Relative Understanding

General Discussion
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“You are not talking to yourself. You, as a person, are talking to other people who exist within your reality. Your reality is you, and you are your reality which is a Conscious Space (as defined by Klinko) that contains everything in your life.” - Sree

AS has been mentioned before this is unverifiable. - @snowcity


You may have good reason to assert that my Conscious Experience of reality is unverifiable to you. I have equally good reason to affirm that my Conscious Experience of reality is verifiable to me. I am not debunking the notion of a shared reality. You are a person within my reality. We share it. This is how you and I can carry a log together and cooperate in the building of a bridge so that you and I can cross a stream.

Instead of arguing about who is right, let’s inquire together into your take on “Solipsism” and dispel the confusion.

first of all, there are two perceptual realities that occur as complete polar opposites of each other (to me at least)

The dream world and the waking world.

The waking world creates the dream world as you begin to conceptualize your interactions with reality, and subsequently the dream world shapes your conceptualizations of reality in non-conscious ways…. because nothing you encounter in your dreams should be foreign to you, the dreams are an accurate reflection of what YOUR position in reality is, what YOU know, what you identify with, what is significant to you.

Because of this, it seems safe to say that the waking reality is a more objective and founded reality. Whether others are real doesn’t seem to matter so much, but I think we can scertain that it is not even REMOTELY as easy to alter the waking reality as it is the dream reality.


Why is a distinction between the dream world and the waking world relevant to our inquiry?

In fact though, the only sensible “reality” that seems to exist may lie between the “twilight zone” of waking and sleeping…. where you temporarily are non-existant (unless you’re very good at meditation/yoga nidra). I think it is in this void of non-existance that all things share common ground… and that the death process is similar to the sleeping process.
You are muddying the water here by speculating on a reality in which you are non-existent. This is not a scientific way to examine “Solipsism”. We need to deal with verifiable facts. You are in my reality. I can hold your head and bang it on a wall to verify that you are in my reality.
So you could say that first of all, “you” don’t exist, because in the scheme of things you are largely impermanent, and you could say that the only thing that exists is you, because you have no way of telling if other people are “real.” However the logical conclusion would be that, much like in your dream, things, people, etc, “exist” they just do not exist in a solid or othwerise tangibly measured form.
Why do you say that I am impermanent? Are you inserting Buddhist philosophy into our conversation? The dream state is a psychological phenomenon that arises when you are asleep or when you are awake (daydreaming). The only occasion when you are non-existent is when you are spacing out which is quite normal. What is abnormal about this is when you deliberately space out and call it a meditative state.
In other words, they exist because they ARE form, and forms exist because you perceive them. I think solipsism arises from the inability to recognize the inherent similarities that all humans have, and erroneously assumes that YOU even EXIST in the first place, when really “you” are just inhabiting a temporary vessel through which to perceive and be.
Whoa. I am losing you here. You are in my reality and spacing out into your “twilight zone” between waking and sleeping.
I think some of the thinking blinds us from the (personal)fact that we are all connected through the inner void of nothingness that lies at the end of the universe that is human consciousness. Objects in your dreams, for example, certainly exist, for they are merely aspects of you and your own thought patterns, if you touch them they will eventually melt away into you.
Buddhist theory. There is no scientific proof supporting this.
Human beings are the same, as in, ultimately they are connected to you through your perception of them, and likewise vice versa, you exist because they perceive you.
True.
But we all are nothing on the inside.
Are we not our bodies? By this, I mean my very existence arises from the sensations I feel emanating from my body.
This comes from me from loosely studying taoism, buddhism, tibettan buddhism, lucid dreaming, psychedelics, and new aged thinking. Hopefully it makes sense. My basic principle for thinking about things right now is that paradoxes DO usually ultimately make sense, that both “nothing” and “everything” exist at the same time. Duality.
No inquiry is of value if it is based on dabbling into superstitions. If you want to nail anything down for certain, you have to be sure of what you perceive to be true.
Basically you would need to ascertain that YOU are real before you can figure out whether other people are. Most people think they are real… but when you realize how subjective and narrow your perceptions of reality are… and how much differently the world could be colored through different eyes. It makes you wonder. It’s safe to say that anything you encounter has some sort of significance that is proportional to your own, since you are in fact perceiving it, and perception is the only way to understand “reality” or “existence” in the first place.”
Perception is all you have. In order to ascertain anything, you need to understand not only the truth about the nature of what you perceive but also the nature of perception itself.
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According to the wiki: Solipsism - Wikipedia

There is no necessary link between a mental event and a physical body.

This link also shows how solipsism is the end result of Occam’s Razor is would be the default position while realism needs the proof: Is it impossible to prove solipsism? - Philosophy, Sociology & Psychology - Shroomery Message Board

Sree that was a reply in one of the links I posted.

