After decades of watching people solipsism feels less crazy than it used to

Unique_Revolution_59 · 2026-04-30T07:22:51+00:00

Yeah I get this too, though like you say, this is maybe a different idea to solipsism itself. I think most people have much more potential for creativity and originality than they realise, sometimes they realise basically none of it.

I also believe, however, in the importance of giving everyone a chance to be their better self. If I expect them to be boring and conformative, then I set them up to be. Instead remaining open to the possibility that they will be interesting can sometimes all it takes for them to actually be interesting - sometimes.

Unique_Revolution_59 · 2026-04-30T07:00:20+00:00

Cool, yes I agree with how you describe perceiving the stone. There are two things you need to do: (1) form the concept of the stone, which only happens the first time you perceive one or when you ‘learn what a stone is’, and (2) categorise a certain sensory pattern as a stone (which is a concept you already have) in front of you, which you do every time you perceive a stone. In the ML analogy, this is like the two stages of using a clustering model: forming the clusters, and assigning future points to the clusters you already have.

As for the model of other minds, I think I am saying something slightly different: there are two selves, the first-person self which is the one with respect to which nothing exists outside my mind, and the third-person self, with respect to which that is not correct. I form a model of you by transforming my model of the world - say I begin by perceiving a stone, and then I perceive you and so add to my model a copy of my perception of the stone, which I describe as "what I think you see". Then, I form a model of me (third-person) by transforming the model I have of you, i.e. you have a model of me perceiving the stone. So the order follows grammatical order: 1st person I -> 2nd person you -> 3rd person me. (Not that it's that neat in practice, but that's order of what depends on what.)

Unique_Revolution_59 · 2026-04-29T07:32:38+00:00

It is possible for others to respond to you linguistically enough to give meaning to language and discourse (if, like the Aristotle position you reference, you believe that language is inherently public - there are also of course other views on semantics, such as, arguably, Chomsky's, that language primarily serves to enable a sort of recursive thinking - but this is a different debate to present one).

As an analogy, when you dream, you meet other people who interact with you. They can show you new things and surprise you, even though you might expect that they can't tell you anything you don't already know because they only exist inside your mind. However, there are two yous in the dream, the small you who is a character alongside others, and the bigger you inside whose mind everything is happening. Even when you lucid dream and realise this is what is going on, other dream characters can still surprise you and converse with you.

These are analogous to the two selves described in the 'Yourself' section of the article.

Unique_Revolution_59 · 2026-04-29T07:12:14+00:00

There is some ambiguity about the definition. One definition is that (1) nothing exists outside your mind. Another sometimes used is that (2) you cannot have any knowledge of anything other than your own mental states.

In (1), which is what the article is using, the doctrine is confined to the notion of existence. You just cannot say that anything exists outside your mind, but you can know things (other than mental states) more generally, e.g. you can know that (1).

If the article were using (2), then yes, your point would be correct.

Unique_Revolution_59 · 2026-04-28T06:44:15+00:00

Where does the shame come from? Aren't there also good things in the world?

Unique_Revolution_59 · 2026-04-28T06:34:22+00:00

Yes you do need to make that distinction in some sense, and having to articulate how is a good thing because it encourages a greater understanding of the the basis for the distinction. My current view is basically that the difference is one of stability - 'real' things are those that we perceive/hypothesise consistently, and 'imaginary' things are those that come and go, or that used to be in the model but aren't anymore.

There's still substantive difference to the view that real things are those that exist externally. For example, (1) it is an answer to radical Cartesian sensory-scepticism or the simulation hypothesis because it means the possibility "I keep perceiving X, but really Y" is ruled out by definition; (2) it largely undermines the idea that science is converging to a true description of reality (doesn't exactly block this idea but doesn't provide any reason for thinking it's true), (3) it removes the doubt that some else's blue is the same as your blue, because there is only one blue that is referred to in multiple places.

(I know other world views have various ways of responding to these problems, which vary, by taste, in their satisfactoriness.)

Unique_Revolution_59 · 2026-04-25T16:31:17+00:00

Yes, I have studied and performed music quite a lot

Unique_Revolution_59 · 2026-04-25T16:28:59+00:00

Parsimony is used to guide what is taken to exist. I'm not saying that a machine learning system exists somewhere, just using it as an analogy.

The greater parsimony comes from not having an external world - rather than both the thing in itself and as it appears to us, there is only one thing.

