September 12th, 2010 / 2:00 pm
Random

On the extent of my errors

Forever, I thought solipsism was one’s belief that she is the center of the universe. This seemed to be a logical definition to me, “sol” after all means “sun.” Also, someone who is solipsistic is egotistical, duh. I mean: my definition made sense. To me, at least.

I started this post with something profound to say.

I was going to say: Logic would tell us that solipsism derives from ego, the inflation of self to the point that one believes she is the center of the universe, planets rotating around her; however, solipsism comes from a deep sense of insecurity and nothing else.

But I was wrong. Solipsism is not the belief that one is the center of this galaxy. Solipsism does not equate self with the sun, a star. No, solipsism is “the view or theory that self is the only object of real knowledge or the only thing really existent” (OED). It’s etymology does not come from “sol” meaning “sun” but from “solus” meaning “alone,” easy mistake, sure.

Therefore, my initial belief that solipsistic people are merely insecure posturers is entirely wrong, and it had everything to do with etymology. Had I thought “sol” part of solipsism came from “solus,” I probably would’ve figured it out on my own. Well, maybe.

Yeah, so it turns out solipsistic people are just crazy egotistical fools. I wanted to give them the benefit of my doubt. But I was wrong. Looks like I’m the fool now. This is what happens when I have work to do that I don’t want to do. I start looking up things in the dictionary and blogging about all the words I thought I knew but didn’t. Happy Sunday everyone!

190 Comments

  1. Owen Kaelin

      Well, I haven’t met any actual “solipsists” and I’ve always doubted that the point of view actually existed except among schizophrenics… but I’d venture to say that this perspective reflects — yes — a feeling of loneliness, a feeling that it is impossible for you to ‘connect’ with anyone, socially, emotionally, psychologically . . . in short a feeling that you are alone in the universe. Therefore: everyone else appears as a character in a play.

  2. Stu
  3. Stu

      Whoops. Latin. Sorry. Jeez.

  4. Stu

      And of course, you already looked that up. This is what happens when I get online 10 minutes after waking. My apologies.

  5. Owen Kaelin

      Ah, memories returning . . . I can feel it.

      Stu: Thanks. Yeah, I seem to remember it was proposed as a theory of where true knowledge can/should safely and appropriately be placed.

      Gorgias and then Descartes, according to Wiki.

      The perspective experienced in actuality, however: as I already said.

  6. Owen Kaelin

      By the way, Lily: I don’t think the “sun” assumption is inappropriate or very far off at all. The Sun provides the final ingredient for life to whatever life-sustaining planets surround it.

  7. Stu

      I am only disappointed in myself because it appears I cannot read, and worse, as someone who grew up speaking Spanish, I can’t recognize Latin derivation in words. Jaja!

  8. ryan

      “Yeah, so it turns out solipsistic people are just crazy egotistical fools.”

      Er. . . that doesn’t seem quite right. Solipsism’s just a philosophical argument about the nature of knowledge, I think. When applied to a person’s character it connotes something like “deeply alienated.”

      I think there are social instances where solipsism could be a virtue. “Out of my mind the golden ointment rained.”

      I’m always a little bewildered when critics call a work “masturbatory” or “solipsistic.” In one sense, I know what they mean. They felt “left out” of the work. But on the other hand, I think masturbation is generally pretty cool. I could think of worse things to do than watch an author get off on the page–especially if it’s hot. Similarly, I’d bow down to an artistic presentation of solipsism if it was persuasive.

  9. Tania Anderson

      Hey all
      From my understanding Solipsism it is a form of Existentialism – that the focus of attempts to understand and explain our world should be focussed on our existence as individuals (and consequently our interactions with other individuals) – Solipsism is an element of this – personally I find this to be totally separate from ego. Instead it is a ‘truth’ of experience – our world is totally confined to our own personal experience – my world and all that is in it – including you and everyone else – is purely mediated by my mind. I cannot experience the world as anyone else – plain and simple. It means that anything outside of my mind is not ‘real’ in the sense that my thoughts are. I cannot prove that the bus I catch in the mornings or the people I meet on it are ‘real’ outside of my mind – think the matrix. And for me I think that is true – it isn’t motivated by egotism – at least I don’t think it was intended too. Just my thoughts on the matter. Thanks

  10. Lily Hoang

      Owen: Thanks, I’m not really that hard on myself for the mix-up. It was a somewhat logical error, probably one that other people have made too.

      Stu: I studied Greek in college, and I also thought sol was Greek, even though sun in Greek is helios. I ought to have known that one, easy mistake. No worries, no shame.

  11. Lily Hoang

      Masturbatory and solipsistic are hardly synonyms, at least to me. If you look up solipsism in the OED, one of the definitions is egotistical. My use of “crazy” and “fool” may be problematic, I grant you that, I blame it on thinking too much about Foucault lately. Although, it’s quite a stretch to say that are instances where solipsism is a virtue… When is it good to think you’re the only to have ANY knowledge? When it is good to think you’re the only one to truly exist?

  12. Lily Hoang

      Thanks, Tania. A lot for me to think over here. Pardon a lapse in response. I’ll get there. Just have to mull for a while.

  13. Lily Hoang

      my error, not egotistical but egoistic.

  14. ryan

      But if nothing is real but the mind–then what is this entity, “the mind?” To what extent does it make sense to talk of a mind if nothing exists outside it?

  15. ryan

      I didn’t mean to imply they were equivalent. . . I just usually think of them together.

      I just looked it up in the OED, and I don’t see that? What version are you using?

      I dunno. My usual thought-process is something like “Solipsism=The Devil,” so I haven’t dwelled on this much. But it seems like solipsism could be usefully subversive in situations where a society’s body of knowledge has been straitjacketed by some external entity, maybe. To some extent I think most “prophets” or “visionaries” pass through some stage of solipsism.

      At the very least it could instill a healthy sense of uncertainty. I don’t think it means that no one else has any knowledge–you’re just questioning the reality of that ‘someone else.’

      Usually I don’t find it persuasive because I don’t get why the delusion stops when we come to the ‘I.’ It presupposes we know ourselves better than anything else, which I don’t feel very comfortable with.

  16. ryan

      Didn’t see your correction, lily. gotcha.

  17. ryan

      I studied Latin in college, and ‘solus’ always threw me off for the same reason (sol=sun association).

  18. Trey

      it doesn’t have to make sense to you, since you aren’t real. or something.

  19. sp

      In defense of solipsists everywhere (myself being one), we aren’t all crazy, “egoistical” fools. In my opinion, anyone who looks at the ubiquitous human inability to ever truly and wholly know another human being (or anything outside of themselves, for that matter) must conclude that solipsism is probably a very rational outlook. (Cripes, I don’t even know if I’d go as far to say that we could ever even truly or wholly know ourselves.)

      Tania, in the comments above, put it more eloquently than I believe I am able, but I would also go on to say that this knowledge, this outlook (at least for me), is not a cause of sadness and certainly is not a prompt for feelings loneliness: why feel sad or lonely when one can assume (not “know”) that every one else on the planet is basically in the same boat? We’re all together in our inabilities to suture the spaces between us, to return, as Lacan posits, to the point before a symbolic consciousness when everything is Ego (perhaps a misreading…), but it’s trying–trying to move like lines towards an asymptote, close enough to approximate but never quite touching–that counters this notion of loneliness or any sadness that might derive from it.

      At least, that’s my 2.718 cents…

  20. deadgod

      [solipsism] isn’t motivated by egotism

      That might be so in some particular case – or many – , Tania, but the danger people see in solipsism is that it redounds irresistibly to self-centeredness, in the literal and then, ineluctably, the destructive senses.

  21. Khakjaan Wessington

      As a former solipsist, I can assure you that the belief is more error than vice. It starts with Crime and Punishment and blossoms with Descartes’ Meditations. Atheism + phenomenology = solipsism. I think it’s an easier error for some to make, than others. For example, I am extremely nearsighted & half deaf. It’s easy for me to distrust my senses. After that, it’s only a small jump to distrust that other people exist. I was horrified at the discovery. I won’t confess more than that. It took some hard living and Husserl to pull me out of the trap. Pity the solipsist. Contempt just looks like a manifestation of his/her ego. Solipsism is a type of meme poison and solipsists need to be helped, not mocked. Okay, they should be helped AND mocked.

