You don't exist.

[Jeremy]

It's interesting that you say that Jeremy, because you'll notice that the majority of the evidence for that science is, as you said, about perception, not about processing. Film cameras and tape players can record things, but not necessarily "process" them. The science of thought it still truly beyond us. Right now we're left with mainly pseudo-scientific theories of the brain like Chomsky's "language organ" and the like.

I totally disagree. An enormous amount of progress has been made on how our brain works in the last 5 to 10 years old. Chomsky's "language organ" theory is 30 years old and all the progress has moved towards evolutionary neurology and evolutionary psychology. Sure we still have a huge distance to go, but the science of thought is getting much closer. Ray Kurzwiel has predicted that within about 30 years we will have machines that are as powerful as human brains. Marc Hauser has successfully demonstrated that our morality has evolved and is universal to us all. Steven Pinker has shown that our brains work by a huge series of discrete information transfers, in the same way a computer works. Susan Blackmore's work shows us that human consciousness is essentially just a large combination of interacting memes. Daniel Dennett shows that this means we'll definitely be able to construct genuinely conscious computer programs within our lifetimes.

The science of our brains has come a long way since Noam Chomsky, and progress is still happening at rapid rates.


Regarding what Dyalan had, the obvious question is; What evidence is there that we can't trust our senses? Perhaps sometimes our senses do not show us what is real, but that comes from a misunderstanding of what our senses are, rather than them actually lying to us. Sure some people's don't work well, or become broken, but we always know when that happens. In a healthy person, our senses completely correspond with our theories of how they work, and how the world works and result in us making achievements in the world. The world is the only plane of existence that we know about, and our senses work for this plane of existence. For all intents and purposes we have to accept that this world is completely real; because the only evidence we have suggests that it is.

[Switch Kicker]

Ray Kurzwiel has predicted that within about 30 years we will have machines that are as powerful as human brains.

I severely doubt that we'll be able to make a computer that has all the processing abilities as the human brain, and have virtually unlimited memory. The processing seems feasible, but not the amount of memory our brains can hold. This is just from what I've been taught in school, and what I gathered from the Discovery channel, lol. I have no facts to back this up.

I've always been taught that the brain can store nearly limitless amounts of memory. The real "Rainman" for instance. The man isn't super smart, he just has an insane photographic memory. He remembers anything, and everything he sees, and he can recall any image he's seen, at any moment in his entire life, without even having to think about it. You say a date and time, and he can describe what he was looking at at that exact time with no hesitation. I believe that's better than any computer we have in the world right now.

[Switch Kicker]

Ray Kurzwiel has predicted that within about 30 years we will have machines that are as powerful as human brains.

I severely doubt that we'll be able to make a computer that has all the processing abilities as the human brain, and have virtually unlimited memory. The processing seems feasible, but not the amount of memory our brains can hold. This is just from what I've been taught in school, and what I gathered from the Discovery channel, lol. I have no facts to back this up.

I've always been taught that the brain can store nearly limitless amounts of memory. The real "Rainman" for instance. The man isn't super smart, he just has an insane photographic memory. He remembers anything, and everything he sees, and he can recall any image he's seen, at any moment in his entire life, without even having to think about it. You say a date and time, and he can describe what he was looking at at that exact time with no hesitation. I believe that's better than any computer we have in the world right now.

[Switch Kicker]

Oh god, lol. Sorry for triple post. I thought I was editing my previous post... Bloody hell. Sorry. Accidentally quoted myself.

[dyalander]

Sure some people's don't work well, or become broken, but we always know when that happens.

Only because they differ from what we consider to be normal based upon what is possesed by the majority. So is the majority the way in which we define truth? In many ways it is.
If you defend against solipsism by saying that "even if I can only be sure of what I percieve, I percieve everything as real so it" then you still need to accept that there is still an assumtion that what we perceive is real. Of course our sense correspond with the theories of how they work - those theories are decriptions of how we percieve them to work. That doesn't mean I'm not in a coma dreaming this whole reality - the point is - even if I were it wouldn't matter because I experiece that dream as real and must therefore act accordingly. But the point is that this doesn't disprove solipsism it just sets up the boundaries for what parts of solipsism are useful within that world I percieve. It's not useful for me to say that because I can't prove the world is real by some external measure I should not participate in it. However, it is useful to say that I should participate in it in a certain way - returning us to the majority, but also to the pattern of assumptions by which that majority perceives, both as the greatest measure of truth allowed given we can onl assume our perceptions to be real.
For example take religion - if the majority believes in some unseen god it doesn't matter weather or not that god actually exists, it exists in their beliefs and so it does in their behaviour and so that god affects the world and the minority must workout how to live within that world based upon paramaters over which they have little control - this isn't a problem where the bahaviours match, but when they don't each assumption those behaviours are based upon come under scrutiny. The nature of that scrutiny is considered to be the difference between truth and false belief - but in reality because they are finally both beliefs the final measure is majority belief on each level of the assumption as it broken down into its constituent parts.

