ON SOLIPSISM, WHY IT GETS A BAD RAP?

Solipsism it is a Philosophical current were Consciousness it is exclusive to the individual, therefore beyond the self, everything can be held in doubt.

There is many variations on this idea, however, I do not intend to dwell in to it, for those unfamiliar with this concept, you can go to Wikipedia and look for Solipsism, after you are familiar with it, you can return to this page and follow my arguments.

There is nothing wrong with Solipsism, for many it seems a hard thing to swallow, since our concept of ‘Reality’ it is based in a Dialectical Universe, and a perception of otherness; a multiplicity of entities with no connection to our self, giving them autonomy, and therefore a separate ‘reality’ beyond our Consciousness, example: When you wake up in the morning it is possible to distinguish your surroundings as familiar, your cat, or  your dog, family members, like your wife, or your parents, etc. You got to get ready to assume your identity, going to work, class, or if your day off to leisure activity, where is very likely you will retake your relationship to others you got some sort of familiarity, friends, classmates, business associates etc. In other words you assume your identity in a day, to day basis, for the sleepy head it may take some minutes to clear your head and realize ‘you are back, in to everyday Consciousness!

So, if you are told it is all a process of your imagination, and there is no proof of the reality beyond your self, naturally most people tend to freak out, and tell you something like this:

“You mean to tell me there is nothing there but my imagination? What are you nuts?”

Once you explain what Solipsism is, and if the person is able to grasp the concept, one immediate response is to find a way to deny it!

 IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE TAO THEN THE YIN AND THE YANG GAVE BIRTH TO THE TEN THOUSAND THINGS…

 

 

Returning is the motion of the Tao.
Yielding is the way of the Tao.
The ten thousand things are born of being.
Being is born of not being.

It is common for most people not to be familiar with Being and Non Being, and of course with no knowledge of that Science the Mother, or the beginning of Philosophy: Ontology

Since Western Philosophy classify Ontology as part of Metaphysics, this immediately categorize Ontology as a waste of your time since Rational Materialism does not accept Metaphysics as valid, in other words it denies whatever may have to say  a priory, with the reasoning that if the existence of Spirit is false, why bother with the rest?

Unfortunately for the Rational Materialist advances in Science, like Astronomy,  with the Big Bang theory, Quantum Mechanics, with Quantum particles, and new Philosophical currents like Post-Modernism have taken us back to square one, and consequently to resuscitate an old witch like Ontology!

Ironically the materialistic view that there is nothing that can’t be explained beyond the Neurochemistry of our brains rather than destroy Solipsism,  if not confirms it totally,  give it a great weight! Since the only response to it, is to believe in the independent existence of the ‘other’ or accept by Faith, or common experience the reliability of our senses, when it is easy to demonstrate how frequent our senses can fool us!

In other words it make a good case for the  postulates of Solipsism:

My most certain knowledge is the content of my own mind—my thoughts, experiences, affects, etc.

When any Neurologist can tell you that the stimulation by artificial means of the brain can reproduce phenomena, regardless of the veracity of such!

Naturally, blindsided, or hypocritically. they also bring the song of:

“One consequence that is inherent to solipsism is an Atomic individualism  view of the world and nature. If only I matter, then other people, animals, environments only matter insofar as they affect me. This may be an antisocial philosophy. Language and other social media are taken for granted as self-conceived and inherent. Maintenance of these social tools is not required, the individual need only exist, not interact with the world. Sincere solipsists are unlikely to be persuaded by such considerations; believing society to be non-existent, there is no question of being “antisocial” for them.”

So in other words if you are a Solipsist you are selfish, and likely to be antisocial, and a bad element for society, of course there is no reason as a member of society if you are an Atheist, the fact you do not need a God to watch over you, still can be ethical, and even profoundly a ‘Humanist’ (read Moral individual) My question why deny the Solipsist the same right? You can deny the existence of a Consciousness beyond yourself, but the experience of waking up one day and decide to act like if others do not exist, can bring ‘illusory’ but nevertheless  unpleasant experiences to the self, like punishment,  jail, or worst! The same as for those who denying the existence of God one day may decide not to observe any Moral, or Ethical code of conduct.So much for the selfish argument, what is good for the goose is good for the gander… Next!

Metaphysical Solipsism

Metaphysical solipsism is the variety of Idealism which maintains that the individual self of the solipsistic philosopher is the whole of reality and that the external  world and other persons are representations of that self having no independent existence.

The very Western discourse of thought, with it’s mania to compartmentalize ideas, and rapidly label them, in this way to catalog them, and promptly discarded them, rater than give them serious consideration as Eastern Ways of Life do. I do not like to name then Eastern Philosophies, since this automatically in our Western mind make them an speculative thought with no more valid reality than a game of words! Were language, and ideas are the substance of inquiry, rather than the praxis through a life style, that result in positive experience, by contrast our Western approach of words as logical discourse based on ideological grounds of speculative intellect, post-modernism has rendered this method of inquiry turn against itself! Everything, Knowledge itself a product of language rendering fixed meaning a construct, and therefore subject to deconstruction, and consequently subjective!

Eastern Ways rather than to talk about it look for proof in to “States of Experience” were Spirit, Mind and Body are One and the same, not different,  dissociate, or dualistic contradictions!

Hotei pointing with the finger to the Moon

 

The nun Wu Jincang asked the Sixth Patriach Huineng, “I have studied the Mahaparinirvana sutra for many years, yet there are many areas I do not quite understand. Please enlighten me.”

The patriarch responded, “I am illiterate. Please read out the characters to me and perhaps I will be able to explain the meaning.”

