Why Does Time Flow Forward?

[octelcogopod]

To drachir about solpsisim:

If someone is conscious, and it assumes, or at least senses some external world, how can it ever prove that this external world exists, when it has nothing to reference it with?
Meaning, the information the brain receives, will always be interpreted by that same brain, so the brain can never verify if the information is coming from itself, or from an external source, no matter how much evidence tips it to the latter.

This isn't like what you said about "this statement is false", it is also a "real" phenomena that would arise with any conscious being.

 

[Drachir]

Proving that something exists

Hello octelcogopod.

You ask

If someone is conscious, and it assumes, or at least senses some external world, how can it ever prove that this external world exists, when it has nothing to reference it with?

First of all, one senses things of the external world. The external world is the class of things that can interact with our senses or extensions of our senses. The idea of a class is an abstract idea; hence the external world is not a physical thing and cannot be sensed.

I think the intent of your question can be put more fundamentally as ‘How can we prove that a sensed thing exists?’ I have stated above that if we are not clear about the meanings of the words with which we think, we cannot know what we are thinking about. The meaning of the word exist is worth examining.

The word exist is defined as be in almost any dictionary. But, most curiously, the word be is defined as exist. Such a circular definition is useless for our purposes. Those words did not always have that circular definition. The circularity arose from metaphoric uses of the two words. The word be has multiple uses now as in ancient times. The uses can be divided into several categories. One of the categories is the existential use of the verb be. In that category there are several different uses of the verb be.

The word exist, however, had essentially a single use in ancient times that is reflected not only by its etymology, but also by its ancient uses. The word exist derives form the Latin words existere and exsistere, meaning ‘to stand out’ and ‘to stand forth.’ When something stands out or forth it can be differentiated from whatever it stands out of or before. Having been differentiated it can next be identified and known.

Now in the question “How can we prove that a sensed thing exists?” we can replace exists with ‘stands out or stands forth.’ The question then becomes “How can we prove that a sensed thing stands out or stands forth? If it is sensed that a particular thing stands forth from another or other things, its standing forth is proved and its existence is proved. To prove to others that something exists, have them do the same sensing. Viruses were not proved to exist until they (tobacco mosaic viruses) were sensed to stand forth from the background when viewed with an electron microscope.

 

[Canute]

Canute - To know that a thing exists, that thing must somehow stand out from all other things, else it could not be differentiated from anything and we could not even be aware of it.
To know that one exists one must first differentiate between oneself and something else.Since a consciousness conscious only of itself is a contradiction in terms, the distinction between things of the mind and things external to the mind is most meaningfully at the heart of ontology.

That is one view. Another view is that things are not simple. The word 'exist' needs to picked apart, and what is fundamental, the only phenomenon that is really real (putting all this crudely) is consciousness conscious of itself.

You have agreed that we have the capacity to differentiate between things of the mind and things external to it. Haven’t you just contradicted the solipsist position? As for solipsism, because of it’s incoherence it is neither falsifiable nor unfalsifiable and prevents us from nothing.

No, this is not a contradiction. The making of distinctions is precisely what the mind does, and reality itself may be an undifferentiated whole. You don't have to agree that it is, but many people say it is and so your view is not secure. The underlying issue here is that by one view mind is no more real in an ultimate sense than matter. In this view solipsism is unfalsifiable because (ultimately) it is not false.

The solipsist cannot know of his own existence because for him there is nothing else from which he can stand out.

Solipsism is precisely the claim that ones own consciousness can be known to exist with greater certainty than anything else. It stands out from nothingness.

As the sole existent, the solipsist would be the generator and possessor of all knowledge. Since he would know about every thing except his own existence the only thing he could doubt would be his own existence. But then he could not be sure who is doing the doubting.

Yeah, it's very confusing. I'm not suggesting that solipsism is true. I'm suggesting that it's not false.

The sea snail Aplysia californica’s brain contains only about 20,000 neurons. It can learn from experience (via its sensory systems). However, it cannot choose not to learn and it cannot choose what to learn; it is “pre-wired” to learn a few things to enhance its chances of survival.

I'm sorry, but I see this pure speculation. It is impossible to prove that human beings are conscious and make choices so of course the same goes for sea snails.

Like all animals, it has consciousness;

Try demonstrating this. It is impossible.

Solipsists use language, a product of society, to claim that there is no society. In so doing they have figuratively cut off their legs and cannot stand.

Yes, that's a good point. However, I don't think anyone is a solipsist so it doesn't really matter. The real point here is that the existence of language does not show that solipsism is false. There is no method by which we can show that it's false.

Descartes’ ontology (which spawned modern solipsism) was as flawed as his physiology (e.g., ‘the function of the lungs is to warm the blood’}. He was, however, a brilliant mathematician and we are forever in his debt for wedding algebra to geometry with his Cartesian coordinates.

I think this was achieved by someone else (Nicole d'Oresme?) a lot earlier, but no matter. Solipsism was not spawned by anyone in particular, although the name obviously was. Plato discusses it at length.

I find no complication in these issues. We should first recognize that that the word ‘self’ has two distinct usages. If, after having carelessly hit my thumb with a hammer, I say “I hurt myself,” ‘self’ means body or a part of it. However, if I convince myself that I can tell in advance how a tossed coin will land, and then find that I cannot and say “I have deluded myself,” self means thought content, not body or body part.

I agree that 'self' has two distinct uses, but to me you are speaking here of the same one, namely your ordinary conscious self.

Consciousness is nothing else than being aware of sense information.

It would be good practice to add 'in my opinion'. Either that or prove it. The unfalsifiability of solipsism means that nobody can prove this statement true, and in my view proves that it cannot be true.

I agree with you that Dennett is wrong by the way, but not for the reasons you give.

Here is an analogy that may aid comprehension of the difference between the process of thought and the content or meaning of a thought. Computer memory stores information in binary format (0 or 1). A byte of information consists of 8 binary bits. The content or meaning of the byte 01000001 can represent different things depending on the context. Converted to a decimal number it means 65. Converted to an alphanumeric character it means capital A. It can represent a location in computer memory, and other things as well. The state of the bits (flip-flop state, magnetic polarity, etc) is physical; but their meaning is not inherent in the physical states representing the byte. The meaning depends on how the information is to be used.

In my view the meaning depends on how it is interpreted, and this will determine how it may be used.

A definition specifies the meaning of a word or term. If we are not clear about the meanings of the words with which we think, we cannot know what we are thinking about.

Agreed.

I thought that Bradley believed that every appearance, even if misleading, is a constituent of reality.

I don't know what he believed but I know what he wrote. He wrote that appearances are not really real, in the sense that there is something from which appearances arise which is fundamental. In order to have information one must have an information space.

I have presented above a view on this topic based on Wittgenstien’s Philosophical Investigations. It effectively disposes of the notions of private experience and private language that are basic presumptions in Cartesian dualism and solipsism.

I don't think Wittgenstein would agree with your interpretation.

I remember some work done in the 60’s on planaria worms. Some of them were taught to curl up on receipt of an electric shock. Their offspring had that knowledge. But what was more striking was that untrained worms fed a puree of trained worms acquired the knowledge without training. Those studies also indicated that learning and memory are chemical processes.

Yes I remember reading about those experiments. They seem to lend some credence to Lamarck's view. But what does this have to do with consciousness, solipsism etc.?

One of the people who did win great fame while demolishing the mind-body dichotomy is Eric Kandel. Kandel searched for and found the chemical bases of learning, of short-term memory, and of long-term memory. The neuron and its ‘wiring’ are not modified, but synaptic sensitivity is chemically modified. Thus mind (e.g., learning, memory) is body (chemical). He won the Nobel Prize for that work in 2000. I would imagine it was front-page news across the globe.

What has this got to do with phenomenal consciousness? How and why do you conclude he demolished the mind-brain dichotomy? He seems to have been studying learning and short-term memory.

Solipsism denies itself by its use of language as I have noted above. All self-denials are without meaning and, hence, are neither true nor false, neither falsifiable or unfalsifiable. The statement “This statement is false” is a self-denial, hence meaningless and neither true nor false.

Solipsism is unfalsifiable. This is a fact. Nothing you note about self-denials, language or anything else will change this.

Your statement “Thus, there are theories in which what you call 'reality' does not really exist” seems an inadvertent bad choice of words. What meaning can the term ‘really’ have if there is no reality?

The 'really' is there as a proviso, to ensure the theory is not confused with nihilism.

Motions exist in the real world. Time never comes into existence in the real world. Time is a mental abstraction, a content of thought that allows one to correlate different motions. That abstraction can only be made after one observes the motions of things.

What real world? If time is not real then neither is motion, which depends entirely on the existence of time, whether or not it is conceptual.

Descartes introduced the benign God idea to avoid falling into the solipsism ready to jump out from his dualism. Solipsism would lead to questions about the existence of God.

Yes, I agree. Descartes assumed solipsism is false. His theory therefore became a metaphysical conjecture.

I still maintain that our senses do not deceive us,

That's fine by me, as long as you accept that it is an assumption. For as long as solipsism is unfalsified it will remain an assumption.

I never saw Matrix.

The plot is predicated on our inability to know whether or not our senses are deceiving us. If it were not for this inability the film would not have been made. The authors were extremely careful not to contradict any known facts of physics or philosophy. They dealt with most of the issues rigorously, by reference to Buddhist doctrine, Jean Baudrillard's 'desert of the real' and so on, all relevant here.