Regarding man having limitless memory - this doesn't seem to be true - all memory is selective, no one has complete access to the entierity of their past experience, some people have more than others, and in those cases it usually focused on one aspect of that individuals experience - there is usually another aspect of processing that suffers seemingly in compensation for the heigtened memory.

[mtoolan]

^^^^^^
proof

big enough for you?

[Jeremy]

Sure some people's don't work well, or become broken, but we always know when that happens.

Only because they differ from what we consider to be normal based upon what is possesed by the majority. So is the majority the way in which we define truth? In many ways it is.

I disagree. Using genetics and biology, we can see the way our perceptions work, and we can see why things are working "differently." If we take our eyes as an example, we can see that our eyes focus photons onto nerves, that transfer the photos into electrical signals, which are sent to the brain. We can also see that people who have bad eyesight have eyes that do not completely follow this procedure, usually they have problems focusing the photons onto the nerves, leading to the photons either not going to the right nerves or not getting there at all. We can clearly see that this is not the way the eye is supposed to work, and can judge that the mechanisms of those eyes are damaged. Not that they're different, but that there is either a mechanical problem or a problem in the way they were built. Using genetics and evolutionary theory, we can see how the eyes came to be how they are, and why they're like that. We can also see which eyes do not work so well, and why. An eye that does not see so well typically records a lot less photons. We can easily measure this inaccuracy. Clearly we can see that an eye that is more accurate is better than an eye that is less accurate for the purpose of sensing electromagnetic radiation of the visible spectrum. It's not a case of different, it's a case of one works and the other doesn't work so well.

[quote
If you defend against solipsism by saying that "even if I can only be sure of what I percieve, I percieve everything as real so it" then you still need to accept that there is still an assumtion that what we perceive is real. [/quote]

But we have no reason to believe that our perceptions are not real. There is not reason to think that they are not real. If you're going to make any statement other than our perceptions are real, you're making a larger assumption, because everything we perceive corresponds with the theory that our perceptions are real.

But the point is that this doesn't disprove solipsism it just sets up the boundaries for what parts of solipsism are useful within that world I percieve.

We can't disprove solipsism, we just have no reason to believe that it is true. You can't disprove that there is an invisible gorilla that has been stalking you since birth either, but I assume you don't think that it is even possible that such an event actually occurs.

[junkyardjew]

Regarding what Dyalan had, the obvious question is; What evidence is there that we can't trust our senses? Perhaps sometimes our senses do not show us what is real, but that comes from a misunderstanding of what our senses are, rather than them actually lying to us.

Man I forgot how fast shit moves on modified. you guys must have way more time than I do. Just wanted to make the point here that in a lot of cases the primary job of our brain is to LIMIT the amount of information that comes to us from our senses.

What we actually perceive at a concious level is a tiny fraction of the information that comes into our brain, so maybe the question should be "what evidence do we have the we CAN trust our senses", and I agree with Dylan here - we don't really have any. The only reason that I ever read anything about solipsism was in my own pursuit to decide if humans actually have free will or not, which led to my investigations into the workings of the brain. Now, those investigations were mainly about the role of causality and quantum phsyics on free will, but check this out, as a side note:

(
this is just the first link I could find, but I've read this in a couple places. The electro-chemical signal in the brain to cause an action generally occurs BEFORE the concious decision is made to perform the action. The illusion of free will is added afterwards so your concious mind doesn't go crazy

[Switch Kicker]

this is just the first link I could find, but I've read this in a couple places. The electro-chemical signal in the brain to cause an action generally occurs BEFORE the concious decision is made to perform the action. The illusion of free will is added afterwards so your concious mind doesn't go crazy

I can imagine that a lot of people don't like that theory. Simply because few people want to believe that they don't have free will, or control of their lives.

[Jeremy]

Man I forgot how fast shit moves on modified. you guys must have way more time than I do. Just wanted to make the point here that in a lot of cases the primary job of our brain is to LIMIT the amount of information that comes to us from our senses.

