X-Message-Number: 8039 From: (Mike C.) Subject: Solipsism Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 21:20:28 -0400 I believe it was Steve H. who wrote: > > Are the one or more "agents" which make up the unconscious >mind, themselves "conscious"? I say yes. > The philosopher Bertrand Russell was once >entertained by a letter from a solipsist, who wrote that, since >solipsism was impossible to disprove, why then didn't more people >believe in solipsism as a philosophy? Russell wrote back in his >incomparably ironic style, asking the correspondent why he >couldn't make himself *believe* that more people didn't believe >in solipsism... I keep reminding my self that, but I do not seem to listen very well. > > As Russell's comments suggest, one difficulty with solipsism >is the emotion of surprise. Surprise results (as it did for >Russell's correspondent) when one's observations or sensations >don't correspond with what one expected, on the basis of one's >model of "reality." Surprise is thus a fundamental emotion, and >perhaps a more important one than it is usually given credit for >being. For the objective realist, surprise (which always results >from inductive mal-prediction) is the fundamental weeder-out of >bad inductive theories about the objective universe (c.f. >Popper's theories of science). For the idealist, surprise is the >ultimate challenge to explain. How does one account for stimuli >one is not expecting? I do not want to expect surprises. That would spoil the whole purpose don't you think? I'll just play a little trick on me and forget that I'm going to surprise my self. > > The solipsist, when confronted with surprise, is forced into >simple denial: the solipsist must either deny the existence of >surprise (clever tack), or else must simply hold somewhat >contrarily that it implies no contradiction in terms for one to >surprise one's self. Of course I'm forced to deny it is not possible; to convince you it can happen I must deny that it can not. Am I trying to make myself appear a fool? Do I think it is immpossible for me to make my self forget I am doing a thing. It is not impossible; I have seen it done to my self. > > For the non-solipsist, however, the essence >of consciousness is knowledge, Can I be conscious if I do not know a thing? > > and the element of surprise in >unexpected stimuli to a conscious being is prima fasciae evidence >of the existence of *something* about which there has been a >demonstrated lack of predictive knowledge-- and thus, something >"outside" (by definition) that consciousness. Bah, if I know of this thing outside of me I am conscious of it. > >If solipsists >write letters to philosophers asking for explanations, I communicate with my self often. > >shouldn't >they already know what to expect by way of answers? ...if I know the future, yes, it is quite instantaneous unless I feel like not making up my mind or being confused. > > To Rene Descartes' famous maxim (the so-called Cogito): "I >think, therefore I am," Then if I think the floor exists I must think it thinks, for that is the proof of existence. > >the non-solipsist will add a corollary: >"Furthermore, I'm often surprised, therefore there is more to >existence than just me." I guess I like making them suprised now don't I? If I am unaware of being surprised am I surprised? > > If the reader is still with me at this point, and hasn't gone >to sleep, it is possible to analyze some of the previous >philosophical debate on Cryonet in terms of what the emotion of >surprise means to the average person. At the beginning of this >letter, I made the explicit argument that the existence of >surprise in a dream argued for the existence of more than one >"model-producing" conscious entity in the brain of a dreaming >person. At the same time, I can also as long time experimental >dreamer report that dreams are not as surprising as real-life >events. In dreams, "objects" sometimes do surprising things, but >"people" only rarely do, and "people" never seen to act in >_totally_ inexplicable ways (as they do occasionally in real >life-- especially women <g>). In dreams, I have noted that >characters act in ways that are understandable and somewhat >stereotyped, almost as people in a bad novel (perhaps this says >something about this author's creativity...). Moreover, I have >noted that more than once, characters in my dreams seen to share >a shocking amount of my own knowledge about the world, so much so >that I've frequently awakened wishing that I might somewhere find >a real person who was as much an alter-ego as someone I had met >in a dream (no doubt if I actually did, I would be spectacularly >bored in a short time, of course). > > It's no coincidence that the characters in my dreams share my >knowledge, for we are dipping at the same well, so to speak. >My dream characters thus share some of my identity, but not quite >all of it. Empirically, one of the primary things that convinces >me of the separate reality/identity of other people, and of the >non-dream nature of the "waking world," is that in my waking >hours other people ("real people") do things which are utterly >unexpected. Try expecting them. > > I believe that (except for die-hard solipsists) we >accord identity to other people partly on this basis. If other >people acted precisely as we expected them to, we would soon no >doubt come to see them as nothing more than complicated devices, >not deserving of the same status and regard with which we hold >ourselves. Am I not a device? I am as real as any thing I know of. I think I am rather simple too. > > A machine which began to slavishly act in predictable ways in >a conversation would not pass the Turing test-- indeed, this is >the most damning of machine-like behaviors in such a test. >Moreover, I propose that one reason Searle's "Chinese Room" seems >to be intrinsically incapable of consciousness to some imaginers, >is that the Chinese Room is intrinsically and by definition >incapable of surprising us. You can, after all, look up and >predict anything it does, in a big book of rules. Like psychology? Are you perhaps suggesting people do not obey physical, natural, Godly laws? > >For that >reason, it doesn't pass the Descartes Corollary test (the >"Surprise Test"), and neither do any computers which run with >discrete and predictable binary programs. > > Here, I don't mean "predictable" in terms of the Turing >halting problem, I mean predicable from the view of repeatability >of behavior. Humans would have exactly the same consciousness >problem, if they were found to be this kind of machine. What >would happen if we were to make a matter duplicator which turned >out copies of people who always did exactly the same thing, >perhaps for hours or days on end, ...carpel tunnel syndrome? > > after they stepped off the >replicator pad, and into the test-room? We might well begin to >regard humans in a different light, in that case. Suppose I feel >"conscious," and yet am doing only exactly what I am expected and >predicted to do, just like an unconscious robot-- is that not a >paradox? (Perhaps only a paradox of the sorites type?) ...not paradoxical to me. > > Is such a duplicator and test-room even possible, then? Some >people, after due consideration, would say no-- that different >conditions of the room at different times would preclude >duplicate responses of the replicated human. But what if you >replicate the room also? Now many people will take refuge in >quantum mechanics, and argue that any such test-room will be >embedded in the universe, and will begin to diverge from any >duplicate (even a perfect one) which appears at another time and >place. We've seen this argument on Cryonet. Another way to >frame such an argument is to say that many people refuse to >accept the consciousness of any being found to be operating >according to fixed and completely deterministic rules, and thus >incapable of doing something we don't expect from looking at a >prior simulation. If a being can't, in principle, provide a >surprise for one who knows enough about it, some people begin to >get solipsistic about its "consciousness." Not to do so would be >to admit to the possibility of a certain determinism of action >for "conscious beings," which bothers many people. As to whether >it should or not, I cannot say.* It does not bother me. I am what I am, concious selfdetermined law abiding robot or not. > > Steve Harris > > >* "Arguments" about determinism have some of the same odd >character as arguments about solipsism. If someone argues for >determinism, the rejoinder is: "What makes you say that..?" "What makes you..." > >If the argument is for some element of randomness, the rejoinder >is: "Oh, you're just saying that..." If I do not know the reason for an action I am ignorant. > > People who want to argue a >third alternative need to be reminded, as Minski does, that there >isn't one. a third alternative to what? 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