Regards
Canute

 

[octelcogopod]

Hello octelcogopod.

Now in the question “How can we prove that a sensed thing exists?” we can replace exists with ‘stands out or stands forth.’ The question then becomes “How can we prove that a sensed thing stands out or stands forth? If it is sensed that a particular thing stands forth from another or other things, its standing forth is proved and its existence is proved. To prove to others that something exists, have them do the same sensing. Viruses were not proved to exist until they (tobacco mosaic viruses) were sensed to stand forth from the background when viewed with an electron microscope.

Sorry but this just doesn't make any sense to me.
It's very simple;

The brain receives signals from somewhere, the origin of those signals are unverifiable.
No matter how much you bend on certain topics, this remains a fact.
You proposed "how can we prove that senses thing exists?" and what we're really asking here is "where is the signal coming from that's giving me this vision?"

Technically, you could be lying in a matrix like little tube, getting data input from sme computer directly into your brain.
It can't be verified 100% that this isn't the case, even if let's say, we were able to manipulate and understand our consciousness and bodies in an absolute way.
Even then, we could still ask ourselves "but what if this is just part of the simulation?"

It seems to me any subjective experiencer would, or could, ask this question.
In a way, even god can ask this question.

 

[Tournesol]

Sorry but this just doesn't make any sense to me.
It's very simple;

The brain receives signals from somewhere, the origin of those signals are unverifiable..

How did you verify that "The brain receives signals from somewhere",
then ?

 

[Tournesol]

Hello octelcogopod.

You ask First of all, one senses things of the external world. The external world is the class of things that can interact with our senses or extensions of our senses. The idea of a class is an abstract idea; hence the external world is not a physical thing and cannot be sensed.

That doesn't follow. The idea of a class C may be abstract. That doesn't
make C itself abstract.

I think the intent of your question can be put more fundamentally as ‘How can we prove that a sensed thing exists?’

How can we sense a thing if it doesn't ?

 

[octelcogopod]

How did you verify that "The brain receives signals from somewhere",
then ?

Well that's the thing, we can't verify it.

 

[Tournesol]

Well that's the thing, we can't verify it.

Then there may not be a problem in the first place.

Scepticism turns out to be a self-refuting universal solvent,
yet again.

 

[Universe_Man]

Maybe time flows forward as we see it because it is the most energy efficient way to do things, kinda like why when you blow a bubble, it takes the shape of a sphere rather than a cube or a pyramid. Maybe nature takes the easiest course of action.

Then again, I don't really know much about it so...

 

[Canute]

Then there may not be a problem in the first place.

Scepticism turns out to be a self-refuting universal solvent,
yet again.

To say that solipsism is unfalsifiable is not scepticism. It's just the way the world is. To say solipsism is true would be scepticism, of a sort, but I don't think anyone here is saying that it's true.

 

[Tournesol]

To say that solipsism is unfalsifiable is not scepticism. It's just the way the world is. To say solipsism is true would be scepticism, of a sort, but I don't think anyone here is saying that it's true.

Solipsis is self-falsifying. It cannot maintain the truth of whatever assumption it starts with (usually one about how the human brain
connects up to the rest of the world).

 

[Tournesol]

To say that solipsism is unfalsifiable is not scepticism. It's just the way the world is. To say solipsism is true would be scepticism, of a sort, but I don't think anyone here is saying that it's true.

Solipsis is self-falsifying. It cannot maintain the truth of whatever assumption it starts with (usually one about how the human brain
connects up to the rest of the world).

 

[moving finger]

I'd like to simplify all this but can't see how at the moment. For now I'll go through the questions you raise. If you can see a way to narrow the discussion down to a couple of key issues then I'd be all for doing so. How come you and me end up arguing in so many threads?

Must be because we have similar interests, but different beliefs?

I agree. A theory is a theory whether or not it is scientific. But someone mentioned Popper's ideas so I objected to the idea that scientific theories were truly falsifiable.

I’m confused. By Popper’s definition, an hypothesis doesn’t count as a scientific hypothesis unless it is falsifiable (by definition), so how can a scientific hypothesis be not falsifiable?

If it is true that solipsism is unfalsifiable then by definition solipsism would not be a scientific hypothesis (but that neither makes solipsism true nor false).

When it comes down to the quantum world, our hypotheses about ontic reality may be unfalsifiable. In other words it seems (according to our understanding of QM) that the world cannot be both local and real, but is it reality that is false, or locality, or both? It seems that the question can never be answered – thus rendering the question unscientific.

I don’t see that the proposition “solipsism is unfalsifiable” is either (a) an explanation of or (b) an understanding of the world. If the proposition is true, then it seems like an analytic truth to me (ie it is true by definition – independent of the world). I could claim that the statement “all bachelors are unmarried” is “knowledge which makes no assumptions” – but does it explain anything about the world, or does it allow us to understand the world? No, because it is an analytic truth (it is true by definition).

To me the unfalsifiability of solipsism cannot be an analytic truth since its truth cannot be derived from the definitions of the terms.

Let’s see.

Here’s an attempt at defining Solipsism = the belief that only my conscious “I” has any real existence, and everything in my conscious perceptual world (if I perceive anything at all) is purely a figment of my imagination, including my perceptions of feelings – and we also assume that I am capable of imagining anything and everything.

Now, how could I go about showing that solipsism is false? Clearly, as far as I am concerned, “I” exist (otherwise the question would not arise in the first place). Thus to show that solipsism is false I would need somehow to show conclusively that there is something within my perceptual world which is NOT a figment of my imagination.

But clearly, if I can imagine anything at all, then it may be the case that everything in my perceptual world IS a figment of my imagination – because I can imagine anything and everything. Anything that I may care to identify as a possible candidate for “real existence” external to the “I” may not in fact be real. There is no logical proof (to my knowledge) which I could employ which would lead me to the sound conclusion that any particular part of my perceptual world is not imagined by me.

Thus, it follows that solipsism is indeed unfalsifiable – the unfalsifiability follows from the definition of (and assumptions inherent in) solipsism. In other words, the fact that solipsism is unfalsifiable is an analytic truth.

(But this of course does NOT mean that solipsism is true).

But I agree that the proposition 'solipsism is unfasifiable' is not an explantion of anything. Rather, as I was proposing, it is a fact that needs an explanation. In my view a genuine 'theory of everything' should explain it.

I believe I have shown above that the truth of the proposition 'solipsism is unfalsifiable' follows necessarily from the definition of solipsism. Thus, the proposition tells us nothing useful about the world (in the same way that the proposition “all bachelors are unmarried” tells us nothing useful about the world).

Thus to claim that the statement “solipsism is unfalsifiable” qualifies as knowledge about the world is in the same category as claiming that “blue is a colour” qualifies as knowledge about the world.

Someone who has never seen 'blue' could nevertheless look up in a dictionary the fact that it is a colour. However, the unfalsifiability of solipsism is not a matter of definitions.

Sorry but I believe it is a matter of definitions.

If one believes that solipsism IS unfalsifiable, then (with respect) one also needs to be able to show WHY one believes it unfalsifiable (otherwise it becomes an assumption or an article of faith).

I have explained above why I believe it is unfalsifiable (we can show that it is necessarily unfalsifiable based on the definition of solipsism).

Can you explain why YOU believe solipsism is unfalsifiable? If you cannot, then on what basis do you claim that it IS unfalsifiable? Unjustified belief?

Please define what you mean by “knowledge” – I think we may have a different understanding of the word.

Yes, the trouble is that 'knowledge' it has at least two significantly different meanings. In an everyday sense of the word 'knowledge' generally means contingent, provisional or relative knowledge of the form 'if this then that'. (E.g. if my speedgun is working properly then that car doing 90 mph; if this supernova is this bright then that supernova must be x light years way etc.).

This seems to rest on inference, but it does not define knowledge. Basically you are saying “if I know that my speedgun is working properly, then by inference I also know that the car is doing 90mph” – you have simply defined one knowledge in terms of another knowledge. But how am I to know that my speedgun is working properly in the first place? Where does my original knowledge come from? And what does this word “knowledge” actually mean?

But true knowledge, in Aristotle's sense, would be what is known for certain with no ifs or buts.

In other words, infallible knowledge. I would argue that the only infallible knowledge we can have is based on analytic truths (or tautologies) – ie truths by definition (like the knowledge that “solipsism is unfalsifiable”). I do not believe that we can have infallible knowledge of the world outside of such analytic truths. But once again – before we can rationally argue this point we need a “definition” of knowledge which is not tautological To define knowledge as “what is known for certain” is tautological – it defines knowledge (ie what is known) in terms of “what is known”.

(it’s like defining “free will” as “the ability to act freely”)

What we need is to agree the necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge, so that we can say “if these conditions are satisfied, then we possesses knowledge; if these conditions are not satisfied, then we do not possesses knowledge”. Clearly, to avoid tautology we must avoid using “knowledge” or “know” within our conditions.

Where is this pain that you think you are feeling? When you think you feel that pain, are you sure that you are feeling the pain, or are you perhaps a brain in a vat being manipulated by an evil scientist who is making you think that you are feeling a pain?

It doesn't make any difference. If I'm feeling pain I'm feeling pain.