What we actually perceive at a concious level is a tiny fraction of the information that comes into our brain, so maybe the question should be "what evidence do we have the we CAN trust our senses", and I agree with Dylan here - we don't really have any. The only reason that I ever read anything about solipsism was in my own pursuit to decide if humans actually have free will or not, which led to my investigations into the workings of the brain. Now, those investigations were mainly about the role of causality and quantum phsyics on free will, but check this out, as a side note:

False. We can easily understand the physics of how an eye works, and what we "should" see as a result of that, and compare it to what we do see. The same goes for sound, although I'm not so sure about the other senses. While you could argue that we're relying on our senses to see these readings, it seems very unlikely that the machines measuring sound make the same errors that our ears and brain make.

Of course many solipsists argue around this point by claiming that our minds, or rather my mind, since other minds don't exist in solipsism, actually create the entire reality around us. Which would mean that I created every piece of literature or comment on literature with the consistency we see from those pieces of work. I am responsible for every scientific discovery and text on that discovery etc. Of course all those works are also completely meaningless, since they only exist in my mind, which is the only mind that exists.

This is rubbish mysticism.

[Jeremy]

this is just the first link I could find, but I've read this in a couple places. The electro-chemical signal in the brain to cause an action generally occurs BEFORE the concious decision is made to perform the action. The illusion of free will is added afterwards so your concious mind doesn't go crazy

I don't understand how that relates to solipsism, or to Dyalan's post-modern attempt to apply solipsism to literature. What it shows is that consciousness is a product of the equations of our brain. It also shows that we have a strong predisposition to be instinctual in our actions, rather than rational. It actually backs up the work of materialists (as opposed to solipsists) in showing that our brain works for physical reasons. The fact that we don't have free will is an idea put forward years before results like this from materialists, and results like that support that prediction. It also shows us that many of the decisions we make are not fully thought through, and if we want to live in a more rational world, we need to spend time thinking about what is the best move before making it.

We should think about it in a little more depth. I'm unbeatable at tic-tac-toe, I can't lose, although if I play against somebody like my brother, I can't win either. Now I obviously decide what move I make after I see the move of my opponent. Presumably what happens is that the person moves, and then I consciously figure out what the best move is, send that information to my unconscious brain, which, of course, decides to move there, and then I make the conscious decision to move. Susan Blackmore describes the process eloquently and shows how my thoughts are made up of a huge amount of discrete pieces of information. Some of these are consciously expressed and some of these are not. While I may not make decisions that I am conscious of, consciousness is just an outcome of the memeplex present in my brain. If I had free will, I wouldn't need consciousness as well.

[dyalander]

We can't disprove solipsism, we just have no reason to believe that it is true. You can't disprove that there is an invisible gorilla that has been stalking you since birth either, but I assume you don't think that it is even possible that such an event actually occurs.

My point was that if everyone did in fact believe that an invisible gorilla was stalking them since birth, or at least a vast majority of people, and acted accordingly, running around like a bunch of people being chased by an invisible gorilla, our understanding of our perceptions would be different.

While you could argue that we're relying on our senses to see these readings, it seems very unlikely that the machines measuring sound make the same errors that our ears and brain make.

Of course they would - we built them to do exactly that. they didn't make the same errors they wouldn't be measuring sound they would be distorting it. But your point is a good one: if a tree falls in the woods and no-one is there to hear it, but there is a machine to measure the sound we know it makes that sound, thus the sound is not the act of a mind, nor is it even the act of perceiveing the sound, it is the sound waves. No problem solipsism seemingly defeated. But this does not solve the ongoing debate between phenomenology and ontology because just as a machine can make an error, ellicit a reading when there is no stimulus, so can the mind. Given the potential for this error how can we be sure that the neurons in our brain are firing because we have seen something and not just firing in error. If we return to the machine, the answer is simple - we get another machine to measure as well, we use a control - and again we return to the fact that truth is finally measured by the majority.
So i guess that when you ask - what evidence do we have thatour minds maynot be trusted - the answer is all the abnormal cases in which perception is fundamentally and vastly distorted.

[Jeremy]

We can't disprove solipsism, we just have no reason to believe that it is true. You can't disprove that there is an invisible gorilla that has been stalking you since birth either, but I assume you don't think that it is even possible that such an event actually occurs.