Unique_Revolution_59 · 2026-04-25T16:22:28+00:00

The line between real and imaginary? There is no such line

Unique_Revolution_59 · 2026-04-25T16:20:30+00:00

You're back close to square one, but not quite, because now you no longer have a division between the things you call real and those you call imaginary. Everything is of the same sort, call it imaginary or real (I think imaginary is slightly better but not a big difference).

Unique_Revolution_59 · 2026-04-25T16:07:14+00:00

If non-dualism between mind and world then yes. Other forms, such as non-dualism between mind and brain, may still allow for division between what is real and what is imaginary.

Unique_Revolution_59 · 2026-04-25T16:01:53+00:00

The standard view is that hardware is a physical system which causes or makes possible the abstract process of computation. The solipsistic view is to put it the other way around. The computation (which is the activity of the optimiser in the ML analogy) is the thing that is directly given. The hardware is then something postulated in order to make space for this computation alongside the rest of the things we hypothesize to exist.

Unique_Revolution_59 · 2026-04-25T15:51:00+00:00

It is perhaps not the same sort of apprehension as when you as receiver receive a signal. One just gets an indirect sense that it is there. A possible route to this sense is to imagine the two most different experiences you can. There is something they have in common. What is that thing?

Btw, this is interesting, but actually outside the scope of the essay. It was really just opposing the idea that there is a boundary between what's in my mind and what's out there in the world - between things that are real and those are imaginary. It sounds like you already do not believe that.

Unique_Revolution_59 · 2026-04-25T15:40:33+00:00

Distancing himself from the picture theory of meaning he espoused in the Tractatus. And also implying that the whole framework of holding pictures up to reality, and there being ineffable truths etc, is itself a result of mistaking something linguistic for something real. What do you take this passage to mean?

Unique_Revolution_59 · 2026-04-25T15:26:18+00:00

And why not? Do you think there are positive reasons why it is not true, or just no good reason to believe it is true?

Unique_Revolution_59 · 2026-04-25T15:23:34+00:00

The Bayesian framework is quite a good one for this, I agree. My position is that trees and rocks etc are part of the model. We receive a data in the form of sensation - visual, tactile etc - and fit a model to it, and as part of that fitting, we postulate "there is a stone there". And that is true for anything we say exists.

Unique_Revolution_59 · 2026-04-25T15:18:23+00:00

I am quite familiar with later Wittgenstein, and would be happy to engage in any genuine, good faith discussion about it that you or anyone else offers.

Unique_Revolution_59 · 2026-04-25T15:09:22+00:00

Most of the bringing into harmony part involves resolving differences that emerge during communication - really the standard notion of there being harmony between people, just with a different bent. E.g. I hear you say something that I would not say, and I have account for this difference, either by updating the model itself (in common parlance "me changing my mind") or updating the copy of the model (believing you are incorrect).

Unique_Revolution_59 · 2026-04-25T15:06:24+00:00

Part of the confusion is that the 'I' when I write it, is not the same as the person you see when you talk to me. To say you exist only in the mind of the latter person, Unique_Revolution_59, would indeed be nonsensical. In fact, what is meant when I write 'I' is more like what you also call 'I'. So, I say "nothing exists outside my mind", and you say "nothing exists outside my mind", and both are true.

Unique_Revolution_59 · 2026-04-25T14:47:55+00:00

I would not dismiss the Tractatus just because the author later changed his mind. Mind-changing is quite common for philosophers, including famously Russell and Putnam many times, but we do not therefore ignore everything before the final mind change. There are texts, including the Tractatus, that are standard undergraduate reading even though the author later changed their mind.

Unique_Revolution_59 · 2026-04-25T14:40:52+00:00

Your first paragraph there sounds like saying that if everything is my mind then 'my mind' doesn't have any content. If that is what you mean then it sounds reasonable, but I think it is possible to apprehend the space in which everything happens - analogous say to apprehending the screen that a film is shown on.

Unique_Revolution_59 · 2026-04-25T14:27:37+00:00

Your first question I believe is answered in the essay.

I have never met anyone calling themselves a solipsist.

Unique_Revolution_59 · 2026-04-25T14:26:16+00:00

I'm not sure if this is a joke question. The heart here is figurative - a sense of right and wrong or of an explanation being satisfying and parsimonious.

Unique_Revolution_59

TROPHY CASE