  22. deadgod

      sp, your “Cripes” indicates a dissatisfaction many people have with the epistemological inconsistency of solipsism (and of solipsistic relativisms): the 100% level of knowledge of another person or thing – “to ever truly and wholly know” – is not seriously asked by the solipsist of her- or himself. Why not let a sensitivity to the imperfections in one’s knowledge of oneself be one’s guide to ‘knowing’ other people and even to ‘knowing’ things? – and let a practical sense of understanding, rather than an unhelpfully notional perfect knowledge, be the aim of epistemic acuity and clarity.

      (Let me suggest Levinas and, especially, Gadamer as more useful in this epistemological regard than Foucault or – gracious – Lacan.)

  23. Owen Kaelin

      Well, I haven’t met any actual “solipsists” and I’ve always doubted that the point of view actually existed except among schizophrenics… but I’d venture to say that this perspective reflects — yes — a feeling of loneliness, a feeling that it is impossible for you to ‘connect’ with anyone, socially, emotionally, psychologically . . . in short a feeling that you are alone in the universe. Therefore: everyone else appears as a character in a play.

  24. deadgod

      Khakjaan, how can anything – for example: “solipsism” – have started with Crime and Punishment (1866) and blossomed (presumably after that thing ‘started’) with Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy (1641)??

      Do you mean ‘started for you, with your reading of these books’? Or do you mean Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations?

  25. Stu
  26. Stu

      Whoops. Latin. Sorry. Jeez.

  27. Stu

      And of course, you already looked that up. This is what happens when I get online 10 minutes after waking. My apologies.

  28. Corey

      Derrida helped me with this one in undergrad. An epistemological postulate. Ego-centrism, rather than ego-tism. They are the sun (maybe?), everything revolves around them like the solar system. They might well despise themselves, get nothing done, shiver in the corner, be vague, be specific, but at the end of the day when you say to a solipsist, “isn’t the weather lovely,” they will not look to the sky, they will think first and foremost of their own “weather”, “yes, I was very warm,” closing off the reciprocation of knowledge between the sky and the two people. So, to share in your disagreement with yourself Lily, there is actually something productive about solipsism at least as a literary technique (if otherwise a failure to participate in life’s multiplicity), and that is to get to the roots of individual experience, however assailed that is with contradiction. Wordsworth, the greatest poet-solipsist, does offer intimacies of human experience of landscape, but then it’s epistemology (that the sublime is better found in the landscape than in the social, for example) leaves me with many reservations. Poetry is often seen as a solipsistic effort. I think the New York poets have a very interesting relationship to solipsism, fully aware of its ubiquity in the hands of the Beats, they run with solipsism (think Ashbery and O’Hara’s anecdotalism) until it bursts, language, in its adhesive propensity, starts shaking the vocal persona and whole worlds of social interaction open up, sometimes into landscapes (as I’d argue of Ashbery). I think here a solipsism is so comprehensively experimented with, once spoken (if you will), as it becomes external, under Ashbery what is declared by critics as surreal we know is so far beyond the surrealist surreal, which is very imagistic, and turns into this weird social landscapes. Great post, Lily.

  29. sp

      I think that “unhelpful notion” and the need to have a “practical sense” is what I was getting at (perhaps?) in the second bit (dreadfully incoherent though it was): despite the seeming isolation associated with so many contemporary relativisms, one can still achieve proximity–as you say, a practical sense of understanding.

      I’ve never been much of a fan of the ultra-relativism of post-modern philosophers (you’ve mentioned Foucault), but I also can’t reconcile for myself the problems with things like, say, liberal humanism or utilitarianism.

      My philosophical explorations into epistemology (though not etymology, entomology, or episcopal apologies) have been limited, though, to say the very least (I’m sure it’s easy to tell), so I very much appreciate the recommendations.

  30. Owen Kaelin

      Ah, memories returning . . . I can feel it.

      Stu: Thanks. Yeah, I seem to remember it was proposed as a theory of where true knowledge can/should safely and appropriately be placed.

      Gorgias and then Descartes, according to Wiki.

      The perspective experienced in actuality, however: as I already said.

  31. Owen Kaelin

      By the way, Lily: I don’t think the “sun” assumption is inappropriate or very far off at all. The Sun provides the final ingredient for life to whatever life-sustaining planets surround it.

  32. Stu

      I am only disappointed in myself because it appears I cannot read, and worse, as someone who grew up speaking Spanish, I can’t recognize Latin derivation in words. Jaja!

  33. deadgod

      The OED gives, for Solipsist., “The view or theory that self is the only object of real knowledge or the only thing really existent.” – similar to Merriam-Webster’s “a theory holding that the self can know nothing but its own modifications and that the self is the only existent thing” (as Stu’s link and the dead-tree version both have it). (They both give proper Latin etymologies: solus alone + ipse self, namely, ‘the “self” alone’.)

      Lily, do you see how the first halves of these definitions is an undefeatably strong argument against the second halves? If the ‘self’ can only know itself, why would it conclude that there’s nothing else (than it) existent, any more than it can know anything about any particular thing other than itself? Within a pure solipsism, nothing can be said about anything other than the inquiring self, including anything about the existence of any particular other thing and the existence of anything-else-at-all.

  34. jereme

      ego does not exist in true solipsism, just as it doesn’t exist within the parameters of true love.

      an egoist pretending to be a solipsist is something different entirely.

      most people do not even know how to define their self ego, let alone diminish it.

      thinking one is alone is not connected with loneliness. aloneness is a beautiful thing: it is the realization of one’s true power; free of ego, free of insecurities, free of the majority’s dogma.

      if a person believes in their true individual power, without doubt, there is no room for loneliness — it simply doesn’t exist.

  35. Steven Augustine

      put the lava lamp down, jereme

  36. jereme

      retard, unless you have something to say, shut the fuck up.

  37. ryan

      “Yeah, so it turns out solipsistic people are just crazy egotistical fools.”

      Er. . . that doesn’t seem quite right. Solipsism’s just a philosophical argument about the nature of knowledge, I think. When applied to a person’s character it connotes something like “deeply alienated.”

      I think there are social instances where solipsism could be a virtue. “Out of my mind the golden ointment rained.”

      I’m always a little bewildered when critics call a work “masturbatory” or “solipsistic.” In one sense, I know what they mean. They felt “left out” of the work. But on the other hand, I think masturbation is generally pretty cool. I could think of worse things to do than watch an author get off on the page–especially if it’s hot. Similarly, I’d bow down to an artistic presentation of solipsism if it was persuasive.

  38. Tania Anderson

      Hey all
      From my understanding Solipsism it is a form of Existentialism – that the focus of attempts to understand and explain our world should be focussed on our existence as individuals (and consequently our interactions with other individuals) – Solipsism is an element of this – personally I find this to be totally separate from ego. Instead it is a ‘truth’ of experience – our world is totally confined to our own personal experience – my world and all that is in it – including you and everyone else – is purely mediated by my mind. I cannot experience the world as anyone else – plain and simple. It means that anything outside of my mind is not ‘real’ in the sense that my thoughts are. I cannot prove that the bus I catch in the mornings or the people I meet on it are ‘real’ outside of my mind – think the matrix. And for me I think that is true – it isn’t motivated by egotism – at least I don’t think it was intended too. Just my thoughts on the matter. Thanks

  39. lily hoang

      Owen: Thanks, I’m not really that hard on myself for the mix-up. It was a somewhat logical error, probably one that other people have made too.

      Stu: I studied Greek in college, and I also thought sol was Greek, even though sun in Greek is helios. I ought to have known that one, easy mistake. No worries, no shame.

  40. Owen Kaelin

      I have something to say: Define “true individual power”.

      Describe what a “self ego” is, how it can be obtained, and how it can exist in solitude.

      …Or else: drop the psychobabble.
      No offense.

  41. Tim Horvath

      Solipsists Anonymous? Hello, my name is X and I believe I’m the only one here.

      Would be cool to hear, maybe, how you overcame solipsism. Maybe that is too personal, though, or hard to put into words.

  42. Steven Augustine

      jereme, please revert to cosmic mode!

