Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id VAA05467 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sun, 10 Sep 2000 21:23:42 +0100 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 13:20:32 -0700 From: "Scott Chase" <hemidactylus@my-Deja.com> Message-ID: <NJPIFOFDADJNBAAA@my-deja.com> X-Sent-Mail: off X-Mailer: MailCity Service Subject: Re: solipsistic view on memetics X-Sender-Ip: 209.240.220.165 Organization: My Deja Email (http://www.my-deja.com:80) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Language: en Content-Length: 3489 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Kenneth:
You're article is quite provocative. Due to stressful personal circumstances, I have troubles collecting all my thoughts on the topics of soplisism (the world is my dream) and idealism (the world is our dream), but I'll give it a whirl. You should try bringing some relevant discussion of Berkeleyian and Schopenhaurian philosophy into your article, especially as they approached the ideas. There's also Berkeley's assertion of "esse is percipi" or that to be is to be perceived conmpared with the world as my idea a la Scopenhauer. It's been a little while since I read Berkeley's _The Principles of Human Knowledge_ and 1000 plus pages of Schopenhauer has displaced much of my thinking and memory at present. I'll like to re-read Berkeley's MUCH shorter book for a refereshing change, since I'm on the home stretch of Schopie's book FINALLY. With esse is percipi, the question is whether there is an unperceived existence. If objects correspond to concrete ideas held in perception, when I close my eyes and these objects
cease to appear, do they cease to exist? I had a dog who thought that if he turned away from me when I was mad at him for something that I ceased to exist, or so it seemed to me anyway :-) With idealism and the more private solipsism, the world is held to be a product of the mind, either mine, ours, or that of an Absolute Deity even.
I'd ask the solipsisist, in the spirit of theodicy, why his/her mind has generated war, famine, and disease. The world is my nightmare?
If you can work these conceptions of "ideas" and perhaps even Platonic archetypal Ideas (and their ectypal reflections) into your article, more power to you. I'd find it fascinating, being a philosophical dilettante myself.
This idealistic/solipsistic twist is based on a mind first mentalism or phenomenalism, is it not? I'm not familiar with Descartes yet, so I cannot go there. It all reminds me of the movie _The Matrix_ though. Schopenhauer manages to work in something called the "veil of Maya" in his book _The World as Will and Idea_. This is defined by my Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary as: "the sense-world of manifold phenomena held in Vedanta to conceal the unity of absolute being". I think Schopie affixes this Mayan web to the Kantian phenomenal appearances. For Schopie, if I recollect correctly, this phenomenal aspect corresponds to "idea" where the Kantian ding an sich or noumenal realm corresponds to "will". Maya is, I suppose, a web of illusion and deception, not unlike the computer generated experiences in _The Matrix_.
Now the notion that there's something about objects that is closely allied to the way they are process through our sensory apparati and brain isn't quite as radical as full blown idealism/solipsism. Kant's idea that we impose our laws on nature (or the category of causality as an a priori answer to the habit based view of Hume on causality and induction) somewhat reflects this less radical notion and I think Popper had affinity for this milder form of idealism, if it can be called that. The way we, as babies, come into this world genetically prewired to start processing chunks of information and to perceive reality is about as far as I would go. There's an objective world "out there". but the way we address it has hints of processing and some subjective components.
Scott "a figment of your active solipsistic imagination" Chase
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