Posted by Karma Police on July 29, 19101 at 11:56:12:
In Reply to: A 'skeptical' solipsist posted by Noctillucent on July 25, 19101 at 23:18:51:
::I have a natural skepticism of solipsism, but I think it can be a very tightly argued position.
Hello Noct.
I found this statement you made in another post:
::Upon realizing this, the untutored mind will say that the term ‘real’ refers to the physical eggs that CAUSE the percepts. The ‘real’ eggs are not the percepts themselves, but lie somewhere hidden in the background.
It appears from the comments above, and from other statements you've made, if I understand correctly, that you place that unbridgeable chasm created by Locke before us (which is that ideas are THAT WHICH we apprehend when conscious, as opposed to the view that they are THAT BY WHICH we apprehend objects).
The former is an untenable position which eventually slopes to solipsism, for it traps us in our own private world of ideas. To make the leap to a belief in a physical world of objects is a blind, irrational leap. It is just as irrational, on that basis, to ume that others exist in their own private world of ideas.
::I take it that you are a theistic dualist of some kind? If so, I would be very curious to know how you argue the interaction of mind and matter, which is an important stopgap in the slide towards solipsism.
Well, I don't know that I'm necessarily a dualist. It is clear to me that there are two apparently incommensurable orders...that of mind (consciousness) and matter. I'm of the Huxlian ilk (Aldous, not Julian) which thinks that consciousness is perhaps transmitted by the mind, rather than produced. However, produced or transmitted, I do believe there is a fundamental relation common to both, a Divine Ground, a reality belonging to both the inner and outer realms.
Rufus Jones writes "Whenever we know anything, wherever there is knowledge at all, there is a synthetic indivisible whole of experience in which a subject knows an object. Subject and object cannot be really sundered without putting an instant end to knowledge--leaving a "bare grin without a face!" A common ground is implied by the incommensurability of mind and matter, and it is confirmed by the experience of the great mystics.
What do you think?
Jesse
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