Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id BAA05886 (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 01:22:19 +0100 Message-Id: <200009110019.UAA08207@mail5.lig.bellsouth.net> From: "Joe E. Dees" <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 19:24:30 -0500 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: solipsistic view on memetics In-reply-to: <32.9e9e76c.26ed79ce@aol.com> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.01b) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: <LJayson@aol.com>
Date sent: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 19:57:02 EDT
Subject: Re: solipsistic view on memetics
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Copies to: Kenneth.Van.Oost@village.uunet.be
Send 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
>
For one of the many contemporary destructions of solipsism as a
serious philosophical stance, go to:
http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/s/solipsis.htm
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