On the contrary, it makes all the difference. One of the characteristics of physical pain is that it has a locus of feeling – we don’t just “feel in physical pain”, that pain seems to be located in a particular part of the body. For the sake of this argument, where would you like to say that this so-called pain is located? Perhaps in your foot? But what if in reality you don’t have any feet? It follows then that the pain you think you are feeling in your foot is an illusion.

Granted that you think you feel pain – but does it does not follow from this that you are really feeling pain. To suggest that “I think that I feel pain entails that this thought arises from a real feeling of pain, as opposed to being a figment of my imagination” assumes solipsism is false – but we have already shown that solipsism is unfalsifiable.

If solipsism is true, then the pain “exists” only in your imagination (ie the fact that you think you feel pain is telling you nothing about the real world external to your consciousness).

This is the million dollar question. You seem to agree that solipsism is unfalsifiable, yet you cannot demonstrate it. How then do you know?

I believe I have shown above that it is true by definition.

You know by virtue of being conscious.

Agreed that it seems reasonable that consciousness is a necessary condition for knowledge – but imho it is far from being a sufficient condition.

This is connected with Aristotle's remark that true knowledge is the identity of knower and known, one of the most important observations that a philosopher can make imho.

This seems inherently tautological to me. “Knower” would seem to be “possessor of knowledge”, and “known” would seem to be the “knowledge possessed”, thus the proposition would become “true knowledge is the identity of the possessor of knowledge and the knowledge possessed” – mystically wonderful perhaps, but not very enlightening is it?

I could use the same form of proposition to “define” any content of consciousness, for example “true happiness is the identity of the possessor of happiness with the happiness possessed”, or “true hatred is the identity of the possessor of hatred with the hatred possessed”, or “true forgiveness is the identity of the possessor of forgiveness with the forgiveness possessed” – all of which I am sure some mystic would love to meditate about (and I’m sure one could sell a book on the subject), but none of which give us a real clue into anything in particular.

Again, until you can define precisely what you mean by the word knowledge then it seems to me that the word doesn’t really mean anything in particular.

And exactly what knowledge does this “experience” provide to you about the world?

Well, for a start, that solipsism is unfalsifiable.

How does your experience tell you that solipsism is unfalsifiable? Can you explain how you arrive at this conclusion based on your experience?

I believe that this particular proposition is an analytic truth (as shown above).
If you disagree, can you tell me by what means you know that solipsism is unfalsifiable? ie where is the rational argument which leads to the conclusion that solipsism is unfalsifiable? In absence of such a rational argument, on what grounds are you claiming it is unfalsifiable?

Suggested possible for grounds for believing that the proposition “solipsism is unfalsifiable” is true : Logical argument (as I have used above); or mathematical proof; or empirical evidence from experience, experiments etc; or divine inspiration; or a mystical vision; or intuition; or guesswork…..

Which grounds do you claim?

You do not believe that your justified beliefs could ever be mistaken? You are infallible?
The answer to the first question would depend on what you mean by 'justified'. Generally

I would define 'belief' as the opposite of 'knowledge', but I know many people define them differently.

That doesn’t mean much until you first define what you mean by knowledge.
Surely knowledge entails belief (rather than being the opposite of belief)? Do you think it is possible to claim that one “knows that X” if one does not also “believe that X”?

Example : How could I claim to know that 2 + 2 = 4 unless I also believe that 2 + 2 = 4?

Of course it does not follow from this that belief entails knowledge. Just because I might believe that the Tooth Fairy exists, it does not follow that I know that the Tooth Fairy exists (because knowledge also entails truth – I cannot know something which is false).

Then it would seem that your definition of knowledge is indeed tautological. Do you think that defining “knowledge as something that is known” is a very useful definition? Does it help us to understand what knowledge is, and how we can come to acquire knowledge?

Strangely I do think this is a useful definition. Once it is understood then it helps in distinguishing between relative and absolute knowledge. The point is that only you can know whether you know something and how you do it.

And how do you know it? How do you know that you know what you think you know, and how do you know that what you think you know is true?
(I hope you can see that an answer “I simply know” would be pretty meaningless).

It all hinges on the definition of knowledge. Plato’s standard account of knowledge seems to me to be much more rational and coherent and useful than Aristotle’s cryptic and tautological claim that “knowledge is the identity of knower and known”. (Rather strange, because by all accounts Aristotle tended to have if anything a more scientific and rational approach to philosophy that did his teacher Plato – but I guess no man is infallible).

According to Plato, knowledge is justified true belief. In other words, for an agent S to know that X, three necessary, and jointly sufficient, conditions must be satisfied:

1 X is true
2 S believes that X
3 S has evidential justification for believing that X

Would you agree, or would you care to offer a different definition that we could discuss?
(imho unless we can agree on a working definition, further discussion on the meaning of knowledge, and even the use of the terms “knowledge” or “know” in our debate, seems fruitless)

Earlier you claimed “mathematically, for a theory to become knowledge it has to be axiomatised”……. And now you are saying that once axiomatised it is not in fact knowledge?

What I was getting at is that a theory founded on a axiomatic proposition whose truth or falsity is not known takes the form 'if A then B then C...'. Any theorems derived from the proposition would be contingent on a guess. The derived theorem would count as knowledge in the sense that it is knowledge of what follows from the truth of the proposition by a certain logical procedure, but it would not be knowledge in an absolute sense. In the mystical literature the two kinds of knowledge are usually distinguished by using a upper-case 'K' for the absolute kind ('Knowledge' as opposed to 'knowledge'). Perhaps we could adopt this convention to save some confusion.

OK. I tend to agree. We should distinguish between fallible knowledge and infallible Knowledge. However, we still need to define knowledge to start with.

(imho Knowledge is impossible, except in the special but uninteresting case of analytic truths).

I did not claim that “it has been shown that spacetime is quantised”. But perhaps you could explain why you think the idea is irrational?

Well, Zeno of Alea gives a few reductio arguments for its irrationality, as has physicist Peter Lynds more recently.

Would you care to present these arguments so we could discuss them?

Here is mathematician Tobias Dantzig from Number - The Langauge of Science (1930). This steers us back onto the topic.

"The axiom of Dedekind - "if all points of a straight line fall into two classes, such that every point of the first class lies to the left of any point of the second class, then there exists one and only one point which produces this division of all points into two classes, this severing of the straight line into two portions" - this axiom is just a skillful paraphrase of the fundamental property we attribute to time. Our intuition permits us, by an act of the mind, to sever all time into the two clasess, the past and the future, which are mutually exclusive and yet together comprise all of time, eternity: The now is the partition which separates all the past from all the future; any instant of the past was once a now, any instant of the future will be a now anon, and so any instant may itself act as such a partition. To be sure, of the past we know only disparate instants, yet, by an act of the mind we fill out the gaps; we conceive that between any two instants - no matter how closely these may be associated in our memory - there were other instants, and we postulate the same compactness for the future. This is what we mean by the flow of time.

Furthermore, paradoxical though this may seem, the present is truly irrational in the Dedekind sense of the word, for while it acts as partition it is neither a part of the past nor a part of the future.

Why is this either paradoxical or irrational? Why should it be the case that the idea “the present is neither part of the past nor part of the future” is irrational? This is not shown at all.

Indeed, in an arithmetic based on pure time, if such an arithmetic was at all possible, it is the irrational which would be taken as a matter of course, while all the painstaking efforts of our logic would be directed toward establishing the existence of rational numbers.

A nice piece of mystical prose, but what exactly is the message hidden in here, and where is it shown that the idea “spacetime is quantised” is irrational?

Imho change is measured as the difference between successive instants.

Are you suggesting that change happens between instants, and thus outside time altogether?

What do you mean by “happens”? If we have state S1 at time T1, and state S2 at time T2, then there is clearly a change of state between times T1 and T2. Thus we might say the change of state “happens” between T1 and T2. But it does not follow from this either that T1 and T2 are continuous variables, or that S1 and S2 are continuous variables. We already know that many properties of the physical world are quantised (ie come in discrete values rather than being continuously varying), why then should it not be that case that changes in this physical world also come in discrete values?

I was suggesting that for a person who concludes that solipsism is unfalsifiable there is something of whose existence they are more certain than the conceptual constructs they create from the evidence of their senses.

I’m still confused.
I conclude that solipsism is unfalsifiable by definition (as per above) – and I can justify my belief based on a logical analysis of solipsism – the truth of the unfalsifiability of solipsism is an analytic truth – true by definition. If this is what you mean by “something of whose existence they are more certain than the conceptual constructs they create from the evidence of their senses” then in a very limited sense I agree with you – but an analytic truth (otherwise known as a tautology) tells us nothing useful about the world. It is true, in all logically possible worlds, by definition.

An analytic truth is true even under solipsism. An analytic truth is true, no matter whether the world of our perceptions represents reality or imagination.

Best Regards

 

[Canute]

I’m confused. By Popper’s definition, an hypothesis doesn’t count as a scientific hypothesis unless it is falsifiable (by definition), so how can a scientific hypothesis be not falsifiable?

This was what I was saying. By Popper's definition a theory in which solipsism is false is technically unfalsifiable. Of course, other parts of the theory may be falsifiable, but this part of it is not.

If it is true that solipsism is unfalsifiable then by definition solipsism would not be a scientific hypothesis (but that neither makes solipsism true nor false).

