best to love them.
You could think of it as being trapped in a dream. Best to make the most of it by being loving towards the people in your dream, out of hope that they won’t hurt you.
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If you know nothing about them you have no reason for thinking loving them will make any difference at all.

By the way, “loving” them out of a hope they won’t hurt you is not loving them out of genuine concern for their well-being, but out of concern for your own. It is self-interest. That might give them another reason to hurt you. 😃

My point is that you CANNOT truly love another as other unless you sincerely believe, in a completely certain and unqualified sense, that they exist as OTHER.

So your solipsism makes the kind of love God expects of us logically impossible.

Perhaps you need to rethink this.
 
Peter_Plato said:
My point is that you CANNOT truly love another as other unless you sincerely believe, in a completely certain and unqualified sense, that they exist as OTHER.

So your solipsism makes the kind of love God expects of us logically impossible.
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Love isn’t a reasoned response. It doesn’t have a bullet list of requirements. It’s an emotional one. Its born of memories, and experiences, and hopes, and fears. It’s born of life. It’s born because the soul yearns for companionship, and so it disregards reason. Love doesn’t care about reason. Love is the suspension of reason.

In fact a solipsist would argue that it’s you who can’t love. It’s you who must be indifferent. For love is greatest when we fear that it might be lost. When a parent sits at the bedside of an ill child, it’s then that they feel their love the deepest. It’s then that they pray the hardest. And so the solipsist treasures everything, not because he’s certain of them, but because he isn’t. You on the other hand must treasure practically nothing, because to you the world is assured, irrefutable, and mundane. Who loves the most? The solipsist does, because he’s assured of nothing, and so he treasures everything.
 
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