The philosophical position I hold is that solipsism isn’t true. Because to ask yourself if others exist requires language, which we all learn from other people. We can doubt our senses without language, but this is psychosis, not philosophy.
And I think most Western people haven’t really solved the question of solipsism and still live in the Cartesian theater. And that this is a major reason why we’re mindlessly killing the planet (and ourselves).
How do you even know which things are part of the self and which are ‘external’? That feels arbitrary or a ‘I know it when I see it’ to me.
You could say the self is things you control but under any scrutiny in almost any domain that’s not true for what we think of as ‘self’ either.
I agree solipsism isn’t true, but I don’t know that I agree you couldn’t doubt the external world without language. I think language is just the mechanism we use to describe our inner thoughts. Math is ‘real’ and describes the world whether you use base 10 or 12 or don’t know about math at all.
How could you convince a solipsist of that? It seems impossible to disprove the position “I am imagining that anything outside my consciousness is real”. Anything you cite as evidence is premised on the conclusion.
Language is how we create our stories. The story is “I am imagining that anything outside my consciousness is real.”
Without language the story cannot be formulated. But language presupposes an other. It exists to pass information. So the fact that we have language disproves solipsism.
This isn’t my argument btw. It’s Wittgenstein’s argument against Decartes “I think therefore I am”. Which was flawed anyway because he still believed in God and the Devil, so two others in Decartes solipsism).
Anyway, it’s a hard argument to break because solipsism is so imbedded in Western thinking. I had to drop LSD to break through it and get what Wittgenstein was saying.
The philosophical position I hold is that solipsism isn’t true. Because to ask yourself if others exist requires language, which we all learn from other people. We can doubt our senses without language, but this is psychosis, not philosophy.
And I think most Western people haven’t really solved the question of solipsism and still live in the Cartesian theater. And that this is a major reason why we’re mindlessly killing the planet (and ourselves).
How do you even know which things are part of the self and which are ‘external’? That feels arbitrary or a ‘I know it when I see it’ to me.
You could say the self is things you control but under any scrutiny in almost any domain that’s not true for what we think of as ‘self’ either.
I agree solipsism isn’t true, but I don’t know that I agree you couldn’t doubt the external world without language. I think language is just the mechanism we use to describe our inner thoughts. Math is ‘real’ and describes the world whether you use base 10 or 12 or don’t know about math at all.
Well self other is a false dichotomy ultimately. This is what the Buddha means by no self.
Language is how we form concepts, like self amd other. Without these concepts the question of solipsism can not arise.
And language is about communication. Moving information between two points. It presupposes these two positions. And thus falsifies solipsism.
then why does language occur internally and create new things, like you say, if its only function is about moving information:
Because the brain is made up of individual cells moving information around.
How could you convince a solipsist of that? It seems impossible to disprove the position “I am imagining that anything outside my consciousness is real”. Anything you cite as evidence is premised on the conclusion.
Language is how we create our stories. The story is “I am imagining that anything outside my consciousness is real.”
Without language the story cannot be formulated. But language presupposes an other. It exists to pass information. So the fact that we have language disproves solipsism.
This isn’t my argument btw. It’s Wittgenstein’s argument against Decartes “I think therefore I am”. Which was flawed anyway because he still believed in God and the Devil, so two others in Decartes solipsism).
Anyway, it’s a hard argument to break because solipsism is so imbedded in Western thinking. I had to drop LSD to break through it and get what Wittgenstein was saying.