Yes, I agree.

When it comes down to the quantum world, our hypotheses about ontic reality may be unfalsifiable. In other words it seems (according to our understanding of QM) that the world cannot be both local and real, but is it reality that is false, or locality, or both? It seems that the question can never be answered – thus rendering the question unscientific.

That seems slightly incorrect to me. We know that naive realism is false and that the world is nonlocal. This is not new knowledge but it's new in physics. Nonlocality seems to me to be a scientific hypothesis or theory, and it seems to be a fact. But why do you say the world cannot be both local and real. This would suggest that its nonlocality implies its reality. I'd say that it cannot be local or real. (Obviously it's real in a sense, but I'm speaking ontologically).

Here’s an attempt at defining Solipsism = the belief that only my conscious “I” has any real existence, and everything in my conscious perceptual world (if I perceive anything at all) is purely a figment of my imagination, including my perceptions of feelings – and we also assume that I am capable of imagining anything and everything.

OK.

Now, how could I go about showing that solipsism is false? Clearly, as far as I am concerned, “I” exist (otherwise the question would not arise in the first place). Thus to show that solipsism is false I would need somehow to show conclusively that there is something within my perceptual world which is NOT a figment of my imagination.

Exactly. The unfalsifiability of solipsism can be known because there is something that cannot be a figment of your imagination, since the fact you can imagine anything demonstrates its existence.

But clearly, if I can imagine anything at all, then it may be the case that everything in my perceptual world IS a figment of my imagination – because I can imagine anything and everything.

Yes, but don't forget there has to be something that is aware of what you are imagining.

Anything that I may care to identify as a possible candidate for “real existence” external to the “I” may not in fact be real. There is no logical proof (to my knowledge) which I could employ which would lead me to the sound conclusion that any particular part of my perceptual world is not imagined by me.

Yep. Actually it's worse than than that, since your 'I' may also be unreal.

Thus, it follows that solipsism is indeed unfalsifiable – the unfalsifiability follows from the definition of (and assumptions inherent in) solipsism. In other words, the fact that solipsism is unfalsifiable is an analytic truth.

It's cannot be an analytic truth since it is only unfalsifiable for a conscious being. The statement says that my consciousness, at the deepest level of analysis, may be all that really exists. The statement therefore makes a claim about consciousness, not simply about words. If it is true or false this would have implications for the world, not just for definitions.

I believe I have shown above that the truth of the proposition 'solipsism is unfalsifiable' follows necessarily from the definition of solipsism.

I see what you're getting at but think you are mising something. Forget solipsism for a moment. Let's just say - everything of which I am conscious may ultimately be illusory. This is not a tautology.

[quoteIf one believes that solipsism IS unfalsifiable, then (with respect) one also needs to be able to show WHY one believes it unfalsifiable (otherwise it becomes an assumption or an article of faith).[/quote]
Nobody can show that it is unfalsifiable. Nor can anyone show it is true or false. This follows from the fact that nobody can show that consciousness exists. However, every human being can know it is unfalsifiable, given some ability to think about the issue. Philosophers have always accepted its unfalsifiability, regardless of what else they believe about the world.

I have explained above why I believe it is unfalsifiable (we can show that it is necessarily unfalsifiable based on the definition of solipsism).

If solipsism is unfalsifiable then it is impossible to show that philosophical materialism is true. Thus, according to your argument, the unverifiability of materialism follows analytically from the definition of solipsism. I feel this doesn't make much sense.

Can you explain why YOU believe solipsism is unfalsifiable? If you cannot, then on what basis do you claim that it IS unfalsifiable? Unjustified belief?

If you do not agree that solipsism is unfalsifiable then we are not going to agree on anything at all. You are the only person I've ever come across who doubts that it is unfalsifiable and I have no arguments that could convince you. I can only suggest you try to show that it is not unfalsifiable. Perhaps the impossibility of doing so might persuade you.

This seems to rest on inference, but it does not define knowledge. Basically you are saying “if I know that my speedgun is working properly, then by inference I also know that the car is doing 90mph” – you have simply defined one knowledge in terms of another knowledge. But how am I to know that my speedgun is working properly in the first place?

Exactly. This is why such knowldge ican never be certain, and thus in this senses is not knowledge. It is relative or provisional knowledge, true as long as other assumptions are true (e.g. that the speedgun is working properly, I read it correctly, I'm not dreaming etc).

Where does my original knowledge come from?

Philosophers generally conclude that all knowledge starts in experience.

And what does this word “knowledge” actually mean?

It has quite a few meanings according the dictionary. I think I gave my dual (absolute/relative) definition earlier.

In other words, infallible knowledge. I would argue that the only infallible knowledge we can have is based on analytic truths (or tautologies) – ie truths by definition (like the knowledge that “solipsism is unfalsifiable”).

When we know we are feeling pain this is not a matter of the definition of pain and knowing (unfortunately).

I do not believe that we can have infallible knowledge of the world outside of such analytic truths.

If we had no infallible knowledge outside the world of analytic truths we could not know that solipsism is unfalsifiable. To know this one must be conscious. Knowing we are conscious is infallible knowledge but not an analytic truth.

But once again – before we can rationally argue this point we need a “definition” of knowledge which is not tautological To define knowledge as “what is known for certain” is tautological – it defines knowledge (ie what is known) in terms of “what is known”.

Sorry, but I don't know how else to define it. I gave you Aristotle's equivalent definition but presumably you don't like it. I cannot improve on it.

(it’s like defining “free will” as “the ability to act freely”)

Yes. It's exactly like that.

What we need is to agree the necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge, so that we can say “if these conditions are satisfied, then we possesses knowledge; if these conditions are not satisfied, then we do not possesses knowledge”. Clearly, to avoid tautology we must avoid using “knowledge” or “know” within our conditions.

True knowledge is identical with its object, says Aristotle, and I'm sticking to that definition. Thus, the necessary and sufficient condition for (true) knowledge would be the identity of knower and known. This follows inevitably from the unfalsifiability of solipsism since anything with which we are not identical may not exist, and in principle any process of reasoning may be flawed.

On the contrary, it makes all the difference. One of the characteristics of physical pain is that it has a locus of feeling – we don’t just “feel in physical pain”, that pain seems to be located in a particular part of the body. For the sake of this argument, where would you like to say that this so-called pain is located? Perhaps in your foot? But what if in reality you don’t have any feet? It follows then that the pain you think you are feeling in your foot is an illusion.

Exactly. This is precisely Berkeley's argument. The pain one feels when kicking a rock does not falsify solipsism.

Agreed that it seems reasonable that consciousness is a necessary condition for knowledge – but imho it is far from being a sufficient condition.

I disagree again. To be conscious is to know what it is like to be conscious. Ergo, consciousness is a sufficient condition for knowledge.

This seems inherently tautological to me. “Knower” would seem to be “possessor of knowledge”, and “known” would seem to be the “knowledge possessed”, thus the proposition would become “true knowledge is the identity of the possessor of knowledge and the knowledge possessed” – mystically wonderful perhaps, but not very enlightening is it?

I feel it is very enlightening if one considers what Aristotle was getting at. However, I agree it is a tricky idea to get hold of.

I could use the same form of proposition to “define” any content of consciousness, for example “true happiness is the identity of the possessor of happiness with the happiness possessed”, or “true hatred is the identity of the possessor of hatred with the hatred possessed”, or “true forgiveness is the identity of the possessor of forgiveness with the forgiveness possessed” – all of which I am sure some mystic would love to meditate about (and I’m sure one could sell a book on the subject), but none of which give us a real clue into anything in particular.

Hmm. That's a very cheap shot. Still, you do raise an interesting issue. However, we are talking about knowledge, not happiness, forgiveness etc.

Again, until you can define precisely what you mean by the word knowledge then it seems to me that the word doesn’t really mean anything in particular.

Yes, the problem of knowledge is very difficult. Russell was not sure that it was possible for a human being to know anything at all with certainty. It's certainly impossible to demonstrate that they do, and neurophysiologists have no idea how we do it. Really the problem of knowledge is just the problem of consciousness in disguise. If we cannot show we are conscious then we cannot show we know anything. If we cannot show we know something then we cannot show we are conscious. All we can show is that sometimes we behave just as if we are conscious and know something.

How does your experience tell you that solipsism is unfalsifiable? Can you explain how you arrive at this conclusion based on your experience?

Surely you don't need me to tell you this? You must know as well as I do that solipsism is unfalsifiable. How do you know this? Because you are conscious, just as I am. Solipsism would not be unfalsifiable for a thermostat.

If you disagree, can you tell me by what means you know that solipsism is unfalsifiable? ie where is the rational argument which leads to the conclusion that solipsism is unfalsifiable? In absence of such a rational argument, on what grounds are you claiming it is unfalsifiable?

Well, it depends what you mean by 'rational'. If you mean, do I know that it is unfalsifiable entirely as the result of a process of reasoning then the answer is clearly no. First I have to be conscious, then from this the reasoning process begins. If this were not true then a insentient machine could work out that solipsism is unfalsifiable.

Suggested possible for grounds for believing that the proposition “solipsism is unfalsifiable” is true : Logical argument (as I have used above); or mathematical proof; or empirical evidence from experience, experiments etc; or divine inspiration; or a mystical vision; or intuition; or guesswork…..