  43. lily hoang

      Masturbatory and solipsistic are hardly synonyms, at least to me. If you look up solipsism in the OED, one of the definitions is egotistical. My use of “crazy” and “fool” may be problematic, I grant you that, I blame it on thinking too much about Foucault lately. Although, it’s quite a stretch to say that are instances where solipsism is a virtue… When is it good to think you’re the only to have ANY knowledge? When it is good to think you’re the only one to truly exist?

  44. Owen Kaelin

      Hah!

  45. lily hoang

      Thanks, Tania. A lot for me to think over here. Pardon a lapse in response. I’ll get there. Just have to mull for a while.

  46. lily hoang

      my error, not egotistical but egoistic.

  47. ryan

      But if nothing is real but the mind–then what is this entity, “the mind?” To what extent does it make sense to talk of a mind if nothing exists outside it?

  48. ryan

      I didn’t mean to imply they were equivalent. . . I just usually think of them together.

      I just looked it up in the OED, and I don’t see that? What version are you using?

      I dunno. My usual thought-process is something like “Solipsism=The Devil,” so I haven’t dwelled on this much. But it seems like solipsism could be usefully subversive in situations where a society’s body of knowledge has been straitjacketed by some external entity, maybe. To some extent I think most “prophets” or “visionaries” pass through some stage of solipsism.

      At the very least it could instill a healthy sense of uncertainty. I don’t think it means that no one else has any knowledge–you’re just questioning the reality of that ‘someone else.’

      Usually I don’t find it persuasive because I don’t get why the delusion stops when we come to the ‘I.’ It presupposes we know ourselves better than anything else, which I don’t feel very comfortable with.

  49. ryan

      Didn’t see your correction, lily. gotcha.

  50. ryan

      I studied Latin in college, and ‘solus’ always threw me off for the same reason (sol=sun association).

  51. Trey

      it doesn’t have to make sense to you, since you aren’t real. or something.

  52. jereme

      ego is obtained, like almost everything else, through learned behavior. it is the academics of society.

      a beast has no ego. it is nonextant.

      ego exists within solitude. solitude doesn’t remove ego. you are pretty fucking stupid if you think that.

      you don’t think that right?

      as for “true individual power”, what don’t you understand dude?

      the power of an individual not diluted by majority influence.

      ???

  53. jereme

      steve, you are becoming the mongloid of the conversation.

      like i said, say something, or just shut up.

      i don’t care if you disagree. but you are just being a little bitch.

      stop being insecure

      give yourself a nice long hug.

  54. d

      I’m so so sorry for doing this, but I can’t help myself:

      “It’s etymology does not…” should be “Its etymology does not…”

      Sorry.

  55. Lily Hoang

      haha! thanks, d. Funny thing is that I’ve been editing all day for someone else, and I didn’t even catch my own typo. All day, I’ve been complaining about commas and 3m dashes and APA citation (which makes no sense to me at all!) and academics’ inability to alphabetize a works cited page. And then, my own typo! Hooray. I’m very tired now.

  56. Owen Kaelin

      “you are pretty fucking stupid if you think that.”

      Eh… mistake #1. So you know: because of past experiences and also because my actual pen name is right up there in hot pink letters, and most of all because I’m editing a new webjournal and don’t want to scare anyone away from submitting (starting a new journal can have its difficulties): I’ve been pretty restrained in my comments, here. Perhaps I should be stronger.

      To argue: Ego cannot exist in solitude. Ego is engendered, built up and maintained by the people one surrounds one’s self with: the information they provide you with, fair or not. You cannot possess an ego in solitude, since in such a case you’ll have nothing to base an ego upon.

      Ego can be said to take two forms: critical self-awareness or competitiveness. Neither of those forms can exist in a vacuum.

      By claiming that “A beast… is nonextant” I would assume you meant to say “not self aware”. Just so: By “beast” I would suppose you mean to exclude, say, chimpanzees. In fact, I would never call a chimpanzee a beast. One of the numerous reasons I oppose relegating chimpanzees to zoos — not to mention the horrific scientific research that is still being rendered upon them (while they await or endure their torture in tight cages) — as well as placing them in zoos. (Actually, as an animal-rights proponent: I oppose zoos in general.) But… I’m getting off track.

      I suppose it’s a given that in order to have an ego: one must be self-aware. This self-awareness leads one to be able to absorb information from others: information pertaining to how others of your neighbors perceive you. This, by necessity and by nature, creates the ego.

      Or, if you like: self-identity. Self-identity is merely a mirror.

      As for your statement “The power of an individual is not diluted by majority influence” . . . in fact, the ‘truth’ is quite the opposite. As a writer — assuming you are one — you must understand how other people’s opinions have affected and continue to affect your writing. It’s extraordinarily difficult to block out other people’s opinions, and if I might be so bold as to go further: it’s utterly foolish for a writer to block out other people’s opinions: selectively, of course. Input is vital to the growth of a writer. But, of course, over time a writer learns which opinions to block out and which opinions to listen to.

      I’ve chosen my father foremost of all, because, in my opinion, he is wisest of all — although our sensibilities and tastes are quite different. It’s been a difficult road to try to block out those opinions which hinder me while absorbing those which assist me. (And aside from the disparities, and the fact that we argue constantly: we do have some notable aesthetic views in common.) But on balance he’s been an extraordinary assistance.

      So… back to your post(s): What I don’t understand? Everything you’ve stated which I’ve just contradicted.

      Again: I don’t want to fight, I’ve respected you and your input so far. But I get annoyed when people cast undue aspersions upon others who don’t deserve it. In regard to the lava-lamp comment: I suspect you need expand your sense of humor.

      To defend Steve — as though he needs to be defended: I see him as one of the most intelligent and valuable posters on this forum. I saw this immediately and immediately respected him for it (and I very rarely do so, so quickly): not just for this, but for his honesty as well. Too many people dismiss him as arrogant. I cannot speak for their reasons for taking such a position, but they’re clearly missing something in interpretation.

      By calling him insecure: you’re simply babbling.
      People have rarely defended me in the past, which has always bothered me. So… I hope this accounts for something.

  57. d

      I appreciate when other people catch my typos, but I know that some people find it annoying/threatening/rude when they are pointed out. So I do so cautiously.

      I’ve never done APA. Have you ever done Turabian?

  58. sp

      In defense of solipsists everywhere (myself being one), we aren’t all crazy, “egoistical” fools. In my opinion, anyone who looks at the ubiquitous human inability to ever truly and wholly know another human being (or anything outside of themselves, for that matter) must conclude that solipsism is probably a very rational outlook. (Cripes, I don’t even know if I’d go as far to say that we could ever even truly or wholly know ourselves.)

      Tania, in the comments above, put it more eloquently than I believe I am able, but I would also go on to say that this knowledge, this outlook (at least for me), is not a cause of sadness and certainly is not a prompt for feelings loneliness: why feel sad or lonely when one can assume (not “know”) that every one else on the planet is basically in the same boat? We’re all together in our inabilities to suture the spaces between us, to return, as Lacan posits, to the point before a symbolic consciousness when everything is Ego (perhaps a misreading…), but it’s trying–trying to move like lines towards an asymptote, close enough to approximate but never quite touching–that counters this notion of loneliness or any sadness that might derive from it.

      At least, that’s my 2.718 cents…

  59. Justin RM

      Penis.

  60. jereme

      your irony is amusing. i am not sorry you are afraid to be “strong” and individual within the ranks of the online scene. it isn’t my concern.

      an ego exists in solitude. are you not alone now? at your computer? yet your ego exists. it is manifesting itself now.

      if ego doesn’t exist in your precious solitude, then why does it affect your dreams?

      animals are self aware. otherwise they would just commit suicide and other dumb things.

      your problem is you think you are better than an animal. an example of ego.

      i don’t care if you get it. i am not here to help you.

      you aren’t making sense in your arguments. you don’t even understand what ego is. sort of what i said previously.

      it’s cool. go play online marbles with steve i guess. you seem to be sweet on him.

  61. jereme

      tire pussy

  62. Justin RM

      Penis butter.

  63. deadgod

      [solipsism] isn’t motivated by egotism

      That might be so in some particular case – or many – , Tania, but the danger people see in solipsism is that it redounds irresistibly to self-centeredness, in the literal and then, ineluctably, the destructive senses.

