Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id BAA05786 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 11 Sep 2000 01:00:07 +0100 From: <LJayson@aol.com> Message-ID: <32.9e9e76c.26ed79ce@aol.com> Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 19:57:02 EDT Subject: Re: solipsistic view on memetics To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk CC: Kenneth.Van.Oost@village.uunet.be Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: AOL 5.0 for Windows sub 117 Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
In a message dated 9/10/00 1:23:00 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
hemidactylus@my-Deja.com writes:
<< 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 >>
Hi Scott --
I am approaching memetics with a background in clinical psychology.
The above segment from your e-mail was all that I could comprehend
---my problem, certainly not yours.
You did motivate me to look up the word 'solipsism' in Britannica:
<<solipsism
in philosophy, formerly, moral egoism (as used in the writings of Immanuel
Kant), but now, in an epistemological sense, the extreme form of subjective
idealism that denies that the human mind has any valid ground for believing
in the existence of anything but itself. The British idealist F.H. Bradley,
in Appearance and Reality (1897), characterized the solipsistic view as
follows:
"I cannot transcend experience, and experience is my experience. From this it
follows that nothing beyond myself exists; for what is experience is its (the
self 's) states."
Presented as a solution of the problem of explaining human knowledge of the
external world, it is generally regarded as a reductio ad absurdum. The only
scholar who seems to have been a coherent radical solipsist is Claude Brunet,
a 17th-century French physician. >> end of article
Solipsism is an interesting concept to contemplate, but the words
' reductio ad absurdum' relegates it to the garbage heap where it
most likely belongs.
Best wishes,
Len in Reno, NV - USA
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