My point was that if everyone did in fact believe that an invisible gorilla was stalking them since birth, or at least a vast majority of people, and acted accordingly, running around like a bunch of people being chased by an invisible gorilla, our understanding of our perceptions would be different.

Yes, and if we all had a telepathic ability our perceptions would be different too. The fact is that that nobody believes that statement about invisible gorillas and nobody has telepathic abilities (at least in the science fiction definition of the term). I think we can both agree that if the world was different, the world would be different, and I hope you can see how meaningless that statement is.

So i guess that when you ask - what evidence do we have thatour minds maynot be trusted - the answer is all the abnormal cases in which perception is fundamentally and vastly distorted.

But in the vast majority of those cases (maybe all), we know what the problem is. We can look at how the persons perception is distorted and say; "that happens for this reason." Likewise we can look at a different person and see if the same physical error is present in their sensory hardware. If it is not present, we can see that things are working as they should.

We can also understand how the physics works at an atomic level, and see if what the person experiences matches the predictions made from evaluating their sensory hardware. The fact that the experiences do match the predictions suggests that in all healthy people, their perceptions are correct.

Can you give an example of a solipsist prediction that can be tested and verified?

If you cannot, doesn't the fact that there are predictions that favour the materialist world model and none that favour the solipsists model suggest that the materialistic model is the one that is more likely to be correct?

[Jeremy]

We can't disprove solipsism, we just have no reason to believe that it is true. You can't disprove that there is an invisible gorilla that has been stalking you since birth either, but I assume you don't think that it is even possible that such an event actually occurs.

My point was that if everyone did in fact believe that an invisible gorilla was stalking them since birth, or at least a vast majority of people, and acted accordingly, running around like a bunch of people being chased by an invisible gorilla, our understanding of our perceptions would be different.

Yes, and if we all had a telepathic ability our perceptions would be different too. The fact is that that nobody believes that statement about invisible gorillas and nobody has telepathic abilities (at least in the science fiction definition of the term). I think we can both agree that if the world was different, the world would be different, and I hope you can see how meaningless that statement is.

So i guess that when you ask - what evidence do we have thatour minds maynot be trusted - the answer is all the abnormal cases in which perception is fundamentally and vastly distorted.

But in the vast majority of those cases (maybe all), we know what the problem is. We can look at how the persons perception is distorted and say; "that happens for this reason." Likewise we can look at a different person and see if the same physical error is present in their sensory hardware. If it is not present, we can see that things are working as they should.

We can also understand how the physics works at an atomic level, and see if what the person experiences matches the predictions made from evaluating their sensory hardware. The fact that the experiences do match the predictions suggests that in all healthy people, their perceptions are correct.

Can you give an example of a solipsist prediction that can be tested and verified?

If you cannot, doesn't the fact that there are predictions that favour the materialist world model and none that favour the solipsists model suggest that the materialistic model is the one that is more likely to be correct?

*reposted fixing bbcode error, perhaps a mod can delete the post with the error in it.

[dp]

I have no facts to back this up.

You're saying this and therefore that statement is redundant.

[Switch Kicker]

I have no facts to back this up.

You're saying this and therefore that statement is redundant.

No, it makes the statement, a statement without facts to back it up. You can either choose to consider the statement, or not.

I only presented my view. And the statement, "I have no facts to back this up." doesn't mean there aren't facts. That just means I don't have the facts with me. If you find the statement interesting enough, you can look it up yourself. However, I was only presenting my thoughts, thoughts that don't need to be proven, because they weren't presented as facts.

There were only two sentences. One commenting on my doubt of Jeremy's idea, and the other presenting what I think is seems feasible. Nothing said, was stated as fact. Why did you interrupt the topic a bunch of posts later, over something so stupid, anyway?

[dp]

The point was that whenever you speak it's assumed you don't have any facts to back up what you're saying. You stating you don't have facts is simply redundant.

Why did you interrupt the topic a bunch of posts later, over something so stupid, anyway?

Because I'm not able to check every single post on modified frequently enough. Sorry if my post is a couple hours late.

[junkyardjew]

Once again, I'm falling out of this discussion, but the last comment directed at me was, I believe:

I don't understand how that relates to solipsism, or to Dyalan's post-modern attempt to apply solipsism to literature

Ah, I see your confusion - it doesn't at all. I got bored of solipsism four or five posts ago. (Because its boring and unprovable ) Oh and Jeremy, I looked up some of the doctors you've mentioned in your posts, becaue I was kind of surprised I'd never read anything by them, and just to take the most outlandish example, Susan Blackmore got her PhD in "Parapsychology" with her dissertation on "Extrasensory Perception as a Cognitive Process". She may no longer be doing her research into "out-of-body and near-death experiences, parapsychology, and alien abductions" but I can't say I take her completely seriously.