I know it is true from the empirical evidence, namely my own experience of consciousness. So do you. I find it very hard to believe that someone can argue they don't know that solipsism is unfalsifiable, especially someone who argue the statement is an analytic truth.

Surely knowledge entails belief (rather than being the opposite of belief)? Do you think it is possible to claim that one “knows that X” if one does not also “believe that X”?

Personally I reserve the term 'belief' for something one is very sure is true but not quite certain. If one is certain then it is knowledge. However, people use these terms variously and I don't mind defining them differently as long as their meaning is clear in the context.

Example : How could I claim to know that 2 + 2 = 4 unless I also believe that 2 + 2 = 4?

You couldn't.

Of course it does not follow from this that belief entails knowledge. Just because I might believe that the Tooth Fairy exists, it does not follow that I know that the Tooth Fairy exists (because knowledge also entails truth – I cannot know something which is false).

Yes, this is why I like to distinguish between belief and knowledge. This is a good point I think, that we can believe something that is false, but not know it.

And how do you know it? How do you know that you know what you think you know, and how do you know that what you think you know is true? (I hope you can see that an answer “I simply know” would be pretty meaningless).

It's no good blaming me for a problem that has plagued philosophers and mathematicians for centuries. Think of Godel's infinite regress of metasystems, it's the same old problem.

It all hinges on the definition of knowledge. Plato’s standard account of knowledge seems to me to be much more rational and coherent and useful than Aristotle’s cryptic and tautological claim that “knowledge is the identity of knower and known”. (Rather strange, because by all accounts Aristotle tended to have if anything a more scientific and rational approach to philosophy that did his teacher Plato – but I guess no man is infallible).

Is Aristotle fallible because you don't agree with him? That seems a slightly arbitrary way to dismiss a great philosopher, especially since many people completely agree with the reasoning by which he reaches his concusion about knowledge. I'd rather place the fallibility somewhere else.

There is a reason his claim is tautological, and this is what you are missing here. The whole idea of knowledge is tautological. This is why Russell, Frege, Church, Godel et al have had to face so many problems of self-reference. We know what we know we know we know, and so on. But how do we know we know we know? Computationally we cannot, as Godel showed. Neverthless, we do.

According to Plato, knowledge is justified true belief.

Yes. What is easily missed is that the evidential justification for certain knowledge is the identity of knower and known. In the absence of this the knowledge is relative, provisional on the truth of some assumption or other.

OK. I tend to agree. We should distinguish between fallible knowledge and infallible Knowledge. However, we still need to define knowledge to start with.

Well, we've both defined it. The problem is we don't agree on the defintion. Could you give me an example of what you would call certain knowledge? Perhaps we could work from particular instances of knowledge back to a more general definition.

(imho Knowledge is impossible, except in the special but uninteresting case of analytic truths).

This view is consistent with your overall view of knowledge. But surely you know you are conscious?

Why is this either paradoxical or irrational? Why should it be the case that the idea “the present is neither part of the past nor part of the future” is irrational? This is not shown at all.

It would be better to ask a mathematician this question, you'd get a much clearer answer. The Dedekind cut is all about how to treat a continuum as a series of points (whether this is the number line, time or space). This requires the notion of infinitessimals, instants and points, the 'ghosts of departed quantities' I think someone called them. There is a paradox inherent in these concepts. IMHO (!) this is what lay behind Zeno's idea of reality being unchanging, and his famous reductio arguments against a mathematical analysis of motion into successive positions and instants.

A nice piece of mystical prose, but what exactly is the message hidden in here, and where is it shown that the idea “spacetime is quantised” is irrational?

If you're happy to drop the rest of the topics here (temporarily at least) and go with this one then I am also. It's difficult to deal with so many issues at once.

What do you mean by “happens”? If we have state S1 at time T1, and state S2 at time T2, then there is clearly a change of state between times T1 and T2. Thus we might say the change of state “happens” between T1 and T2. But it does not follow from this either that T1 and T2 are continuous variables, or that S1 and S2 are continuous variables. We already know that many properties of the physical world are quantised (ie come in discrete values rather than being continuously varying), why then should it not be that case that changes in this physical world also come in discrete values?

If spacetime is quantised then we have two choices. Either motion/change occurs in an instant or between instants. Both ideas seem paradoxical to me, and I am not alone in this.

If this is what you mean by “something of whose existence they are more certain than the conceptual constructs they create from the evidence of their senses” then in a very limited sense I agree with you – but an analytic truth (otherwise known as a tautology) tells us nothing useful about the world. It is true, in all logically possible worlds, by definition.

I meant that the unfalsifiability of solipsism shows that our consciousness is known with more certainty than anything else, since anything else may be an illusion. We may, for example, be brains in a vat, or may be being tricked by Descartes' evil demon.

An analytic truth is true even under solipsism. An analytic truth is true, no matter whether the world of our perceptions represents reality or imagination.

Agreed.

Phew
Canute

 

[Tournesol]

You are confusing flow with sequence.

No confusion at all – I have not once referred to “sequence” in the above paragraph.
However, flow does indeed entail sequence. A flow is a sequential temporal progression. If you are perhaps claiming there is no objective sequence, it follows there also can be no objective flow.

Let me take another crack at it.

Thus if time really does “flow” (and we are to believe that this flow is not an illusion), then all but one of the above timelines (since they reflect different sequences of events) must be an illusion.

Not all the different sequences can be correct.

Which of the above timelines would one think represents the real “flow of time” – the objective timeline or one of the the experienced timelines? It obviously cannot be one of the experienced timelines

It most certainly *could*. Even serendipitously.

(because we each experience different timelines, and none of us is in a privileged position of being able to claim to have direct access to the “absolute flow of time”),

The objective timeline is measured with clocks.

therefore (if anyone timeline flows) it must be the objective timeline.

Any of them can flow. They cannot all match the objective sequence (that
is sequnce, not flow). Of course there is really just one timeline, and
certain latencies and delays in the brain that produce different
subjective "timelines". But subjective timelines are nothing
fundamental. If you could make a complete informational model
of the brain and peer into it from the outside, it would
all work within objective time -- and you would be able
to say objectively that some parts of the brain receive information
out-of-order.

But if this is the case, then it follows that we each sometimes perceive time as flowing in the opposite direction to the way it is objectively flowing!

Again, that is sequence, not flow.

Thus, our subjective experience of the flow of time is indeed an illusion

No, no, no. You have got two different things mixed up
here:

(1)whether we have a quale of flow, and (2) whether
we always perceive things in the correct sequence.

We don't always perceive things in the correct sequence, but
that has no impact on (1).

A red object under green light will look black. You cannot infer from
that there are no colour-quale !

(whether the objective timeline really “flows” or not), and we thus cannot infer from our perceived or experienced flow of time that objective time is actually flowing at all.

Doesn't follow.

Each subjective “instant” of experienced time contains information correlated with both antecedent and consequent “instants”.

well, antecedent anyway.

The conscious experience within each pigeon-hole, within each instant of time, would be exactly the same as it was when we illuminated the pigeon-holes in the “correct” sequence.

But what would the experience of the *whole* system of pigeon-holes be like ?

In other words, the subjective conscious experience within each instant is independent of the objective sequence of illumination of the pigeon-holes. The subjective consciously experienced instant in pigeon-hole 2341 is just the same, no matter whether the previously (in our objective timeframe) illuminated pigeon-hole was 2340 or 1654. We could objectively replay the pigeon-holes in any sequence, forward, random, reverse, and it would make no difference as far as the subjective conscious experience encapsulated within the instants in each pigeon-hole is concerned. Indeed, we could illuminate all of the pigeon-holes simultaneously (using a large floodlight instead of our small flashlight), and the subjective consciously experienced instants of time within each pigeon-hole would be just the same as if they had been illuminated individually in sequence. In other words – there need be no objective “flow of time” at all, since the subjective illusion of the “flow of time” is already encoded within the subjective “arrow of time” within each temporal instant.

There will be no subjective flow of time in that scenario. Instead "I" will have some
sort of simulatenous 4D consciousness. I would not merely remember past events ,
but I would be conscious of them in the past while also being conscious of
present events in the present. You are not following through
your own premmisses. If the "light" means "consciousness on"
the illuminating everytng simultanously mean simultaneous-conscious-throughout-personal-history.

One might ask “but why do I experience only one instant of time at a time, and why is it THIS particular instant of time?” Think about it. In fact, your conscious experience experiences EVERY instant of time at which your conscious experience exists. No particular instant is more special than any other, but at each and every one of those instants in time you could ask yourself the same question – “why am I experiencing this instant rather than any other?”. The question is meaningless – because by definition you do consciously experience every instant of time in which your consciousness exists, at that particular time.

But one at a time. I remember the past, I am not aware of it simultaneously with the present.

OTOH , if flow is objective, that easily explains why there is subjective flow too. There is subjective flow because consciousness is rooted in the phsycal brain.

Because consciousness is located “in time” rather than outside of time is why we have the intuitive subjective feeling of the flow of time – interpreting this as a "real flow of time" is the “easy explanation”.

What does "in time" mean to a flow-denier (AKA Block theorist) ? "Time" is just another spatial
dimension to a block theorist.

But as we have seen, the inference of objective flow from subjective flow is invalid, and as we have seen above there is in fact no need to posit any flow at all in order to explain the subjective experience. What is the rational reason to posit something (an objective flow) which is not needed to explain any empirical data, especially when that something (the objective flow) is itself in need of further explanation (which is yet another problem)?