  64. Khakjaan Wessington

      As a former solipsist, I can assure you that the belief is more error than vice. It starts with Crime and Punishment and blossoms with Descartes’ Meditations. Atheism + phenomenology = solipsism. I think it’s an easier error for some to make, than others. For example, I am extremely nearsighted & half deaf. It’s easy for me to distrust my senses. After that, it’s only a small jump to distrust that other people exist. I was horrified at the discovery. I won’t confess more than that. It took some hard living and Husserl to pull me out of the trap. Pity the solipsist. Contempt just looks like a manifestation of his/her ego. Solipsism is a type of meme poison and solipsists need to be helped, not mocked. Okay, they should be helped AND mocked.

  65. Khakjaan Wessington

      Well having an epistemic structure that resisted my natural skepticism helped pull me out of it. That’s why Husserl helped me. Everybody has a different ailment, which means we all require different cures. It wasn’t as simple as just getting laid, because I was getting laid when I was a solipsist. Maybe I had the illness of an ex-theist. I don’t know. But once I had a worldview in place that didn’t depend on sense certainty, solipsism vanished.

      @deadgod: my explanation was clear, so your questions sound disingenuous.

  66. deadgod

      sp, your “Cripes” indicates a dissatisfaction many people have with the epistemological inconsistency of solipsism (and of solipsistic relativisms): the 100% level of knowledge of another person or thing – “to ever truly and wholly know” – is not seriously asked by the solipsist of her- or himself. Why not let a sensitivity to the imperfections in one’s knowledge of oneself be one’s guide to ‘knowing’ other people and even to ‘knowing’ things? – and let a practical sense of understanding, rather than an unhelpfully notional perfect knowledge, be the aim of epistemic acuity and clarity.

      (Let me suggest Levinas and, especially, Gadamer as more useful in this epistemological regard than Foucault or – gracious – Lacan.)

  67. deadgod

      Khakjaan, how can anything – for example: “solipsism” – have started with Crime and Punishment (1866) and blossomed (presumably after that thing ‘started’) with Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy (1641)??

      Do you mean ‘started for you, with your reading of these books’? Or do you mean Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations?

  68. Caca Coup

      Derrida helped me with this one in undergrad. An epistemological postulate. Ego-centrism, rather than ego-tism. They are the sun (maybe?), everything revolves around them like the solar system. They might well despise themselves, get nothing done, shiver in the corner, be vague, be specific, but at the end of the day when you say to a solipsist, “isn’t the weather lovely,” they will not look to the sky, they will think first and foremost of their own “weather”, “yes, I was very warm,” closing off the reciprocation of knowledge between the sky and the two people. So, to share in your disagreement with yourself Lily, there is actually something productive about solipsism at least as a literary technique (if otherwise a failure to participate in life’s multiplicity), and that is to get to the roots of individual experience, however assailed that is with contradiction. Wordsworth, the greatest poet-solipsist, does offer intimacies of human experience of landscape, but then it’s epistemology (that the sublime is better found in the landscape than in the social, for example) leaves me with many reservations. Poetry is often seen as a solipsistic effort. I think the New York poets have a very interesting relationship to solipsism, fully aware of its ubiquity in the hands of the Beats, they run with solipsism (think Ashbery and O’Hara’s anecdotalism) until it bursts, language, in its adhesive propensity, starts shaking the vocal persona and whole worlds of social interaction open up, sometimes into landscapes (as I’d argue of Ashbery). I think here a solipsism is so comprehensively experimented with, once spoken (if you will), as it becomes external, under Ashbery what is declared by critics as surreal we know is so far beyond the surrealist surreal, which is very imagistic, and turns into this weird social landscapes. Great post, Lily.

  69. sp

      I think that “unhelpful notion” and the need to have a “practical sense” is what I was getting at (perhaps?) in the second bit (dreadfully incoherent though it was): despite the seeming isolation associated with so many contemporary relativisms, one can still achieve proximity–as you say, a practical sense of understanding.

      I’ve never been much of a fan of the ultra-relativism of post-modern philosophers (you’ve mentioned Foucault), but I also can’t reconcile for myself the problems with things like, say, liberal humanism or utilitarianism.

      My philosophical explorations into epistemology (though not etymology, entomology, or episcopal apologies) have been limited, though, to say the very least (I’m sure it’s easy to tell), so I very much appreciate the recommendations.

  70. deadgod

      The OED gives, for Solipsist., “The view or theory that self is the only object of real knowledge or the only thing really existent.” – similar to Merriam-Webster’s “a theory holding that the self can know nothing but its own modifications and that the self is the only existent thing” (as Stu’s link and the dead-tree version both have it). (They both give proper Latin etymologies: solus alone + ipse self, namely, ‘the “self” alone’.)

      Lily, do you see how the first halves of these definitions is an undefeatably strong argument against the second halves? If the ‘self’ can only know itself, why would it conclude that there’s nothing else (than it) existent, any more than it can know anything about any particular thing other than itself? Within a pure solipsism, nothing can be said about anything other than the inquiring self, including anything about the existence of any particular other thing and the existence of anything-else-at-all.

  71. Owen Kaelin

      Awe, hell, Jereme.

      Throughout this entire post you’ve refused to answer my questions. You are being evasive, which suggests you do not know what you’re talking about.

      Since when does sitting at a computer constitute being alone in the world? For chrissake: I have friends, you know. I even have adversaries. I talk to people regularly and have talked to people and lived amongst people my whole life. I have long hair for a reason and I dress the way I do for a reason. I’ve had roommates and I’ve had coteries. All of this interaction creates an ego. What don’t YOU understand about this? So far as I can see, it’s as simple as can be.

      Of course, an easy way out for you is to admit that you were wrong. I’m not afraid to admit I’m wrong when I’m shown that I’m wrong. I know that fewer people than otherwise have the guts to admit when they’re wrong. Do you?

      On animals: Why would non-self-aware animals commit suicide? You make no sense. If this were true: we’d have no insects left. Nor fish.

      Okay, so they aren’t techinically ‘animals’. But the point is made.

      Suicide is an act of the self-aware, although I’m not aware of a single self-aware animal (like dogs, pigs, cats) which has committed suicide. They will not do it, although they do engage in territorial behavior.

      As for being ‘tough’: I’ve learned, over time, that being decent to other people pays off better than being an asshole. I do not want to be an asshole. Apparently you’re now taking that route, except that you do not seem to have the intelligence to back it up.

      I’ll give you another chance. Explain to me 1. what “true individual power” means — or at the very least implies — and 2. how in the world an ego can develop in solitude.

      Finally: I am not here to help YOU from your delusions. I am only here to try to save you from jumping off a cliff.

  72. jereme

      ego does not exist in true solipsism, just as it doesn’t exist within the parameters of true love.

      an egoist pretending to be a solipsist is something different entirely.

      most people do not even know how to define their self ego, let alone diminish it.

      thinking one is alone is not connected with loneliness. aloneness is a beautiful thing: it is the realization of one’s true power; free of ego, free of insecurities, free of the majority’s dogma.

      if a person believes in their true individual power, without doubt, there is no room for loneliness — it simply doesn’t exist.

  73. Steven Augustine

      put the lava lamp down, jereme

  74. jereme

      retard, unless you have something to say, shut the fuck up.

  75. Owen Kaelin

      I have something to say: Define “true individual power”.

      Describe what a “self ego” is, how it can be obtained, and how it can exist in solitude.

      …Or else: drop the psychobabble.
      No offense.

  76. Tim Horvath

      Solipsists Anonymous? Hello, my name is X and I believe I’m the only one here.

      Would be cool to hear, maybe, how you overcame solipsism. Maybe that is too personal, though, or hard to put into words.

  77. Steven Augustine

      jereme, please revert to cosmic mode!

  78. Owen Kaelin

      Hah!

  79. jereme

      ego is obtained, like almost everything else, through learned behavior. it is the academics of society.

      a beast has no ego. it is nonextant.

      ego exists within solitude. solitude doesn’t remove ego. you are pretty fucking stupid if you think that.

      you don’t think that right?

      as for “true individual power”, what don’t you understand dude?

      the power of an individual not diluted by majority influence.

      ???