“Solipsism does not change the size of the world. There are exactly the same number of things that need to be explained, regardless of the framework that you are attempting to use to explain it. No mater what, you need to explain why the feeling of holding something goes with the experience of seeing it. With solipsism, you need to explain why how someone else, someone you’ve never met, has the same experience. Because, when you do meet them, they describe the same sensations. That’s easily explained by the standard model of physics.”

All that is explained via solipsism is it not? I’d also direct you to the paragraph Sree just went through. Also you are using terms that cannot be verified. Someone else when I can’t know if that are real or have experiences. These forms talk but so what? It proves nothing. I don’t think people understand what they are arguing against.

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I don’t think people understand what they are arguing against. -- snowcity
I'm against you, and you're right, I don't understand why I'm doing that.
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It’s not that, I posted the link to the wiki page on it which explains what it is. There should be no confusion.

“We can give language all the meaning in the world and it is still nothing but grunts and groans on the larger scale. Just because our ape brains have to developed to a point where we can formulate concepts doesn’t mean that the meanings we attribute to them are inherent.”

Even this link which addresses common arguments against it.

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According to the wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism

There is no necessary link between a mental event and a physical body. - @snowcity


The divide between the mental and the physical is an illusion caused by indoctrination. Perception - that is shaped by a belief in the dogmas of science – identifies forms as mental if they cannot be detected by the senses.

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In other words, they exist because they ARE form, and forms exist because you perceive them. I think solipsism arises from the inability to recognize the inherent similarities that all humans have, and erroneously assumes that YOU even EXIST in the first place, when really “you” are just inhabiting a temporary vessel through which to perceive and be. - @snowcity
I would like to come back to the above statement. You are quite right in pointing out that “Solipsism” is based on the notion that YOU are a material observer in objective reality. As I said, this is an illusion created by the dogmas of science.
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Science (from the Latin word scientia, meaning “knowledge”) is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.

dogma is a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.

So, “dogmas of science” is an oxymoron.

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I found another answer on Quora to sort of illustrate the point: https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-believe-that-the-humans-around-me-actually-possess-consciousness-and-its-not-just-me-who-is-conscious-What-if-the-people-around-me-are-merely-programmed-to-act-that-way

 

"

I’ve been asking myself that question from when i was a kid - I can see how i have always WANTED to BELIEVE that other people think and feel and experience stuff inside their head/themselves, just like me — yet, i could never get over the FACT that when i am looking at them with my eyes, i see none of that going on - i am just seeing a picture. Yet the picture looked so much like my picture that I didn’t want to accept that maybe what i think about what other people think and feel and experience ‘within themselves’ isn’t actually real and really only exist in my own head/‘consciousness’ and i truly am ‘alone’ in my ‘consciousness’/‘inner experiences’ as ‘thoughts, feelings and emotions’.

Because, that would then imply that i am ALONE here, ALONE in existence, AS existence - and even though common sense deduction of the FACTS would indicate that to be reality, i see how i started to, throughout my life, deliberately convince myself that what exist inside of myself as my ‘mind’, exist within others as well through ‘interpretative perception’, even though i could not and cannot possibly see this for real - as i cannot actually open up the head of another human and see the thoughts and feelings - just so that i would not feel so alone or have to realize that i am alone.

Because, what would it imply to be/exist ALONE here? It would imply that i am responsible for all that exist here as this world/reality that i am seeing with my eyes, as it all IS me, just me, alone, here. It would imply that i am ‘God’ and all that exist here is my creation — it would also imply that i would have to face the fact that i have never been aware of being ‘God’ and of when, how or why I created this existence in the first place — which scared the living shit out of me. So, i took the road of self-deception and pretended that i am ‘not alone’ because ‘other people feel what i feel, they think what i think - and i am my thoughts and feelings, so that means that i am not alone responsible for what is here’. Though what i have had to come to terms with is the deliberate self-deception in convincing myself that i am this ‘system’ of ‘thought, feeling and emotion’, while deeeep down within myself I kind of know that that is not really who i am - i simply brainwashed myself deliberately into losing myself within that system to just not have to face the FACT that i am ALONE here.

This is the sad reality of it because it is the FACTS - as i can see that ‘consciousness’ as what i believe about what ‘other people’ think, believe, feel and experience, still only exist within MY MIND — so, it’s a matter of making that decision: will i stop fooling myself and face the FACTS that ‘consciousness’ is my own self-made illusion or will i continue hiding within myself to not face the ‘God’ that is me and the enormous responsibility that comes with it?"

