Hi D,
Visited the link you provided......
fr:Solipsisme Solipsism is the metaphysical belief that only oneself exists, and that "existence" just means being a part of one's own mental states - all objects, people, etc, that one experiences, are merely parts of one's own mind. One is like a God, creating the reality in which one exists.
This might be how solipsism is defined.
However it's not that there is a "D" which is creating her world, using some sort of a volition in the process.........but that "D" and "D's projected world" (whether the dream-world or the waking world) are conjugant.
They both arise together, they both dissipate together.
The appearing and disappearing, must have an unchanging constant sub-stratum, for an "appearing" to be recognized as an 'appearing" and a "disappearing" to be recognized as a "disappearing".
Solipsism is logically coherent, but not falsifiable, so it cannot be established by current modes of the scientific method.
Well, what I am told advances in brain-scanning technologies and other developments in the field of neuro-science in the last 10 years or so, is startlingly arriving at what the mystics have been muttering for the last seven thousand years.
Solipsism is a common theme in eastern philosophy. Various interpretations of Buddhism, especially Zen, teach that the entire universe exists only in one's mind.
The classic objection to solipsism is that people die.
Do they?
Are there people to die?
Or the biological organism which is a particular coalescing of the fundamental elements, ........reverts back to the un-coalesced form, after a certain duration?
Manure to manure.
However, you have not died, and therefore you have not disproved it.
A further objection is that life causes pain. Why would we create pain for ourselves? One response to this is that there may be some reason which we have decided to forget, such as the law of Karma, or a desire not to be bored.
As you can see D, solipsism essentially(or as per this article) presumes the existence of an independent separated individual entity or a self.
A deeper objection, raised by David Deutsch, among others, is that, since you have no control over the "universe" you are creating for yourself, there must be some unconscious part of your mind creating it. If you make your unconscious mind the object of scientific study (e.g. by conducting experiments) you will find that it behaves with the same complexity as the universe offered by realism; therefore, the distinction between realism and solipsism collapses - what realism calls "the universe", solipsism calls "your unconscious mind", but these are just different names for the same thing: both are massively complex processes external to your conscious mind, and the cause of all your experiences.
Whether the conscious mind or the unconscious mind,......
......mind is a notion,..... inferred by the mnemonic impressions of past experiences.
The image that this notion builds of itself is the sense of entitification, the sense of the personal self.
From one of the associated links.....
Solipsism is sometimes expressed as the view that 'I am the only mind which exists', or 'My mental states are the only mental states'.
:-)
Any mind is the only mind that exists.
For "a" mind, any other mind, is a cognition in this mind.
An array of jewels, each existing only as a reflection,............. in each other.
As the Quantum physicist grudging accepts, ............any point of the Universe is it's centre.
However, the sole survivor of a nuclear holocaust might truly come to believe in either of these propositions without thereby being a solipsist. Solipsism is therefore more properly regarded as the doctrine that, in principle, 'existence' means for me my existence and that of my mental states. In other words, everything which I experience - physical objects, other people, events and processes, in short, anything which would commonly be regarded as a constituent of the spatio-temporal matrix in which I coexist with others - is necessarily construed by me as part of the content of my consciousness.
Except that there is no "me" to have "my" consciousness.
Both the cognizing subject and the cognized object,............... both are cognized objects.
For the solipsist, it is not merely the case that he believes that his thoughts, experiences, and emotions are, as a matter of contingent fact, the only thoughts, experiences, and emotions. Rather, the solipsist can attach no meaning to the supposition that there could be thoughts, experiences, and emotions other than his own. In short, the true solipsist understands the word 'pain', for example, to mean 'my pain' - he cannot accordingly conceive how this word is to be applied in any sense other than this exclusively egocentric one.
And the difference D, is that there is pain, but there is "no-one" to suffer the pain.
From these two articles on solipsism, it appears that while the consequential result is seen, solipsism assumes the existential reality of an individual self.
Which has to necessarily birth the "other".
And then when solipsism pontificates only of "my" consciousness, "my" pain,....as the only consciousness as the only pain....obviously it opens itself to pot shots by other schools of philosophy (or whatever).
No wonder the phrase of derision "that's a clever solipsism" has come about.
As phenomenality,...........there is indeed the appearance of the myriad of separated, individual manifested objects, each uniquely conditioned.
Among this array of manifestations, certain manifested objects having the attribute of sentience, appear not only to sense the "other" but to also build an image of each other.
With the birth of the image of the "other",............... the image of the individual "self", is born.
With the birth of the sense of a "you", is the birth of the sense of the "me".
A saint is not a saint(to himself or herself),............. without a sinner being around, to salvage.
The Guru which believes in his or her "Guru-ness", .............needs at least one seeker around.
And thus from that self-constructed images of you/me,.........a relating is now possible.
The infinite mosaic of relatings between the infinite array of manifested objects, both sentient and non-sentient, .............relatings which are ever changing, moment to moment to moment,.......thus needing the duality of the "other'....
.....lo behold ............Life,..............as duality.............as .......phenomenality.
And just to make it interesting, ........up the ante, ..........
.......a dose of dualism is slipped in, ............such that each of the "wave" believes IT IS and it's the one which climbs the crest and battles against falling into the trough.
Solipsism appears to take this to be an absolute Truth.
Whereas, phenomenality, as this gestalt of duality, is itself an ideation, an inference,........a thought.
It's like the duality and dualism inherent in your last night-sleep dream.
While that drama was going on, the intrinsic duality and dualism was so logically real, that you gentle D would hack somebody with a blunt axe, if there was a suggestion that it's all puff.
Awake, now in the morning, sipping some hot cocoa,.................you see that none of the "me"(s) and none of the "you"(s) and none of the relatings between any of the "me"(s) and any of the "you"(s),..
..in that last night sleep dream-sequence.........
.....have any independent existential reality to them.
Same hoopla for this waking dream.
As can be apperceived from the state of deep-sleep.
And when a awakening to all the three hooplas,...........the coco beans and you are not two.
Now that's a neat jingle.