Said the nun, “You cannot even recognize the characters. How are you able then to understand the meaning?”

“Truth has nothing to do with words. Truth can be likened to the bright moon in the sky. Words, in this case, can be likened to a finger. The finger can point to the moon’s location. However, the finger is not the moon. To look at the moon, it is necessary to gaze beyond the finger, right?”

The article in Wikipedia about Solipsism covers briefly the view of some Eastern Religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Yoga, Advaita Vedanta

whose positions are pretty interesting to study if you feel like it, but since you can easily look them up in your browser I will not dwell on them, as for the responses negating them most of them lack a solid foundation on Philosophical grounds, since they overlook Being and Non Being, which is the core of Ontology.As to the argument of:

Some philosophers hold the viewpoint that solipsism is entirely empty and without content. Like a ‘faith’ argument, it seems sterile, i.e., allows no further argument, nor can it be falsified. The world remains absolutely the same — so where could a solipsist go from there? Viewed in this way, solipsism seems only to have found a facile way to avoid the more difficult task of a critical analysis of what is ‘real’ and what isn’t, and what ‘reality’ means. The solipsist might hold in response that further argument is meaningless and there are limits to what can be known about ‘reality.’

My answer is  what “Critical Analysis” can add? It is not Rational materialism a close system that admit no argument in to what is the nature of the composition of the World that is not based in a Rational Materialist view? And furthermore what conclusion you can draw from there that will contribute  anything new that this Philosophy has not already  establish? So, where Rational Materialism can go from here? It is not hypocritical  to say you do not have all the answers, but stubbornly deny  any other possibility, because doesn’t fit your established Cosmology? Have this people not been aware of the collapse of Logic Positivism?

IBN ARABI

 

I rather introduce another player in the Solipsism cause, so often overlooked, since most people is unawere of his tremendous work, the Sheik Muhyi al-Din Muhammad ibn ‘Ali ibn al-‘Arabi (1165-1240) A Spanish Moor born at Murcia in then al-Andalus. Known by many as Sheik al-Akbar (Greatest Master) Scholar Mystic whose work contemporary Western scholars are bringing to light, not an easy task due to Ibn Arabi tremendous body of work (it is said he wrote over 500 works, his main book the Futuhat al-Makkiyyah is about 16,000 pages long, and he wrote it twice during his lifetime!) but it is not the volume of his work the only obstacle, but the complexity of it that makes it not easy to comprehend by the lay reader, and have in the past many times been  misunderstood even by many Eastern, and Western scholars alike.

As we in the West took a different fork in the road of Philosophy, there has been a strong current to look in the East for answers at our bankrupt Spirituality. Warning you that Ibn Arabi can’t be pigeonholed to a certain category of thought, since his Philosophy has many facets, and if there such a thing as a pure Solipsism which I ignore what it is since Solipsism embraces many different currents of thought.

Most people when it come to God they imagine His Existence, or Non Existence as an idea to contemplate to accept, or reject according to our reasoning, rarely ever contemplate the idea that God it is not an idea to debate, but is our own Self!

Here is the Sheik:

“Junayd was asked about Knowledge and the Knower. He replied ‘The water takes on the color of it’s cup’ In other words the container display its effects in what it contains. Junayd said this to let you know that you will never judge your object of knowledge except by yourself, since you will never know anything but yourself. Whatever may be the color of the cup, water become manifest in that color. The person without knowledge judges the water is like that, since sight gives that to him. Water discloses itself in the forms of all the cups in respect to their colors, but it does not become delimited in its essence.You only see it that way. In the same manner, the shape of the containers in which water appears display its effect in it, but in all of them it is still water. If the container is square the water becomes manifest as square…

He who sees only the water in the cup judge it by the property of the cup. But he who sees it simple and non compound knows  that the shapes and colors it becomes manifest are the effects of the containers. Water remains in its own definition and reality, weather in the cup or outside of it. Hence it never loses the name “water”

 

Therefore, know your self, who you are, what is your identity. … Consider well in what way you are Haqq, (Truth, Reality) and in what way Khalq,(Creation, Otherness) as being separate, other.

He who knows himself knows his Lord; … indeed, He is his very identity and reality.

In one sense the Reality is creatures; in another sense, It is not. … Whether you assert that It is undivided or divided, the Self is alone. The manifold [universe] exists and yet it does not exist.

It is none other than He who progresses or journeys as you. There is nothing to be known but He; and since He is Being itself, He is therefore also the journeyer. There is no knower but He; so who are you? Know your true Reality. He is the essential self of all. But He conceals it by [the appearance of] otherness, which is “you.”

If you hold to multiplicity, you are with the world; and if you hold to the Unity, you are with the Truth …. Our names are but names for God; at the same time our individual selves are His shadow. He is at once our identity and not our identity … Consider!

Know that whenever something permeates another, it is assumed into the other.
That which permeates, the agent, is disguised by that which is permeated, the object.
In this case, the object is the manifest [universe], and the agent is the Unmanifest, the Hidden.

On Him alone we depend for everything; our dependence on other things is in reality dependence on Him, for they are nothing but His appearances.

The eye perceives nothing but Him; only He is to be known.
We are His; by Him we exist, and by
Him we are governed; and we are, at all times and in all states, in His presence.

There is no existence save His existence. … This means that the existence of the beggar is His existence and the existence of the sick is His existence. Now, when this is admitted, it is acknowledged that all existence is His existence; and that the existence of all created things, both accidents and substances, is His existence; and when the secret of one particle of the atoms is clear, the secret of all created things, both outward and inward, is clear; and you do not see in this world or the next, anything except God.