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Science (from the Latin word scientia, meaning “knowledge”) is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. - Lausten
Cite one testable explanation and prediction about the mysterious universe the nature of which is still being explored.
dogma is a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.
Correct.
So, “dogmas of science” is an oxymoron.
I guess so, but only if you have the wherewithal to question scientific knowledge of objective reality as laid down by scientists. If you can’t, and swallow what the scientists laid down about time and space and gravity as incontrovertible truths, then you are a believer of dogmas.
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if you have the wherewithal to question scientific knowledge of objective reality

Then you are thinking like a scientist, you are doing science

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if you have the wherewithal to question scientific knowledge of objective reality

Then you are thinking like a scientist, you are doing science - Lausten


Very good. I am impressed.

So, let’s do science and inquire into the nature of YOU, the observer, and find out if YOU are ALONE here.

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I think you are getting a little off topic here.

But I have another point from the Quora post:

 

“I feel that existence of something cannot be proved without perception. If I cannot see it, taste it, feel it, smell it, or hear it then “it”'s existence is questionable. Emotions, thoughts, consciousness, and things related cannot be picked up up by our physical senses so existence is questionable. I often think about if it’s just my conscious that exists and everyone and everything else is just an illusion that my brain feeds me for entertainment purposes or maybe something greater. But I have argued with a friend about my idea of perception/existence and a strong point against my idea is that the oxygen we breathe can’t be picked up by our senses but us being alive proves that it exists.”

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Random Quora post: "I often think about if it’s just my conscious that exists and everyone and everything else is just an illusion that my brain feeds me for entertainment purposes or maybe something greater."
The sequence of events leading to you being a disembodied mind imagining all of reality is infinitely less likely than the sequence of events leading to you being a living, breathing person like the rest of us.

Volunteer somewhere. Raise money for an orphanage or animal shelter. Go to the park and pick up garbage. All of those things will make you more real to the rest of the world than all this mental gymnastics you do. If you want to be special, do something special.

If you want to make people know you exist, you can punch them or hug them. Both accomplish the same thing, but please choose the one that leads to a better world.

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Emotions, thoughts, consciousness, and things related cannot be picked up up by our physical senses
Really? Describe a feeling without mentioning something physical
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I’ve been asking myself that question from when i was a kid – I can see how i have always WANTED to BELIEVE that other people think and feel and experience stuff inside their head/themselves, just like me — yet, i could never get over the FACT that when i am looking at them with my eyes, i see none of that going on – i am just seeing a picture. Yet the picture looked so much like my picture that I didn’t want to accept that maybe what i think about what other people think and feel and experience ‘within themselves’ isn’t actually real and really only exist in my own head/’consciousness’ and i truly am ‘alone’ in my ‘consciousness’/’inner experiences’ as ‘thoughts, feelings and emotions’. - @snowcity
Other people you look at, and even touch, are not like you. They are just perceived forms of people like the form of yourself you see in the mirror. Remember what I said about proving that you are real by banging your head on the wall. You may yell “ouch” in pain but I can’t feel your pain. You are just a “picture” to me.
Because, that would then imply that i am ALONE here, ALONE in existence, AS existence – and even though common sense deduction of the FACTS would indicate that to be reality, i see how i started to, throughout my life, deliberately convince myself that what exist inside of myself as my ‘mind’, exist within others as well through ‘interpretative perception’, even though i could not and cannot possibly see this for real – as i cannot actually open up the head of another human and see the thoughts and feelings – just so that i would not feel so alone or have to realize that i am alone.
Your fear of being ALONE is the problem.
Because, what would it imply to be/exist ALONE here? It would imply that i am responsible for all that exist here as this world/reality that i am seeing with my eyes, as it all IS me, just me, alone, here. It would imply that i am ‘God’ and all that exist here is my creation — it would also imply that i would have to face the fact that i have never been aware of being ‘God’ and of when, how or why I created this existence in the first place — which scared the living shit out of me. So, i took the road of self-deception and pretended that i am ‘not alone’ because ‘other people feel what i feel, they think what i think – and i am my thoughts and feelings, so that means that i am not alone responsible for what is here’. Though what i have had to come to terms with is the deliberate self-deception in convincing myself that i am this ‘system’ of ‘thought, feeling and emotion’, while deeeep down within myself I kind of know that that is not really who i am – i simply brainwashed myself deliberately into losing myself within that system to just not have to face the FACT that i am ALONE here.
Avoiding the truth - that you are ALONE – is self-deception.
This is the sad reality of it because it is the FACTS – as i can see that ‘consciousness’ as what i believe about what ‘other people’ think, believe, feel and experience, still only exist within MY MIND — so, it’s a matter of making that decision: will i stop fooling myself and face the FACTS that ‘consciousness’ is my own self-made illusion or will i continue hiding within myself to not face the ‘God’ that is me and the enormous responsibility that comes with it?”
“Consciousness” is not an illusion. Being ALONE as “consciousness” is a FACT. Forget other people, who are forms like those of trees, birds, squirrels, mountains, and sky furnishing your reality.

