Timeline for Give advice on justifying belief in the existence of other minds
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
23 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 1 at 13:19 | comment | added | Arnold | Why is the probability of the existence of other minds higher than the probability of solipsism? | |
| Apr 30 at 18:44 | comment | added | Marco Ocram | I already did, three comments ago! Make an effort to read and digest! | |
| Apr 30 at 17:34 | comment | added | Arnold | "What counts is the cumulative probability of having n separate assumptions. " - explain this please | |
| Apr 30 at 12:20 | comment | added | Arnold | ok, then please explain why the existence of other minds is the best explanation for other people's behavior. I want to see how IBE rejects solipsism. | |
| Apr 30 at 11:08 | comment | added | Marco Ocram | That seems to be what you are failing to understand. You cannot decide whether an argument with n assumptions is better or worse than an argument with m assumptions purely on the basis of whether n is larger or smaller than m, so the question you are asking is pointless. | |
| Apr 30 at 11:06 | comment | added | Marco Ocram | ...however, the probabilities of the assumptions have to be taken into account, not just the number of them. An argument with ten plausible assumptions is still preferable to an argument with one assumption if the probability of that one assumption is lower than the collective probability of the ten. | |
| Apr 30 at 11:04 | comment | added | Marco Ocram | I have tried to tell you, and you are not listening. The number of entities, per se, is utterly meaningless, and has no bearing on the plausibility of an argument. What counts is the cumulative probability of having n separate assumptions. Every assumption has a probability, and the overall probability of the set of assumptions is the product of their individual probabilities (assuming they are independent). So for every assumption you add, you decrease the overall probability. You can therefore make an argument more plausible by eliminating unnecessary assumptions... | |
| Apr 30 at 11:00 | comment | added | Arnold | The only problem is that I do not know what is more important: the number of entities and special status or the number of explanations, unification, the principle of uniformity and symmetry? How to determine which criteria are more important? | |
| Apr 30 at 10:57 | comment | added | Arnold | And then everything is simple. Other people are similar to us anatomically and have behaviors similar to ours. The best explanation is that other people have minds because it is a unified, simple and understandable explanation that is economical and does not violate the principle of uniformity, symmetry and analogy. | |
| Apr 30 at 10:54 | comment | added | Arnold | Solipsism is unconvincing because solipsism claims a special status for you for no reason: the behavior of other people is created by your mind for you to see; The whole world is created by your mind so that you can see it. If we assume that the universe is as we see and feel it: objective, permanent, independent, etc. then all the people around are real and exist independently of your mind. | |
| Apr 30 at 10:45 | comment | added | Arnold | since we cannot see all 8 billion people at once, we need some justification to believe that there really are 8 billion conscious people in the world. Solipsism suggests that there are only those people with whom we interact (that is, there is only what you interact with). This is the problem. Ontologically, it is simpler. But the existence of other minds has a much better explanatory power. | |
| Apr 30 at 7:55 | comment | added | Marco Ocram | You are wrong to assume solipsism requires an explanation for only one 'entity'. If you assume yours is the only 'real' mind, you still have to account for all the consequences of the other billions of unreal minds. How do you account for the existence of my answers, for example? | |
| Apr 30 at 6:46 | comment | added | Arnold | Solipsism offers only one entity, while the existence of other minds offers billions of entities. One less than billions. So when compared, who wins in the criterion of the number of entities? | |
| Apr 29 at 20:59 | comment | added | Marco Ocram | I'm wasting my time talking to you because you seem not to be taking in a word I say. You are still claiming that solipsism 'wins on simplicity' despite the fact that I have tried to tell you that claim is pure nonsense. | |
| Apr 29 at 19:25 | comment | added | Arnold | That is, you need to look for the best explanation? Here are the criteria used by IBE: depth, comprehensiveness, simplicity and unifying power; Depth, Power, Falsifiability, Modesty, Simplicity, Conservativeness. That is, solipsism wins only in one criterion, but loses in all other criteria. We need to compare the explanations and see which explanation wins? Explain how it works. | |
| Apr 29 at 10:40 | comment | added | Marco Ocram | The number of entities matters where you have to make separate, independent assumptions to justify the existence of each one. | |
| Apr 29 at 8:07 | comment | added | Arnold | "The number of entities is irrelevant unless you have a good reason to assume otherwise" - please explain this. Tell me in which cases we should start counting the number of entities?In what cases does the number of entities matter? | |
| Apr 28 at 21:05 | comment | added | Marco Ocram | Why are you stubbornly ignoring what I have told you? The number of entities is irrelevant unless you have a good reason to assume otherwise. | |
| Apr 28 at 16:39 | comment | added | Arnold | philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/101256/… here it is said that simplicity is not the only criterion, but I do not understand what simplicity is meant: quantitative or explanatory. Also, where does unification apply? To simplicity or to some other criterion? | |
| Apr 28 at 16:36 | comment | added | Arnold | That is, there are IBE criteria, among which there is a number of entities. The existence of other minds is simple, clear, unified, and solipsism has fewer entities. So 3:1 in favor of other minds? Does it work any other way? | |
| Apr 28 at 16:26 | comment | added | Marco Ocram | I've already told you- the number of entities is an irrelevance unless you have a reason to claim otherwise. That is why you are confused and are continually asking the same question. Rid your mind of the entities nonsense. | |
| Apr 28 at 16:11 | comment | added | Arnold | Why do you say "in general"? Solipsism suggests that not all people exist at the same time, but only those with whom I interact. And here mind and body are counted as separate entities. One mind and, for example, 5 bodies has fewer entities than 5 minds and 5 bodies. Explain it. | |
| Apr 28 at 15:51 | history | answered | Marco Ocram | CC BY-SA 4.0 |