Everything is in need of further explanation.

while there is a "choice", your preferred option is much less explanatory than mine.
On the contrary, my interpretation is complete whereas yours is not. Mine explains the subjective experience (illusion) of flow as a direct consequence of the psychological arrow of time, without requiring any objective “flow” at all, and without the need to postulate anything special about the subjective “now”.

All you are doing is holding up Sequence and saying "Behold, this is Flow!".

Well, it isn't.

(Bearing in mind that nothig corresponds to the torch
in Block Universe theory -- either everythig is illuminated
equally, or nothing is at all).

Your interpretation explains the subjective experience of flow at the cost of postulating something mysterious called the objective flow of time, for which you have no further explanation, and your interpretation presumably also entails something special and unique about “now” which also begs further explanation.

Whatever. Block theorists can't explain why there is an extra quasi-spatial dimension. Why isn't
the universe a single 3D snaphsot ? Every theory leaves something unexplained.

The problem of explaining the “feeling of the flow of time” is essentially similar to the problem of explaining the “feeling of free will” – the “easy and intuitive” explanation is that our feeling of free will is due to the objective existence of something called “free will” (but this “free will” seems itself to be beyond coherent explanation), whereas the rational explanation is that our feeling of free will is an illusion, caused simply by our lack of detailed knowledge about our own internal decision-making processes.

Free will *is* capable of explanation.

 

[Tournesol]

My ground for saying that there is no such thing as time itself is not that it doesn’t exist separately from specific instances. My grounds are 1) that we cannot even conceive of time without invoking a conception of something moving, and 2) that our notion of time is an abstraction from the motions of things. When we measure time we are comparing one motion with another. Motion can be sensed with several of our senses.

To move is to be in different places at different times. v=dx/dt

Time cannot be sensed at all. At most all we can do is produce clocks that count 86,400 seconds in a day. There is nothing universal about a 24 hour day, a 60 minute hour, or a 60 second minute. If I remember correctly, those choices were made in ancient Mesopotamia.

Inches and grammes and coulombs are arbitrary too.

Charge and mass are not abstractions from reality. They are known to exist because they can be sensed. Charge can be sensed and even measured by the force it produces, as in a gold foil electrometer.

Charge is inferred from force and motion. Time is inferred from the position
of clock-hands


The notion of time running backwards implies that all motions would be reversed and that all history would retrace its steps backward. It’s not possible. There are too many things that prohibit the reversal of time. Water can’t change its direction through a check valve. Electrons cannot change their direction through a diode or transistor.
If you reverse all the laws of physics ,
you reverse all the laws of physics. The problems
you mention will "cancel through".
Did you mean to say that if you reverse time you reverse all the laws of physics?

What change to which laws(s) of physics would allow water to flow backwards through a check valve?

You err if you equate a reversal of time with a reversal of all the laws of physics. Some essential things in physics, such as the resolution of forces, are time invariant.

If they are time-invariant, a fortiori they can be reversed. Time-invariance
doesn't mean reversal is impossible, it means it makes no difference !

What reversals of Newton’s first two laws would “cancel through” the effects of a reversal of time?

if they are time-invariant, all of them. Or they would nto be invariant.

More importantly, what would Newton’s first and second laws look like if the physics were reversed?

what any time-invariant law looks like under time-reversal. Left as an exercise to the reader.

Tournesol, thanks for pointing out the error in my description of the effect of time running backward on the spinning earth. Let me try anew. Newton’s apple fell from the tree and hit the ground. If time had then reversed, the apple would have risen up to the tree. The only way to explain that would be that gravity had become a repulsive force (reversing a law of nature).

Nope. Reverse the "t" in Newton' equations and the "x" also reverses wihtout any
further changes.

In this last example a reversal of time requires the reversal of a physical law that contradicts the reversal of time. Can you give us an example of a reversal of time and a reversal of laws of physics that could result in a playback of history without contradiction?

Pick any time-invariant law...

 

[moving finger]

This was what I was saying. By Popper's definition a theory in which solipsism is false is technically unfalsifiable. Of course, other parts of the theory may be falsifiable, but this part of it is not.

Assumptions need not always be falsifiable (if they were always falsifiable, we would not need to assume them, would we?). An hypothesis plus assumptions simply says “given these assumptions, this hypothesis says that such and such should be true”. Popper’s definition re falsifiability applies to the hypothesis, not to the assumptions.

Do you know of any scientific hypothesis in which solipsism (or the denial thereof) figures as a part of the working hypothesis (as opposed to being a part of the underlying assumptions)?

That seems slightly incorrect to me. We know that naive realism is false and that the world is nonlocal.

Do we indeed? Check the Many Worlds Interpretation of QM – this interpretation is compatible with the assumption of locality. And depending on exactly how one defines locality, Cramer's Transactional Interpretation can also be compatible with the assumption of locality.

But why do you say the world cannot be both local and real. This would suggest that its nonlocality implies its reality. I'd say that it cannot be local or real.

Oh Canute, really! To say that “X cannot be both Y and Z” is not the same as saying “X cannot be either Y or Z”. This is elementary logic for goodness sake! Thus if I say that X “cannot be both Y and Z”, it does NOT follow (as you claim) that I am saying “not-Y implies Z”.

(Obviously it's real in a sense, but I'm speaking ontologically).

It would be interesting to know in what sense you think the world is real if you think it is ontologically not real. Obviously solipsism would fit with the notion that the world (outside of the conscious “I”) is ontologically not real – but you’re surely not suggesting that you believe solipsism is true, are you? If so then I’m out of here.

Yes, but don't forget there has to be something that is aware of what you are imagining.

So what? Solipsism does not posit that the conscious “I “ is unreal.

It's cannot be an analytic truth since it is only unfalsifiable for a conscious being. The statement says that my consciousness, at the deepest level of analysis, may be all that really exists. The statement therefore makes a claim about consciousness, not simply about words.If it is true or false this would have implications for the world, not just for definitions.

The definition of solipsism assumes an “I” within the definition. That’s what definitions do, it’s in their nature to make assumptions. A bachelor is defined as an unmarried man, but we do not claim that the proposition “all bachelors are unmarried” is therefore NOT an analytic truth simply because there are possible worlds where men do not exist.

In a world where men do not exist, we might claim that the statement “all bachelors are unmarried” is meaningless. In the same way, in a world where consciousness does not exist we might claim that the statement “solipsism is unfalsifiable” is meaningless.

But the logical possibility of other worlds where men and consciousness do not exist has no bearing on OUR world, where men and consciousness DO exist. In our world, “all bachelors are unmarried” has a meaning, and it is an analytic truth. In our world, “solipsism is unfalsifiable” also has a meaning, and it also is an analytic truth.

I see what you're getting at but think you are mising something. Forget solipsism for a moment. Let's just say - everything of which I am conscious may ultimately be illusory.

That seems like solipsism to me.

Nobody can show that it is unfalsifiable.

Please show where my argument that the proposition “solipsism is unfalsifiable” is an analytic truth is incorrect.

Nor can anyone show it is true or false. This follows from the fact that nobody can show that consciousness exists.

No, it follows from the fact that the proposition “solipsism is unfalsifiable” is an analytic truth.

However, every human being can know it is unfalsifiable, given some ability to think about the issue. Philosophers have always accepted its unfalsifiability, regardless of what else they believe about the world.

I have asked you many times in this thread to show that it is unfalsifiable, instead of simply stating it. You have not done so, indeed you reject my argument that the unfalsifiablity of solipsism is an analytic truth, you even claim above that “Nobody can show that it is unfalsifiable” – thus on what basis do you claim that it IS unfalsifiable?

If solipsism is unfalsifiable then it is impossible to show that philosophical materialism is true.

Please show (with a rational, coherent logical argument if possible) why this follows.

Has anyone claimed that it IS possible to show that philosophical materialism is true? How have they shown this? (Again a rational, coherent logical argument if possible would be much appreciated).

If you do not agree that solipsism is unfalsifiable then we are not going to agree on anything at all. You are the only person I've ever come across who doubts that it is unfalsifiable and I have no arguments that could convince you. I can only suggest you try to show that it is not unfalsifiable. Perhaps the impossibility of doing so might persuade you.

Canute – I thought that we were having a rational and constructive discussion up to this point, but the above comment of yours suggests to me that you are replying to my posts without reading them. Many times in this thread I have claimed, and I have shown, that the proposition “solipsism is unfalsifiable” is an analytic truth – and now you claim that I do not agree that solipsism is unfalsifiable?

With the greatest respect to you, it seems either that you do not bother to try and understand my posts, or that you have trouble understanding plain English, in either case there isn’t much point in continuing our discussion.

One last time, for the avoidance of doubt – you are claiming (without any supporting argument) that solipsism is unfalsifiable, but you do not agree with my argument that “solipsism is unfalsifiable” is an analytic truth – please therefore explain on what basis you claim solipsism is unfalsifiable.

Canute - I’ll refrain from responding to the rest of your post until we clear this up, because it’s a waste of time to continue any further if you don’t read.

Best Regards

But what would the experience of the *whole* system of pigeon-holes be like ?

