Solipsism

[Moody]

Solipsism precludes the use of language, for example, which is an activity goverened by agreed upon rules.

Therefore language [very important to any Nationalist cause anyway] shows how solipsism, egoism, anomie, nihilism, anarchism etc., are doomed as philosophical positions [e.g., you have to use the rules of language to tell me you are against rules].

Language can therefore be a paradigm for this inter-connected out-look [Nietzsche, being a philologist was well placed to discover this insight]; it connects with concepts such as psychological archetypes, race-souls, cultures [memes?],various group-particular instincts and, yes, biological types also.

"All poetry deals more or less in the common form, this common coin, this circulating fluid of idea and image and phrase, and that it is the very ethos, nay, the very esence, of the poet to make the common as if it were not common".
[Austin Osman Spare, 'Ethos']


A. O. Spare, self-portrait.

[Jack]

Oh, really Njörd? And what caused the matter out of which the material universe is contstructed? And what caused that cause?

Fun fun fun...

Njörd, you say, without cause and effect, no time. I have no issue here. If you wanted to take this strictly, you'd end up with no beginning and no end (assuming you can answer the above question) - like infinite regression. Now I'm quite sure you're willing to acknowledge that you are an observer - of what, you can't say - Kant's demonstrated that the ding an sich is unknowable And I can tear your guts out of your argument by suggesting there is no 'Ich', only a series of thoughts and apperceptions. You cannot demonstrate cause and effect to be true. Welcome to solipsism. Have fun.

[Scoob]

Solipsism is entertaining, indeed.

Bertrand Russell was once entertained by a letter from a solipsist, who wrote that, since solipsism was impossible to disprove, why then didn't more people believe in solipsism as a philosophy. Russell wrote back asking the correspondent why he couldn't make himself believe that more people didn't believe in solipsism.

There is a minor contradiction of solipsism: the moment of surprise

The mystic Gurdjieff said that most people spend most of their lives in sleep - that what we call waking life is like dream-sleep, except that we are able to act on the world. Our experience is colored and overshadowed by fantasies, interpretations, ideas, thoughts, etc - which are not much more meaningful than dreams.

As such, we are all solipsists of a type. We believe our own dreams and ideas have reality, and are unable to distinguish them from empirical phenomena.

And as for Logic... I believe it is a tool and nothing more. I think logic taken too far is absurd. There is chaos inherent in reality, and not everything can be clearly quantified, except in a rough-and-ready, practical way.

[Moody]

Thorburn; "Russell's Paradox
No set can contain itself logically.
Thus, the mind cannot contain itself. Surely, the solipsist will discard logics as a non-objective convenience, but the fact remains that the solipsist is not able either to prove the correctness of his philosophy. While it is thus argued by some that solipsism is able to explain private experiences, it is, in my view, not the best explanation".

Moody; It must be pointed out that Russell's Paradox [also known as Russel's Antinomy] is a poor refutation of solipsism simply because the paradox is based on the assumption that there are more than one thing - i.e., a 'set'.

A set is a collectivity, or a class.

[Russel's Paradox: Most classes are not members of themselves (the class of cats is not a cat), but some classes are members of themselves (the class of classes is a class). Is the class of all classes that are not members of themselves a member of itself? If yes, no. If no, yes.
This is the most famous of the logical paradoxes.
(Lacey)]

Solipsism says that there is only one thing;

Latin 'solus', alone + 'ipse', oneself.
So 'solipsism' means 'ONLY-oneself-ism'.

It rejects the very premise that there are sets and classes; Russel''s Paradox is based on this [unproven to a solipsist] assumption.

It is worth distinguishing solipsism as an ontology [i.e., where nothing exists except oneself], from solipsism as an epistemology [i.e., where nothing can be KNOWN except oneself].

Of course, both cases of solipsism involve byzantine explanations to account for the 'universe' as experienced by the solipsist.
To say instead that there are other beings which exist and that we experience them [to whatever extent] is a much more elegant explanation for the Universe, as limited as it is.