Solipsism

Solipsism is the belief that, because we can only verify our own experiences and no-one elses, only the self is real. This page presents arguments that this is not true.

The belief that your own mental states are the only states

This means that only your self exists, nothing else. All is a creation of your imagination including other beings. Other beings, who may appear to be alive, are actually just projections of your own being.

This is clearly very difficult to refute, as it is impossible to validate any experiences other than your own and therefore impossible to prove than any life, other than the self, is actually alive and not just a biological automaton that has learned to communicate as if it was alive.

"He who sees everything as nothing but the Self, and the Self in everything he sees, such a seer withdraws from nothing.

For the enlightened, all that exists is nothing but the Self, so how could any suffering or delusion continue for those who know this oneness?"

Isha Upanishad, sloka 6

Problem One: Explaining Solipsism to someone
However a problem is faced in Solipsism when you try to explain this belief to someone else. You see, it is nearly impossible to convince anyone that this could be true. There are only two ways to convince someone that Solipsism is true:

• You have to convince them that *they* are valid, and that you yourself are a projection of their own self. However they'll know you can't possibly believe this yourself.

• So, you have to convince them that they are a projection of your imagination. Which they simply will never believe, because they are conscious themselves.

It appears, using this simplistic approach to Solipsism, to be impossible to state that you yourself are the only valid consciousness in a meaningful way, because anyone who you tell it to will automatically disbelieve you. That is a major problem, it makes Solipsism workable only as a completely private belief. It doesn't necessarily mean it isn't true, if you do honestly believe that all the people around you are automatons of your own creation, and do not possess independent consciousness.

Problem Two: There can only be one!
It seems only one person in the world can be a solipsist and be correct in their belief. If two Solipsists ever meet, one of them are wrong in their belief. This problem begins to appear as a symptom of a great problem of solipsism: It might not actually be true.

Problems resolved: God
But I soon came up with a Vexen style workaround from this problem based on the assumption that the self is God. I came up with the notion that even our own consciousness is not the actual, valid, true consciousness. That only our subconscious is.

Our subconscious, for want of something to do, created a Universe and created lots of people and created our conscious self also, as the only valid individual in this world. This seemed to me to be an argument for the existence of God.

Because if this was true, it is just as true to say that the real Solipsist is God, and that all people are the creation of that God, including the Solipsist himself. This would mean that Solipsism was the same (practically) as standard theism (especially pantheism), but merely looking at it from a different perspective. However, before the theists get excited, it turns out that this defence of Solipsism doesn't work out!

The final argument against Solipsism was the result of a question I asked myself about consciousness. What is it? And why does a Solipsist think that they are the only source of consciousness?

Further problems
Solipsism has another problem. Where do the experiences come from? If they are self generated, how did the self come into existence? It seems the self cannot die. These unanswered questions are no different to the unanswered questions of other belief systems such as theism or atheism. Where did God come from? Where did the Universe come from? Where did the Solipsist self come from? These appear to me to be the same question expressed in different words, but answered internally by no belief system.

There is a question that all belief systems need to answer: What is the cause of existence? I think any belief systems that causes more problems and questions than it answers are probably faulty (occam's razor). So, theism (we believe God did it) causes more problems, because we are then left with multiple questions such as "Where did God come from?" in addition to "Why did God create the Universe?". Solipsism leaves us with "Where did the self come from" and "Why do we create our own experiences of the Universe?"

It seems we would be able to do anything, to be omnipotent, if the Universe was our own solipsist creation. All in all there are very little signs that this is true. It seems very much like we are not living in my Solipsist world ... it seems more sensible (although it is not provable) that consciousness is a product of the Universe, and not the other way round.

Solipsism misunderstands consciousness
Biology as the cause of life is also the cause of consciousness. There is simply no reason to presume that simply because you can't validate other life that biology (based on scientific laws) does not create valid consciousness other than your own self. If yourself logically exists, then there is basis for stating that logic alone can create life.

The assumption, therefore, that yourself, one particular individual, is the only life that the laws of nature have produced seems to be unfounded. If your own consciousness is valid, then it is likely that the consciousness of all life is valid too.

With this realisation I saw a mistake. Solipsism is at the very extreme end of subjectivism. This is the belief that because all people are different, all people see things differently. Which is perfectly sensible. Solipsism takes this and adds the major problem of epistemology (that all our information is from our own experiences, which may be wrong) and arrives at the conclusion that the self is the only valid consciousness.

This, however, is a mistake. There's an extra assumption in there which I think is wrong. It is valid that we cannot verify that our experiences come from anywhere but within. But this lack of validation is definitely not proof of the non-existence of other beings. Just because we can't verify that other beings exist does not mean that they don't. It is an assumption, an unfounded one, of Solipsists to assert that themselves are the only valid source of experience.

Combine this unknown with the fact that biology appears to have created both our own and other people's lives and we are left with a feeling that there is actually valid conscious life, even if we can't personally prove it to ourselves experimentally.

Therefore it becomes illogical (for me) to ignore the basis of life in biology in order to stick to the belief that only the self is conscious, when there is reason to suspect that biology generates valid life, including the self.

The final argument for Solipsism is that consciousness is not the result of biology, but the uncaused cause is the self, a single conscious person who creates his own Universe and we live in that Universe. However, as I am a conscious person, and I live in a Universe where conscious life is generated from biology, Solipsism cannot be true. If someone in a different existence, a different Universe, believes that they are eternal, God and the uncaused cause then they'll never read this text (because they're in a different Universe) and for all intents and purposes I think I'm ready to declare Solipsism dead. Which is a shame, because it was real fun!

So... this is Vexen, officially no longer being a Solipsist. OK ok it took me years to make my mind up, but hey, I don't take my beliefs lightly.