There is no experience of the *whole* system in entirety. Conscious experience is localized in time and space (yes I know some people claim to be able to delocalize their consciousness over the whole of space or even the whole of time – but to me that’s just BS).

There will be no subjective flow of time in that scenario. Instead "I" will have some
sort of simulatenous 4D consciousness. I would not merely remember past events ,
but I would be conscious of them in the past while also being conscious of
present events in the present. You are not following through
your own premmisses. If the "light" means "consciousness on"
the illuminating everytng simultanously mean simultaneous-conscious-throughout-personal-history.

You misunderstand the idea of the metaphor. “Light on” means “consciousness on”, but it does not mean there is any communication between the conscious experience in different pigeon holes. Each conscious experience of each instant of time is located within a single pigeon-hole, there is no conscious communication between them (over and above the existing physical causal connections between adjacent pigeon-holes). Illuminating 1000 pigeon-holes simultaneously just means that we get 1000 separate instants of conscious experience enacted in parallel, but these instants do not communicate anything to each other, the experience in each pigeon-hole is just the same as if they had been illuminated one by one, in sequence.

But one at a time. I remember the past, I am not aware of it simultaneously with the present.

I have never said that illuminating all pigeon-holes simultaneously produces a single communicating conscious experience where past and present are experienced together as one conscious experience – this is your misinterpretation of the idea. Illuminating 1000 pigeon-holes simultaneously simply produces 1000 parallel but non-communicating conscious experiences. The individual experiences would be exactly the same as if each pigeon-hole were illuminated in sequence.

What does "in time" mean to a flow-denier (AKA Block theorist) ? "Time" is just another spatial
dimension to a block theorist.

“In time” means from within the 4D block universe. It is because our conscious experience of the universe is from within that same universe, and we consciously perceive of an arrow of time from within that universe, that we have the subjective impression of a flow of time. If we could “stand outside” the 4D universe and view it from a 5th dimension (which we cannot) we would see the illusion for what it is.

All you are doing is holding up Sequence and saying "Behold, this is Flow!".

No, I am saying the arrow of time provides the illusion of a flow of time to any conscious entity that exists within that time dimension. Only by standing outside of time (viewing from the 5th dimension) would we be able to see that there is no flow at all.

(Bearing in mind that nothig corresponds to the torch
in Block Universe theory -- either everythig is illuminated
equally, or nothing is at all).

The torch and pigeon-hole metaphor is just an attempt to provide a way of looking at (examining) the problem from another perspective – it’s not meant to be taken literally as a model of how the world works. The metaphor of the floodlight shows that all instants of conscious experience could be enacted “in parallel” (when viewed from the 5th dimension), and yet we as 4D conscious beings would still think (from within our 4 dimensions) that we are instead experiencing each conscious moment sequentially, and we would perceive it as a flow of time.

Whatever. Block theorists can't explain why there is an extra quasi-spatial dimension. Why isn't
the universe a single 3D snaphsot ?

Because it is a single 4D snapshot.

Maybe there is another universe “out there” which is a single 3D snapshot (3 spatial dimensions and no time dimension) – but such a universe would not contain sentient beings. Life could not evolve in a single 3D snapshot.

4 dimensions (3 of space and 1 of time) would seem to be the essential minimum geometric conditions required for sentient beings to evolve. But none of this requires any objective “flow” of time – it requires only a time dimension.

Free will *is* capable of explanation.

I didn’t say it isn’t. I can explain the existence of the Tooth Fairy, but that doesn’t make my explanation coherent.

Best Regards

 

[Tournesol]

(Obviously it's real in a sense, but I'm speaking ontologically).

It would be interesting to know in what sense you think the world is real if you think it is ontologically not real.

When physicists talk about "local realism" , the "realsim" they are talking about is the princuiple that objects have pre-existing values corresponding
to any possible measurement. Lack of realsim in that
sense doens't add up to objects not existing at all,
just to them existing fuzzilly.

 

[Canute]

moving finger

Shall we call it a day here? We're going nowhere. If you are convinced that 'solipsism is unfalsifiable' is an analytic truth then anything else I say won't make sense to you. It'll come up again I'm sure. If we keep going one of us is going to lose their composure.

regards
Canute

 

[Tournesol]

But what would the experience of the *whole* system of pigeon-holes be like ?

There is no experience of the *whole* system in entirety. Conscious experience is localized in time and space (yes I know some people
claim to be able to delocalize their consciousness over the whole of space or even the whole of time – but to me that’s just BS).

That is how consciousness seems to work. However, the question is what the implications of Block Universe/B-series
theory are. The BU/BS theory doesn't have the resources to switch on individual moments of time one after the other
--that would require an A series.
Either all moments are conscious or none are. It is clearly not the case
that none are, so all are. That is the predictions of the BU/BS theory. And
it doens't match what is observed. So the BU/BS theory is wrong.

There will be no subjective flow of time in that scenario. Instead "I" will have some
sort of simulatenous 4D consciousness. I would not merely remember past events ,
but I would be conscious of them in the past while also being conscious of
present events in the present. You are not following through
your own premmisses. If the "light" means "consciousness on"
the illuminating everytng simultanously mean simultaneous-conscious-throughout-personal-history.

You misunderstand the idea of the metaphor. “Light on” means “consciousness on”, but it does not mean there is any
communication between the conscious experience in different pigeon holes. Each conscious experience of each instant of time is
located within a single pigeon-hole,

Why ? Why isn't conscious experience located in individual neurons? Why does
individualisation apply ot time and not to space ? Flow-of-Time/A-series theorists
can claim this because it follows naturally form their premises. But BU/BS theorists
regrard time as being almost the same, or the same, as space.

there is no conscious communication between them (over and above the existing physical causal
connections between adjacent pigeon-holes).

Well, quite. The causal connection between neurons are enough to allow
consciousness to spread over the brain. Why aren't the causal connections
between moments in time enough to allow consciousness to spread over the fourth dimension ?
Again, the whole point of BU/BS is that time is just like space.

Illuminating 1000 pigeon-holes simultaneously just means that we get 1000 separate instants
of conscious experience enacted in parallel, but these instants do not communicate anything to each other,

They have "already" communicated, in that subsequent moments contain information-traces from previous ones.

the experience in each
pigeon-hole is just the same as if they had been illuminated one by one, in sequence.

The experience is all-or-nothing in BU/BS.

But one at a time. I remember the past, I am not aware of it simultaneously with the present.

I have never said that illuminating all pigeon-holes simultaneously produces a single communicating conscious experience where
past and present are experienced together as one conscious experience – this is your misinterpretation of the idea.
Illuminating 1000 pigeon-holes simultaneously simply produces 1000 parallel but non-communicating conscious experiences.
The individual experiences would be exactly the same as if each pigeon-hole were illuminated in sequence.

All you are doing is holding up Sequence and saying "Behold, this is Flow!".

No, I am saying the arrow of time provides the illusion of a flow of time to any conscious entity that exists within that
time dimension. Only by standing outside of time (viewing from the 5th dimension) would we be able to see that there is no
flow at all.

(Bearing in mind that nothig corresponds to the torch
in Block Universe theory -- either everythig is illuminated
equally, or nothing is at all).

The torch and pigeon-hole metaphor is just an attempt to provide a way of looking at (examining) the problem from
another perspective – it’s not meant to be taken literally as a model of how the world works. The metaphor of the
floodlight shows that all instants of conscious experience could be enacted “in parallel” (when viewed from the 5th dimension),
and yet we as 4D conscious beings would still think (from within our 4 dimensions) that we are instead experiencing each
conscious moment sequentially, and we would perceive it as a flow of time.

That doesn't follow. Under the BU/BS theory, we are 4D, so why wouldn't we have
a 4D condciousness ? If spatially separated neurons can form the same consciousness,
why can't temporally separated ones ?

Whatever. Block theorists can't explain why there is an extra quasi-spatial dimension. Why isn't
the universe a single 3D snaphsot ?

Because it is a single 4D snapshot.
Maybe there is another universe “out there” which is a single 3D snapshot (3 spatial dimensions and no time dimension) –
but such a universe would not contain sentient beings. Life could not evolve in a single 3D snapshot.
4 dimensions (3 of space and 1 of time) would seem to be the essential minimum geometric conditions required for sentient
beings to evolve. But none of this requires any objective “flow” of time – it requires only a time dimension.

How can there be evolution without a flow of time ?

Free will *is* capable of explanation.

I didn’t say it isn’t. I can explain the existence of the Tooth Fairy, but that doesn’t make my explanation coherent.

Free will is capable of coherent explanation. You have not been able to show otherwise.

 

[Drachir]

Is This How A Solipsist Might Falsify Solipsism?

The notion that solipsism is unfalsifiable is a widespread idea that has appeared in seven posts of this thread. Although there have been some attempts at refuting that idea, they have relied on indirect or external attacks. One such indirect attack tries to place the language used by the solipsist into a world outside the solipsist by virtue of the societal origins of language and the external world implied by the notion of a society. However, that is an implication that the solipsist can readily discount by pointing out that a notion is an idea, and all ideas are, after all, merely objects of the solipsist’s consciousness.

The claim has been made that a non-solipsist cannot convince a solipsist of the fallacy of solipsism because the solipsist considers the non-solipsist to be only an object of the solipsist’s consciousness. It has also been claimed that the solipsist cannot falsify solipsism because the solipsist cannot prove that an outside world is anything more than merely an object of the solipsist’s consciousness. Thus, solipsism is held to be unfalsifiable. Nonetheless, I may have found out how a solipsist might falsify solipsism.