  80. jereme

      steve, you are becoming the mongloid of the conversation.

      like i said, say something, or just shut up.

      i don’t care if you disagree. but you are just being a little bitch.

      stop being insecure

      give yourself a nice long hug.

  81. d

      I’m so so sorry for doing this, but I can’t help myself:

      “It’s etymology does not…” should be “Its etymology does not…”

      Sorry.

  82. lily hoang

      haha! thanks, d. Funny thing is that I’ve been editing all day for someone else, and I didn’t even catch my own typo. All day, I’ve been complaining about commas and 3m dashes and APA citation (which makes no sense to me at all!) and academics’ inability to alphabetize a works cited page. And then, my own typo! Hooray. I’m very tired now.

  83. Owen Kaelin

      “you are pretty fucking stupid if you think that.”

      Eh… mistake #1. So you know: because of past experiences and also because my actual pen name is right up there in hot pink letters, and most of all because I’m editing a new webjournal and don’t want to scare anyone away from submitting (starting a new journal can have its difficulties): I’ve been pretty restrained in my comments, here. Perhaps I should be stronger.

      To argue: Ego cannot exist in solitude. Ego is engendered, built up and maintained by the people one surrounds one’s self with: the information they provide you with, fair or not. You cannot possess an ego in solitude, since in such a case you’ll have nothing to base an ego upon.

      Ego can be said to take two forms: critical self-awareness or competitiveness. Neither of those forms can exist in a vacuum.

      By claiming that “A beast… is nonextant” I would assume you meant to say “not self aware”. Just so: By “beast” I would suppose you mean to exclude, say, chimpanzees. In fact, I would never call a chimpanzee a beast. One of the numerous reasons I oppose relegating chimpanzees to zoos — not to mention the horrific scientific research that is still being rendered upon them (while they await or endure their torture in tight cages) — as well as placing them in zoos. (Actually, as an animal-rights proponent: I oppose zoos in general.) But… I’m getting off track.

      I suppose it’s a given that in order to have an ego: one must be self-aware. This self-awareness leads one to be able to absorb information from others: information pertaining to how others of your neighbors perceive you. This, by necessity and by nature, creates the ego.

      Or, if you like: self-identity. Self-identity is merely a mirror.

      As for your statement “The power of an individual is not diluted by majority influence” . . . in fact, the ‘truth’ is quite the opposite. As a writer — assuming you are one — you must understand how other people’s opinions have affected and continue to affect your writing. It’s extraordinarily difficult to block out other people’s opinions, and if I might be so bold as to go further: it’s utterly foolish for a writer to block out other people’s opinions: selectively, of course. Input is vital to the growth of a writer. But, of course, over time a writer learns which opinions to block out and which opinions to listen to.

      I’ve chosen my father foremost of all, because, in my opinion, he is wisest of all — although our sensibilities and tastes are quite different. It’s been a difficult road to try to block out those opinions which hinder me while absorbing those which assist me. (And aside from the disparities, and the fact that we argue constantly: we do have some notable aesthetic views in common.) But on balance he’s been an extraordinary assistance.

      So… back to your post(s): What I don’t understand? Everything you’ve stated which I’ve just contradicted.

      Again: I don’t want to fight, I’ve respected you and your input so far. But I get annoyed when people cast undue aspersions upon others who don’t deserve it. In regard to the lava-lamp comment: I suspect you need expand your sense of humor.

      To defend Steve — as though he needs to be defended: I see him as one of the most intelligent and valuable posters on this forum. I saw this immediately and immediately respected him for it (and I very rarely do so, so quickly): not just for this, but for his honesty as well. Too many people dismiss him as arrogant. I cannot speak for their reasons for taking such a position, but they’re clearly missing something in interpretation.

      By calling him insecure: you’re simply babbling.
      People have rarely defended me in the past, which has always bothered me. So… I hope this accounts for something.

  84. d

      I appreciate when other people catch my typos, but I know that some people find it annoying/threatening/rude when they are pointed out. So I do so cautiously.

      I’ve never done APA. Have you ever done Turabian?

  85. Justin RM

      Penis.

  86. jereme

      your irony is amusing. i am not sorry you are afraid to be “strong” and individual within the ranks of the online scene. it isn’t my concern.

      an ego exists in solitude. are you not alone now? at your computer? yet your ego exists. it is manifesting itself now.

      if ego doesn’t exist in your precious solitude, then why does it affect your dreams?

      animals are self aware. otherwise they would just commit suicide and other dumb things.

      your problem is you think you are better than an animal. an example of ego.

      i don’t care if you get it. i am not here to help you.

      you aren’t making sense in your arguments. you don’t even understand what ego is. sort of what i said previously.

      it’s cool. go play online marbles with steve i guess. you seem to be sweet on him.

  87. jereme

      tire pussy

  88. Justin RM

      Penis butter.

  89. Khakjaan Wessington

      Well having an epistemic structure that resisted my natural skepticism helped pull me out of it. That’s why Husserl helped me. Everybody has a different ailment, which means we all require different cures. It wasn’t as simple as just getting laid, because I was getting laid when I was a solipsist. Maybe I had the illness of an ex-theist. I don’t know. But once I had a worldview in place that didn’t depend on sense certainty, solipsism vanished.

      @deadgod: my explanation was clear, so your questions sound disingenuous.

  90. Owen Kaelin

      Awe, hell, Jereme.

      Throughout this entire post you’ve refused to answer my questions. You are being evasive, which suggests you do not know what you’re talking about.

      Since when does sitting at a computer constitute being alone in the world? For chrissake: I have friends, you know. I even have adversaries. I talk to people regularly and have talked to people and lived amongst people my whole life. I have long hair for a reason and I dress the way I do for a reason. I’ve had roommates and I’ve had coteries. All of this interaction creates an ego. What don’t YOU understand about this? So far as I can see, it’s as simple as can be.

      Of course, an easy way out for you is to admit that you were wrong. I’m not afraid to admit I’m wrong when I’m shown that I’m wrong. I know that fewer people than otherwise have the guts to admit when they’re wrong. Do you?

      On animals: Why would non-self-aware animals commit suicide? You make no sense. If this were true: we’d have no insects left. Nor fish.

      Okay, so they aren’t techinically ‘animals’. But the point is made.

      Suicide is an act of the self-aware, although I’m not aware of a single self-aware animal (like dogs, pigs, cats) which has committed suicide. They will not do it, although they do engage in territorial behavior.

      As for being ‘tough’: I’ve learned, over time, that being decent to other people pays off better than being an asshole. I do not want to be an asshole. Apparently you’re now taking that route, except that you do not seem to have the intelligence to back it up.

      I’ll give you another chance. Explain to me 1. what “true individual power” means — or at the very least implies — and 2. how in the world an ego can develop in solitude.

      Finally: I am not here to help YOU from your delusions. I am only here to try to save you from jumping off a cliff.

  91. deadgod

      disingenuous

      Khakjaan, you wrote: “It starts with Crime and Punishment and blossoms with Descartes’ Meditations.”

      I wondered: How can something start 225 years after it blossoms?

      – me thinking ‘maybe she or he wrote “Descartes’ Meditations” but means another book’. If the other book you meant was Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations, then Husserl did not “pull [you] out of the trap” – as its ‘blossom’, he constituted the closing of the trap.

      Maybe you didn’t mean “blossoms”; maybe you didn’t mean “pull me out”; maybe “Husserl” was inexpertly sorted into your “explanation”. In any of these cases, trotting out “disingenuous” is not to the advantage of ‘clarity’, if that priority is your own.

  92. deadgod

      disingenuous

      Khakjaan, you wrote: “It starts with Crime and Punishment and blossoms with Descartes’ Meditations.”

      I wondered: How can something start 225 years after it blossoms?

      – me thinking ‘maybe she or he wrote “Descartes’ Meditations” but means another book’. If the other book you meant was Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations, then Husserl did not “pull [you] out of the trap” – as its ‘blossom’, he constituted the closing of the trap.

      Maybe you didn’t mean “blossoms”; maybe you didn’t mean “pull me out”; maybe “Husserl” was inexpertly sorted into your “explanation”. In any of these cases, trotting out “disingenuous” is not to the advantage of ‘clarity’, if that priority is your own.