I wouldn’t say that you are “God”, as defined by the Catholic Church, but I understand why you make that association. Realizing that you are ALONE does invoke a sense of responsibility. You either respond to that calling and become ALIVE or you cop out and live out your life like a soulless picture of those other people in your reality.

 

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So, let’s do science and inquire -- Sree
Stop saying things like "dogmas of science" and I'll think about doing that with you
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But I have another point from the Quora post:

“I feel that existence of something cannot be proved without perception. If I cannot see it, taste it, feel it, smell it, or hear it then “it”‘s existence is questionable. Emotions, thoughts, consciousness, and things related cannot be picked up up by our physical senses so existence is questionable. I often think about if it’s just my conscious that exists and everyone and everything else is just an illusion that my brain feeds me for entertainment purposes or maybe something greater. But I have argued with a friend about my idea of perception/existence and a strong point against my idea is that the oxygen we breathe can’t be picked up by our senses but us being alive proves that it exists.” - @snowcity


Consciousness itself cannot be detected by your “physical” senses; and yet, it contains everything that is perceived by your “physical” senses, as well as, your emotions and thoughts. The contents of consciousness make consciousness.

There are many things that the senses cannot detect. You cannot see the people you converse with on the internet. Consciousness takes over, through the use of memory (knowledge), to facilitate interaction with people not within the field of sensory perception. I don’t know what I am breathing. If the scientist says that it is oxygen, I take his word for it. I can’t see air either but can feel it when the wind (which I also cannot see) blows. Sometimes, when in my garden, I don’t feel the wind blowing and everything is still except for a single leaf on the tree fluttering. I don’t lose sleep over it wondering why.

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Sree that doesn’t really make a lot of sense. How are they not like me? What makes them just forms and not me just a form? Also banging my head on a wall proves nothing about whether I am real or not. I could still be a dream of something else or a figment.

I don’t see how fear of being alone is the problem, that seems like a reasonable downside to it being true. There is also no CALLING like you think since from what I gather on the post she has no facts, just beliefs. You too are guilty of claiming the same alleged “facts” she does, I also pointed out how solipsism being true leads to a soulless existence and eventually into nihilism.

That I am ALONE is not truth, it’s still a belief. One believes they are alone, but they cannot confirm this. I think you understand solipsism and the problem of other minds about as well as the OP does in that link. You also assume consciousness yet if solipsism were true you could never prove it. How do I know if I am conscious or if consciousness even exists or is a thing. Also if what the OP is saying were true then there would be no point in posting it on Quora if we are just “forms” or pictures and looking at her profile there would be no reason to post anything else or use words like WE and such.

Rat, you don’t seem to grasp it either. You assume the existence of others just like Sree assumes that you are alone. Solipsism says that one cannot know for sure.

Pretty sure there was a thought experiment with the Boltzman Brain that said something similar:

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Sree that doesn’t really make a lot of sense. How are they not like me? What makes them just forms and not me just a form? Also banging my head on a wall proves nothing about whether I am real or not. I could still be a dream of something else or a figment. - @snowcity
Nothing makes sense until you figure it out. You are ALONE. You either realize this or you don’t. Most people don’t. People who don’t feel ALONE are forms. They don’t believe in solipsism and live with other people in families and communities.
I don’t see how fear of being alone is the problem, that seems like a reasonable downside to it being true.
Being ALONE is frightening. Living in fear is a problem if you cannot deal with it. Being ALONE prevents you from relating with other people who are forms. This is why @3point14rat has been pleading with you to stay away from crazy stuff like solipsism.
There is also no CALLING like you think since from what I gather on the post she has no facts, just beliefs. You too are guilty of claiming the same alleged “facts” she does, I also pointed out how solipsism being true leads to a soulless existence and eventually into nihilism.
Which way are you going? If you reject solipsism, then we can end this discussion. I am fine with that.
That I am ALONE is not truth, it’s still a belief.
Not to me.
One believes they are alone, but they cannot confirm this.
Being ALONE is a FACT to me. The way to confirm this is not through discussion with other people and get their concurrence. Other people are not ALONE. They are just forms and pictures in my reality. Being ALONE requires self-confidence rooted in intelligence that comes from a flawless mind.
I think you understand solipsism and the problem of other minds about as well as the OP does in that link. You also assume consciousness yet if solipsism were true you could never prove it. How do I know if I am conscious or if consciousness even exists or is a thing. Also if what the OP is saying were true then there would be no point in posting it on Quora if we are just “forms” or pictures and looking at her profile there would be no reason to post anything else or use words like WE and such.
You have many doubts that cannot be silenced. You are unsure of many things. Curious as you are, you have neither the determination to inquire nor the courage to explore the unknown. You stand in the light among other people, and peer at the void, a darkness into which you dare not go.
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@snowcity Sree rarely if ever makes sense.