Solipsism is the theory held by a solipsist that the solipsist is the sole existent. As a consequence of holding that theory, the solipsist also holds that what a non-solipsist might call the outside world – including the solipsist’s body -- is only the content or object of the solipsist’s consciousness. The solipsist, therefore, can only consider a solipsist to be a disembodied consciousness that is the sole existent. Therefore, the solipsist considers the subjects and contents of the solipsist’s consciousness to be completely dependent on the solipsist’s consciousness. The solipsist considers solipsism to be unfalsifiable since any manifestations of things that might be used to verify an external world are merely the subjects or contents of the solipsist’s consciousness.

In all other respects the solipsist is similar to a non-solipsist and can be conscious of perceptions and thoughts, can learn, can recall memories, can experience memory lapses, can find meaning in the words used to express the solipsistic theory, can think logically, and is not omniscient, omnipotent, or eternal. The solipsist remembers not having always understood the meaning of many words, including the word solipsism. The solipsist remembers having had perceptions of dictionaries and of having noted that words can only be defined in terms of other words. The solipsist also remembers having learned that the unknown can only be defined in terms of the known.

In light of that last remembrance, the solipsist deduces that the solipsist’s definition of the solipsist’s first unknown must have been done in terms of what the solipsist already knew, i.e., some already-held knowledge. The solipsist notes that the solipsist’s first conscious act had to have been the act of identifying and defining the content of the solipsist’s first perception. That was the solipsist’s first meeting with the unknown. Since no perception or act of consciousness could precede that first perception or first act of consciousness, the solipsist becomes aware that such an act implied that the requisite already-held knowledge could not have been acquired from perceptions by the solipsist’s consciousness.

The solipsist therefore concludes that any such already-held knowledge must be independent of the solipsist’s perceptions and consciousness. The solipsist then realizes that since that already-held knowledge is independent of the solipsist’s consciousness, the solipsist’s consciousness cannot be the sole existent. The solipsist has found a contradiction to the solipsist’s definition of a solipsist and has thereby falsified solipsism.

 

[selfAdjoint]

The solipsist remembers having had perceptions of dictionaries and of having noted that words can only be defined in terms of other words. The solipsist also remembers having learned that the unknown can only be defined in terms of the known.

In light of that last remembrance, the solipsist deduces that the solipsist’s definition of the solipsist’s first unknown must have been done in terms of what the solipsist already knew, i.e., some already-held knowledge. The solipsist notes that the solipsist’s first conscious act had to have been the act of identifying and defining the content of the solipsist’s first perception. That was the solipsist’s first meeting with the unknown. Since no perception or act of consciousness could precede that first perception or first act of consciousness, the solipsist becomes aware that such an act implied that the requisite already-held knowledge could not have been acquired from perceptions by the solipsist’s consciousness.

I don't find this at all convincing. All this talk about what the solipsist must conclude assumes that the solipsist is a logical machine. I am not such, and were I a solipsist I should rather accept my awareness as an unanalyzable "Fall" (in the existentialist sense - a situation we find ourselves in and have no account of).

 

[Drachir]

selfAdjoint, I did not refer to what a solipsist must conclude. I did refer to how a solipsist might falsify solipsism. As for "logical machine" I merely said that the solipsist can think logically. You know, as you and I can.

 

[moving finger]

Free will is capable of coherent explanation. You have not been able to show otherwise.

Show me an alleged explanation of free will, and I will show you that it is either incomplete or incoherent.

Obviously, I cannot show that a particular explanation is incoherent if there is no explanation, or if the explanation is incomplete - this is the way that most libertarians avoid the charge of incoherence, by refusing to explain how their pet notion of free will works, and clouding it in mysticism, smoke, mirrors and claiming "and then a miracle occurs..." - obviously a non-explanation cannot be shown to be incoherent, but then a non-explanation isn't worth the paper that its not written on.

Best Regards

 

[moving finger]

The solipsist notes that the solipsist’s first conscious act had to have been the act of identifying and defining the content of the solipsist’s first perception. That was the solipsist’s first meeting with the unknown. Since no perception or act of consciousness could precede that first perception or first act of consciousness, the solipsist becomes aware that such an act implied that the requisite already-held knowledge could not have been acquired from perceptions by the solipsist’s consciousness.

This does not follow. It is quite possible that the solipsist's consciousness is the only thing in existence, and the first act of that consciousness was to imagine a perception. You seem to be assuming that the first perception must be grounded in some reality external to consciousness, but there is no a priori reason why this must be the case.

You talk of "knowledge" - but what do you mean by the word? The conventional analysis of knowledge defines it as justified true belief. Now there is no way that the solipsist can know for certain that his beliefs are true, therefore any knowledge he thinks he has is simply a "belief about" knowledge. The solipsist has beliefs (beliefs which he may even claim are justified beliefs), but to make the leap of faith from belief to knowledge entails that those beliefs are true - and the solipsist has no access to certain truth (any more than you or I).

Your argument is therefore unsound.

Best Regards

 

[moving finger]

That is how consciousness seems to work. However, the question is what the implications of Block Universe/B-series
theory are. The BU/BS theory doesn't have the resources to switch on individual moments of time one after the other
--that would require an A series.
Either all moments are conscious or none are. It is clearly not the case
that none are, so all are. That is the predictions of the BU/BS theory. And
it doens't match what is observed. So the BU/BS theory is wrong.

All moments (= temporal plane slices in 4D spacetime) are conscious - but from the conscious perspective "within" each moment (temporal plane slice in 4D spacetime) you have no direct awareness of the other moments (other temporal plane slices in 4D spacetime). Just because all moments are conscious does not mean they are all conscious "at the same time" - because the (internal) time is different for each moment, and there is no other dimension of "background time" against which the 4D spacetime is "played out"! It is static. Its the same problem as "if time is flowing - what is it flowing relative to?" - the question is meaningless, because time is not flowing (therefore it is not flowing relative to anything).

Why ? Why isn't conscious experience located in individual neurons? Why does individualisation apply ot time and not to space ? Flow-of-Time/A-series theorists can claim this because it follows naturally form their premises. But BU/BS theorists regrard time as being almost the same, or the same, as space.

I agree that consciousness must be delocalised over a finite region of 4D spacetime, but this does not mean that time flows, any more than it means that "space flows".

Well, quite. The causal connection between neurons are enough to allow
consciousness to spread over the brain. Why aren't the causal connections between moments in time enough to allow consciousness to spread over the fourth dimension ?
Again, the whole point of BU/BS is that time is just like space.

I agree that consciousness must be delocalised over a finite region of 4D spacetime, but this does not mean that time flows, and more than it means that "space flows".

They have "already" communicated, in that subsequent moments contain information-traces from previous ones.

Agreed, but that communication is limited to times and spaces which are in direct causal contact with the spacetime in question. The only information in your brain linked to previous times is contained in the causally dependent brain-states which result from those direct causal contacts. You have no conscious connection with those other spacetimes except via the information provided from those causal connections.

That doesn't follow. Under the BU/BS theory, we are 4D, so why wouldn't we have a 4D condciousness ? If spatially separated neurons can form the same consciousness, why can't temporally separated ones ?

Consciousness is delocalised over a small, but only a very small, region of spacetime, I agree.

Our consciousness is 4D, but the relations between different temporal "slices" of 4D spacetime is mediated by intervening slices. In the same way that a person when in New York is spatially (and temporally) separated from that same person when in New Delhi, your consciousness in 1996 is temporally (and spatially) separated from your consciousness in 2006 - they are separate instances of consciousness in spacetime.

How can there be evolution without a flow of time ?

Because evolution is simply the deterministic relation between different temporal plane slices in a block 4D spacetime. Why need there be any flow?

Free will is capable of coherent explanation. You have not been able to show otherwise.

See earlier response (post #84).

Best Regards

 

[Tournesol]

I don't find this at all convincing. All this talk about what the solipsist must conclude assumes that the solipsist is a logical machine. I am not such, and were I a solipsist I should rather accept my awareness as an unanalyzable "Fall" (in the existentialist sense - a situation we find ourselves in and have no account of).

Then you would be the less anoying osrt of solipsist, the ones
who don't attempt to persuade others. The rest do
indeed rely on logic, since they can't rely on (3rd person) empiricisim.

I thought Drachir's comment was along the right lines, (although it is only
one of a number of objections against to "unfalsifiable" solipsism).

Solipsists have to rely on their 1st person experience. and our
experience is that we learn things and are surprised by things -- things
that "come into" our consciousness from "outside".

 

[Tournesol]

Show me an alleged explanation of free will, and I will show you that it is either incomplete or incoherent

I have done, and you haven't.

 

[moving finger]

I have done, and you haven't.

Are you referring to your Darwinian model here?

That's not an "explanation of free will", it's a simple model which combines determinism and random behaviour. Why do you think it has "free will"?

Best Regards

 

[Tournesol]

Are you referring to your Darwinian model here?

That's not an "explanation of free will", it's a simple model which combines determinism and random behaviour. Why do you think it has "free will"?

("That's not water , it is just hydrogen combined with oxygen!")

It combines CHDO and rationality. Look at the definition
of FW at the beginning.