  93. Khakjaan Wessington

      Only the laziest of thinkers resort to the ad vericundium of dictionary.

      Berkeley, Merleau Ponty, Descartes and Husserl would all differ w/ the definition you offer (I know, you’re going to play the ‘oh, don’t talk to me about it, talk to the OED’ card. You jokevitch! You want I take argument more seriously than you!).

      Taxonomies don’t aid in comprehending the concepts they map.

      No wonder you’re obsessed with scarequotes and tangents. You’re a solipsist in your own way: doubting that anything makes sense unless it makes sense to you. Sad.

  94. Khakjaan Wessington

      I love seeing children try and make models of molecules with tinker-toys. Were you trolling, or is your brain completely broken?

      1)
      “ego does not exist in true solipsism, just as it doesn’t exist within the parameters of true love.”

      Nice of you to go and redefine everything. So let’s disregard Descartes, right? He might have cooked up the idea, but who needs him!? It’s all about Jereme now! You’re so great, you don’t even need to argue your posits!

      Pick up an ordinary book, you fucking moron. Ha! And you have the temerity to troll anyone? No wonder you don’t put any identifiers in your posts.

      2)
      “an egoist pretending to be a solipsist is something different entirely.”

      This is just incredibly stupid shit, born from you not taking the time to read a book. Solipsism is defined as ego cogito doubting sense data. That’s an analytic definition–same as triangle. It’s not fungible. Rather, you are misusing the terms. Rather ridiculously, I might add. And reading this depressing thread, it looks like nobody knows or cares. Typical pseudo-intellectual horseshit: throw an idea out there, but dodge any attempts to delve into the subject.

      3)
      “most people do not even know how to define their self ego, let alone diminish it.”

      Joke?

      4)
      “thinking one is alone is not connected with loneliness. aloneness is a beautiful thing: it is the realization of one’s true power; free of ego, free of insecurities, free of the majority’s dogma.”

      Or an excuse for never bothering to properly understand a concept.

      5)
      “if a person believes in their true individual power, without doubt, there is no room for loneliness — it simply doesn’t exist.”

      Jokevitch? Comrade, joke production is at all time high! We already have world’s biggest joke. You!

  95. Khakjaan Wessington

      Deadgod, seriously, are you stupid? Because if you wanted to fuck with me, there would be smarter ways to do it. But this is just too pathetic.

      You obviously don’t understand the concept of solipsism if you’re asking how the process takes 225 years, because you are appealing to invalid epistemic structures (at least according to the solipsist).

      Wow, you’s a dumb-ass cracka. You make all these hasty rhetorical errors that kill the conversation before it even begins. Who wants to have a serious conversation with such a shit-heel? I don’t.

  96. Tim Horvath

      Khakjaan,

      Thanks for the elaboration. Interesting to think about solipsism as a condition that can beset one rather than a philosophical position that one might take or not. Witttgenstein’s “The philosopher’s treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness.” Stanley Cavell does a lot with this, from what I remember, in the Claim of Reason, building toward how Othello’s act is like a consequence of skepticism unchecked. That particular issue never bothered me so much, but in other ways philosophy has helped me out big-time at one point or another. So long as the insurance companies don’t catch wind…Big Pharmakon. Cheers.

  97. Khakjaan Wessington

      Only the laziest of thinkers resort to the ad vericundium of dictionary.

      Berkeley, Merleau Ponty, Descartes and Husserl would all differ w/ the definition you offer (I know, you’re going to play the ‘oh, don’t talk to me about it, talk to the OED’ card. You jokevitch! You want I take argument more seriously than you!).

      Taxonomies don’t aid in comprehending the concepts they map.

      No wonder you’re obsessed with scarequotes and tangents. You’re a solipsist in your own way: doubting that anything makes sense unless it makes sense to you. Sad.

  98. Khakjaan Wessington

      I love seeing children try and make models of molecules with tinker-toys. Were you trolling, or is your brain completely broken?

      1)
      “ego does not exist in true solipsism, just as it doesn’t exist within the parameters of true love.”

      Nice of you to go and redefine everything. So let’s disregard Descartes, right? He might have cooked up the idea, but who needs him!? It’s all about Jereme now! You’re so great, you don’t even need to argue your posits!

      Pick up an ordinary book, you fucking moron. Ha! And you have the temerity to troll anyone? No wonder you don’t put any identifiers in your posts.

      2)
      “an egoist pretending to be a solipsist is something different entirely.”

      This is just incredibly stupid shit, born from you not taking the time to read a book. Solipsism is defined as ego cogito doubting sense data. That’s an analytic definition–same as triangle. It’s not fungible. Rather, you are misusing the terms. Rather ridiculously, I might add. And reading this depressing thread, it looks like nobody knows or cares. Typical pseudo-intellectual horseshit: throw an idea out there, but dodge any attempts to delve into the subject.

      3)
      “most people do not even know how to define their self ego, let alone diminish it.”

      Joke?

      4)
      “thinking one is alone is not connected with loneliness. aloneness is a beautiful thing: it is the realization of one’s true power; free of ego, free of insecurities, free of the majority’s dogma.”

      Or an excuse for never bothering to properly understand a concept.

      5)
      “if a person believes in their true individual power, without doubt, there is no room for loneliness — it simply doesn’t exist.”

      Jokevitch? Comrade, joke production is at all time high! We already have world’s biggest joke. You!

  99. Khakjaan Wessington

      Deadgod, seriously, are you stupid? Because if you wanted to fuck with me, there would be smarter ways to do it. But this is just too pathetic.

      You obviously don’t understand the concept of solipsism if you’re asking how the process takes 225 years, because you are appealing to invalid epistemic structures (at least according to the solipsist).

      Wow, you’s a dumb-ass cracka. You make all these hasty rhetorical errors that kill the conversation before it even begins. Who wants to have a serious conversation with such a shit-heel? I don’t.

  100. deadgod

      ‘Fucking’ with you would be like taking bicycles away from fish, Khakjaan.

      You said that something that started in 1861 blossomed in 1644. I asked: did you misspeak? or what did you mean? – I, referring to the “invalid epistemic structure” of putting the blossoming before the starting.

      You should read Dostoyevsky, Descartes, and Husserl in any order, Khakjaan – their books are as good as you’ve heard.

  101. Steven Augustine

      Owen: thanks for stepping in the kitty-sick for me; it doesn’t hurt at all but it’s not the coolest way to kill forty seconds… owe you one! Laugh

      now let’s stand back and watch jereme attain unknown vibrational levels!

  102. deadgod

      Berkeley, Merleau[-]Ponty, Descartes and Husserl

      Yes, Khakjaan, they’d each qualify the OED and Merriam-Webster’s definitions in interesting ways. You should also move the Bishop and the Stalin-apologist from your books-that-you’d-like-to-have-read list to your books-to-read list.

      The point of repeating Lily’s quotation from the OED (in the blogicle) was to compare both halves of it to both halves of the Merriam-Webster’s (already linked-to on the thread). Do you see, Khakjaan? ‘If the self is the only source of knowledge or the only knowable thing, how can it know that there’s nothing existent other than it?’

      Taxonomies don’t aid in comprehending the concepts they map.

      Of course they do: taxonomies make visible the formally causative structures inherent in the entities they map. (“concepts”? Make sure you understand phrases and sentences you’re lifting.)

      I’m curious, Khakjaan: why do you think the magically impressive, but not-even-digressive, word “taxonomy” occurred to you at this point?

  103. yawn

      @ owen

      You and steve should get a room…

      Or even better, you could go to his blog and post love letters to each other over there.

      Its a win win

      We dont have to read your long winded bullshit, and steve’s blog readership will go up by 1/5th

  104. deadgod

      Pen is tired pus-sipping, but, er . . .

  105. jereme

      “true individual power” is a river with no distributaries. i am not evading. you aren’t understanding.

      ego doesn’t “develop” in solitude. it exists.

      if you were to say a person has been in solitude since birth, then yes, i would agree, there is no ego to be found.

      but you aren’t. you are saying ego magically disappears under the warm cloak of solitude. lucky for those with such a cloak!

      suicide doesn’t exist within the animal kingdom because there is no concept of it: it simply isn’t taught.

      i like how you completely evade the dream comment. freud was a loser, i’m sure.

      if you don’t want me to be an asshole, then come at me proper. i refuse to sit back and smile while crumb grabbers like yourself and steve make disparaging remarks for no apparent reason.

      i am not here to teach you.