Cognitive science is something I'm extremely interested in (as a lay person of course, with no background in it whatsoever) and the more I read about it, the more I see how very very little we actually know. I don't want to quote all of it, but your post of Wed Apr 04, 2007 8:15 pm, earlier on this page is full of very bold, and completely un-back-up-able statements. Now I love science (I've devoted my life to it in fact) but its important to know its limitations as well.

Oh okay, I can't resist. Lets start with:

Susan Blackmore's work shows us that human consciousness is essentially just a large combination of interacting memes.

This is skating extremely close to the kind of thing debunked by Dawkins in that article you posted - its hard to trust a buzzword like 'meme' used out of context. Or how about

Marc Hauser has successfully demonstrated that our morality has evolved and is universal to us all.

Marc Hauser may have a compelling hypothesis about moral universality and its basis in evolutionary group dynamics, but I don't believe that even he would claim to have "proven" anything of the sort. Now, Hauser's Curiculum Vitae is significantly more impressive than Blackmore's, but I actually have a friend doing research for her PhD in a similar field (actually, she just went to a primate convention in Boston - I bet he was there since he teaches at Harvard.) and while primate cognition is incredibly fascinating research, it makes no serious claim to explain the workings of the human brain.

The problem is that we are researching effects without a clear understanding of the causes. Its similar to the state of medicine before germ theory, and while I expect an breakthrough imminently, we do face a dearth of hard facts.

[junkyardjew]

An enormous amount of progress has been made on how our brain works in the last 5 to 10 years old. Chomsky's "language organ" theory is 30 years old and all the progress has moved towards evolutionary neurology and evolutionary psychology.

Oh, I just wanted to point out one more thing - Chomsky's theory might be 30 years old, but it is definitely still in use, with some refinements. Why? Because they can't prove or disprove it yet.

Not only that, but in a nice little twist, Marc Hauser not only works within the Chomskyist framework, they research and publish papers together!

Fitch, W.T., Hauser, M.D., Chomsky, N. (2005). "The Evolution of the Language Faculty: Clarifications and Implications." Cognition.

They write that

progress in understanding the evolution of language will require much more empirical research, grounded in modern comparative biology, more interdisciplinary collaboration, and much less of the adaptive storytelling and phylogenetic speculation that has traditionally characterized the field.

[Jeremy]

I wanted to point out a couple of things;

First your attack in Susan Blackmore is farcical at best. Her work on outer body experiences etc. is not one of claiming that those experiences actually are outer body experiences, but rather, explaining what is actually going on when a person has those experiences. Do you think that people who have near death experiences make them up? Of course they don't, but that doesn't mean that their "soul" actually leaves their body. Susan Blackmore's work is in explaining what happens when people have those experiences. As for;

She may no longer be doing her research into "out-of-body and near-death experiences, parapsychology, and alien abductions

That's completely misleading. Can you give me a source of the research Susan Blackmore has done on alien abductions? She once presented a show on television about alien abductions. Richard Dawkins has presented many shows about religion, does that mean he believes in God?

This is skating extremely close to the kind of thing debunked by Dawkins in that article you posted - its hard to trust a buzzword like 'meme' used out of context. Or how about

How did I use the word out of context? It's interesting that you make that judgement, when my source for that statement was, in fact, Richard Dawkins (www.richarddawkins.net) and incidentally, it was Richard Dawkins who came up with the term "meme." Meme is not a buzzword, although it is often used by people who misunderstand it. It was, in fact, coined by Richard Dawkins as essentially information that is only exists as information; especially ideas or thought processes. I'm sure you can see that actually my usage of it is exactly as the word was intended to be used.

Finally it's no surprise that Chomsky and Hauser work together, since they're both working in similar fields and are two of the most influential academics in the world at the moment. I was not, in fact saying that Chomsky was wrong, but rather, that you were wrong in stating that;

The science of thought it still truly beyond us. Right now we're left with mainly pseudo-scientific theories of the brain like Chomsky's "language organ" and the like.

When, in fact, as I stated, there's a huge amount of progress made since then, explaining how our thoughts work. The accuracy of Chomsky is irrelevant, my point was that there has been a lot of progress into "the science of thought" since then.