Thursday, December 11, 2008

Solipsism

An interesting philosophy I was introduced to recently that you can only know that your mind exists and anything else can never be fully understood - you only know it as your mind can know it...please share your thoughts on this idea...

Here's a brief summary to get you going: Wiki



"Terminal Solipsism" image from http://elsewherecommunities.blogspot.com/

7 comments:

  1. This is something I categorized with neo-classic philosophical self reference where the challenge of perception and reality is related to the dream state of consciousness.

    These fundamental arguments are dismissive of a lot of pointed facts - even the fact that a fact is a fact - which is absurd. Obscure and relative facts are ignored, but all-in-all these types of philosophical arguments are fun to wiggle through using the rules of philosophical argument, they're like solving a Rubek's cube, but they can be denounced.

    Fact of the matter is this - denying the fact that the human brain is the only item in existence factually is a selective and subjective truth and thus can be denounced as simply an opinion. If you're capable or willing to accept a truth that existence is only held within the brain, you can further deduce that existence "isn't"; and you're not really here, but you're a figment of an imagination that's not your own. It's more complicated than I'm getting into, but I need to get back to web dev so I can start my imaginary weekend.

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  2. 3rd paragraph (denying) should be (accepting). woops

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  3. Interesting indeed. This could be my new motto:
    Nothing exists;
    Even if something exists, nothing can be known about it; and
    Even if something could be known about it, knowledge about it can't be communicated to others.

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  4. I'll add more of my thoughts after I hear from a few more peeps on this...

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  5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kant
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kierekgaard

    Huh, now I'm in a philosophy mood... it's been a while. The above two links are... well, they exist to hurt brains.

    Kierekgaard --
    "Epistemological solipsism is the variety of idealism according to which only the directly accessible mental contents of the solipsistic philosopher can be known."

    This guy was a noodle fry in college. But after a while, what "is" and what "can be" become two very distinct and distinguishable subjects, especially when you expel the ravings of fanaticism, such as "we are in a dream, working through a collective consciousness" (much like the Matrix); "nothing exists but your mind creates a perception of existence", etc. Hollywood's played into these metaphysical philosophical arguments a lot.

    Check out "The Fountain", "Vanilla Sky", hell, even Total Recall.

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  6. I'm going to download Total Recall. I've seen The Fountain and Vanilla Sky. Thanks for the recs.

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