  106. Steven Augustine

      hey aptly-named-dude: I kind of miss the thrill of the rhetorically-deadly flame… this is just like having a smudgy kid on a school bus flip you off at a stop light… ie it says a lot about the poor little ringwormed kid…

  107. jereme

      WHATEVER. YOU WIN.

  108. jereme

      are you going to whine all day or actually say something i can respond to?

      you now what your problem is cockjohn? you have no heart.

  109. yawn

      your momma has ringworms

  110. deadgod

      Whatever you win,
      give it a spin!
      A funeral shroud
      draws a nice crowd.

  111. deadgod

      I thought 1/5th > 19.9+% – but then the ringworm differentiated me by the throat.

  112. Tim Horvath

      Khakjaan,

      Thanks for the elaboration. Interesting to think about solipsism as a condition that can beset one rather than a philosophical position that one might take or not. Witttgenstein’s “The philosopher’s treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness.” Stanley Cavell does a lot with this, from what I remember, in the Claim of Reason, building toward how Othello’s act is like a consequence of skepticism unchecked. That particular issue never bothered me so much, but in other ways philosophy has helped me out big-time at one point or another. So long as the insurance companies don’t catch wind…Big Pharmakon. Cheers.

  113. Owen Kaelin

      Steve: Yes, I’d like to see just what height of vibratory state Jereme can obtain before he finally disappears completely. Like the Anasazi, eh?

      Jereme: You’re babbling.

      First: You have never explained until now what you meant by “true individual power”, therefore there was nothing for me to misunderstand. Even the explanation you’ve just proffered makes no logical sense. I feel you’ll have to explain further. A river with no tributaries? Are you serious? What sort of pop-psychology nonsense have you been reading? What on earth does a non-forking river have to do with how people think and how they process and negotiate information fed to them by others?

      Again, I’m afraid I have to agree with Steve, here: You need to put that bong away.

      Second: I sense you’re confusing ego with self-awareness. Methinks you’re hugging those Freud books too tightly. Sigmund was a brilliant man, sure, but he was often capital-W Wrong.
      Third: When did I say that an ego can magically appear or disappear at will or by prompting? If you’re going to have an intelligent argument: rule#1 should be to not make shit up.

      What I’m saying is that ‘ego’ — this being how a person perceives his or her place among other people (or wolves, if they happen to be raised by them) — is informed, molded and generated by the input of others, and how one processes that input. This means, by necessity, that an ego cannot exist in a vacuum — despite self-awareness.

      If you are suggesting that someone has been born in solitude and existed in solitude continually then they have no ego — well, first: thank you for proving my point, and second: thank you for contradicting your own argument that ego is synonymous with self-awareness.
      You say “suicide doesn’t exist within the animal kingdom because there is no concept of it: it simply isn’t taught”.

      I find that to be an extraordinarily interesting contention. So… people commit suicide because they’re taught suicide. An interesting idea. I don’t think it’ll hold water, but: feel free to run it up the flagpole until it rains. We’ll see.

      Penultimately, you say “If you don’t want me to be an asshole, then come at me proper.” Well: Instead of accepting a harmless jab, you began behaving like an asshole (“retard, unless you have something to say, shut the fuck up.”) . . . therefore I came at you “proper[ly]”, as you say. I don’t tolerate vicious and disingenuous people. I skewer them until they scream. I’m not the same shy little armadillo I was in grade school.

      Finally, you say: “I am not here to teach you.” Well… it seems to me you haven’t begun yet. However: I’m all ears, as they say . . . or, rather, eyes.
      I’ll say one thing [slightly] in your favor: This is the very first time I’ve gained an inkling of what you might possibly have originally meant — which is that you equate self-awareness with ego. It sure as hell took you long enough to come out with it.

  114. Owen Kaelin

      Oooh…. good one, Anonymosis. Nailed him there.

  115. yawn

      i nailed your momma, owen, you pompous, long winded cock

  116. deadgod

      blither blather blahther

  117. jereme

      owen, stay in solitude. you aren’t ready to understand.

  118. jereme

      hahaha

  119. Blake Butler

      Wow, guys.

  120. lily

      seriously: is this necessary? come now.

  121. yawn

      so necessary

  122. Owen Kaelin

      Okay, Jereme. I’ll stay in my prayer room until it’s time for you to hit me with the bamboo stick.

      Perhaps one of these days I’ll figure out your mysterious koan.

      …Unless you achieve your higher state of being before then.

  123. Owen Kaelin

      I think I’m back at Tribe.net.

  124. deadgod

      lily, what’s wrong with wearing a ringworm hickey?

      – or was slandering the infinitesimal just below 1/5th provocative??

      I can’t help it if I’m smudgy – I just grew that way.

  125. mts

      Just remember, Owen and everybody else: jereme is Blake’s buddy. Blake thinks jereme is hilarious and insightful. Yeah.

  126. Owen Kaelin

      Well… we were talking about Solipsism, weren’t we?

      …sigh…

  127. sean

      srsly.

  128. Lily Hoang

      at some point, yes, i believe we were.

  129. Owen Kaelin

      No, Lily’s right. Enough already. This is not a civilized discussion, it’s utterly pathetic.

  130. Owen Kaelin

      I’m sorry it all blew up this way, Lily. If I’m partially to blame then I’ll own it, but I think I was only playing defense.

  131. Lily Hoang

      I don’t really care. People need to vent, and the internet is a relatively anonymous way to do it, no real repercussions, I get it. A degree of civility and maturity is generally a good thing though.

  132. Owen Kaelin

      Well… anonymous for some.

  133. deadgod

      ‘Fucking’ with you would be like taking bicycles away from fish, Khakjaan.

      You said that something that started in 1861 blossomed in 1644. I asked: did you misspeak? or what did you mean? – I, referring to the “invalid epistemic structure” of putting the blossoming before the starting.

      You should read Dostoyevsky, Descartes, and Husserl in any order, Khakjaan – their books are as good as you’ve heard.

  134. Steven Augustine

      Owen: thanks for stepping in the kitty-sick for me; it doesn’t hurt at all but it’s not the coolest way to kill forty seconds… owe you one! Laugh

      now let’s stand back and watch jereme attain unknown vibrational levels!

  135. deadgod

      Berkeley, Merleau[-]Ponty, Descartes and Husserl

      Yes, Khakjaan, they’d each qualify the OED and Merriam-Webster’s definitions in interesting ways. You should also move the Bishop and the Stalin-apologist from your books-that-you’d-like-to-have-read list to your books-to-read list.

      The point of repeating Lily’s quotation from the OED (in the blogicle) was to compare both halves of it to both halves of the Merriam-Webster’s (already linked-to on the thread). Do you see, Khakjaan? ‘If the self is the only source of knowledge or the only knowable thing, how can it know that there’s nothing existent other than it?’

      Taxonomies don’t aid in comprehending the concepts they map.

      Of course they do: taxonomies make visible the formally causative structures inherent in the entities they map. (“concepts”? Make sure you understand phrases and sentences you’re lifting.)

      I’m curious, Khakjaan: why do you think the magically impressive, but not-even-digressive, word “taxonomy” occurred to you at this point?

  136. yawn

      @ owen

      You and steve should get a room…

      Or even better, you could go to his blog and post love letters to each other over there.

      Its a win win

      We dont have to read your long winded bullshit, and steve’s blog readership will go up by 1/5th

  137. deadgod

      Pen is tired pus-sipping, but, er . . .

  138. jereme

      “true individual power” is a river with no distributaries. i am not evading. you aren’t understanding.

      ego doesn’t “develop” in solitude. it exists.

      if you were to say a person has been in solitude since birth, then yes, i would agree, there is no ego to be found.

      but you aren’t. you are saying ego magically disappears under the warm cloak of solitude. lucky for those with such a cloak!

      suicide doesn’t exist within the animal kingdom because there is no concept of it: it simply isn’t taught.

      i like how you completely evade the dream comment. freud was a loser, i’m sure.

      if you don’t want me to be an asshole, then come at me proper. i refuse to sit back and smile while crumb grabbers like yourself and steve make disparaging remarks for no apparent reason.

      i am not here to teach you.

  139. Steven Augustine

      hey aptly-named-dude: I kind of miss the thrill of the rhetorically-deadly flame… this is just like having a smudgy kid on a school bus flip you off at a stop light… ie it says a lot about the poor little ringwormed kid…

  140. jereme

      WHATEVER. YOU WIN.

  141. jereme

      are you going to whine all day or actually say something i can respond to?

      you now what your problem is cockjohn? you have no heart.

  142. yawn

      your momma has ringworms

  143. deadgod

      Whatever you win,
      give it a spin!
      A funeral shroud
      draws a nice crowd.

  144. deadgod

      I thought 1/5th > 19.9+% – but then the ringworm differentiated me by the throat.

  145. deadgod

      Ok, Lily, let me say again: you quote the OED to the effect that a solipsist is committed to “the self [being] the only object of real knowledge” and/or to “the self [being] the only thing really existent”.

      The former being true would make the latter a nonsensical – or at least indemonstrable – assertion. If the ‘self’ can only know itself, then it can’t know whether any other thing exists or whether there’s anything else (than it) at all.

      For most (but not all) people who care to think about the conundra – the antinomies – of “man the measure of all things”, real solipsism is a degree-zero relativism that is simply epistemologically incoherent.

      (By the way, the wikipedia “Solipsism” article does indeed mention Gorgias, but it also mentions the slightly earlier Protagoras, who – it’s said – first claimed that “man is the measure of all things”. You can find this kernel of Western civ’s philosophical adventures in “solipsism” where it’s first to be found (now): Protagoras 152a and (the short version) Cratylus 385e/386a. In the Protagoras, (Plato’s) Socrates quotes Protagoras’s “writing” directly: of all things/matters, a person is the measure, both of existing things, that which exists, and of non-existing things, that which does not exist. [my transl.])

  146. Lily Hoang

      I meant to respond to this, deadgod, though I got side-tracked in the comment thread. You’re right. The two halves of the definition contradict each other, and if not a contradiction, then one renders the other impossible. I don’t live by the definition or anything, nor would I swear by it. I posted this because I looked up a word I’ve used hundreds of times, only to realize I had it all wrong. Thanks for the lesson above. There are many gaps in my reading.

  147. Owen Kaelin

      Steve: Yes, I’d like to see just what height of vibratory state Jereme can obtain before he finally disappears completely. Like the Anasazi, eh?

      Jereme: You’re babbling.

      First: You have never explained until now what you meant by “true individual power”, therefore there was nothing for me to misunderstand. Even the explanation you’ve just proffered makes no logical sense. I feel you’ll have to explain further. A river with no tributaries? Are you serious? What sort of pop-psychology nonsense have you been reading? What on earth does a non-forking river have to do with how people think and how they process and negotiate information fed to them by others?

      Again, I’m afraid I have to agree with Steve, here: You need to put that bong away.

      Second: I sense you’re confusing ego with self-awareness. Methinks you’re hugging those Freud books too tightly. Sigmund was a brilliant man, sure, but he was often capital-W Wrong.
      Third: When did I say that an ego can magically appear or disappear at will or by prompting? If you’re going to have an intelligent argument: rule#1 should be to not make shit up.

      What I’m saying is that ‘ego’ — this being how a person perceives his or her place among other people (or wolves, if they happen to be raised by them) — is informed, molded and generated by the input of others, and how one processes that input. This means, by necessity, that an ego cannot exist in a vacuum — despite self-awareness.

      If you are suggesting that someone has been born in solitude and existed in solitude continually then they have no ego — well, first: thank you for proving my point, and second: thank you for contradicting your own argument that ego is synonymous with self-awareness.
      You say “suicide doesn’t exist within the animal kingdom because there is no concept of it: it simply isn’t taught”.

      I find that to be an extraordinarily interesting contention. So… people commit suicide because they’re taught suicide. An interesting idea. I don’t think it’ll hold water, but: feel free to run it up the flagpole until it rains. We’ll see.

      Penultimately, you say “If you don’t want me to be an asshole, then come at me proper.” Well: Instead of accepting a harmless jab, you began behaving like an asshole (“retard, unless you have something to say, shut the fuck up.”) . . . therefore I came at you “proper[ly]”, as you say. I don’t tolerate vicious and disingenuous people. I skewer them until they scream. I’m not the same shy little armadillo I was in grade school.

      Finally, you say: “I am not here to teach you.” Well… it seems to me you haven’t begun yet. However: I’m all ears, as they say . . . or, rather, eyes.
      I’ll say one thing [slightly] in your favor: This is the very first time I’ve gained an inkling of what you might possibly have originally meant — which is that you equate self-awareness with ego. It sure as hell took you long enough to come out with it.

  148. Owen Kaelin

      Oooh…. good one, Anonymosis. Nailed him there.

  149. yawn

      i nailed your momma, owen, you pompous, long winded cock

  150. deadgod

      blither blather blahther

  151. deadgod

      Of course, I didn’t mean to imply that you were defending “solipsism”. Lily – just wanted to show how the two definitions each directly manifest one of the basic contradictions of solipsistic – and, I think, all relativistic – epistemologies.

      It is uncanny to realize that one has had a word wrong ‘all these years’, or a spelling, or an attribution (‘no, I’m sure Dickens wrote Mill on the Floss‘ – that kind of thing).

      The side-tracks of this thread are pretty funny, though, eh? – especially the risibly insincere ‘sincerity’.

  152. jereme

      owen, stay in solitude. you aren’t ready to understand.

  153. jereme

      hahaha

  154. Blake Butler

      Wow, guys.

  155. lily hoang

      seriously: is this necessary? come now.

  156. yawn

      so necessary

  157. Owen Kaelin

      Okay, Jereme. I’ll stay in my prayer room until it’s time for you to hit me with the bamboo stick.

      Perhaps one of these days I’ll figure out your mysterious koan.

      …Unless you achieve your higher state of being before then.

  158. Owen Kaelin

      I think I’m back at Tribe.net.

  159. deadgod

      lily, what’s wrong with wearing a ringworm hickey?

      – or was slandering the infinitesimal just below 1/5th provocative??

      I can’t help it if I’m smudgy – I just grew that way.

  160. mts

      Just remember, Owen and everybody else: jereme is Blake’s buddy. Blake thinks jereme is hilarious and insightful. Yeah.

  161. Owen Kaelin

      Well… we were talking about Solipsism, weren’t we?

      …sigh…

  162. sean

      srsly.

  163. lily hoang

      at some point, yes, i believe we were.

  164. Owen Kaelin

      No, Lily’s right. Enough already. This is not a civilized discussion, it’s utterly pathetic.

  165. Owen Kaelin

      I’m sorry it all blew up this way, Lily. If I’m partially to blame then I’ll own it, but I think I was only playing defense.

  166. lily hoang

      I don’t really care. People need to vent, and the internet is a relatively anonymous way to do it, no real repercussions, I get it. A degree of civility and maturity is generally a good thing though.

  167. Owen Kaelin

      Well… anonymous for some.

  168. deadgod

      Ok, Lily, let me say again: you quote the OED to the effect that a solipsist is committed to “the self [being] the only object of real knowledge” and/or to “the self [being] the only thing really existent”.

      The former being true would make the latter a nonsensical – or at least indemonstrable – assertion. If the ‘self’ can only know itself, then it can’t know whether any other thing exists or whether there’s anything else (than it) at all.

      For most (but not all) people who care to think about the conundra – the antinomies – of “man the measure of all things”, real solipsism is a degree-zero relativism that is simply epistemologically incoherent.

      (By the way, the wikipedia “Solipsism” article does indeed mention Gorgias, but it also mentions the slightly earlier Protagoras, who – it’s said – first claimed that “man is the measure of all things”. You can find this kernel of Western civ’s philosophical adventures in “solipsism” where it’s first to be found (now): Protagoras 152a and (the short version) Cratylus 385e/386a. In the Protagoras, (Plato’s) Socrates quotes Protagoras’s “writing” directly: of all things/matters, a person is the measure, both of existing things, that which exists, and of non-existing things, that which does not exist. [my transl.])

  169. lily hoang

      I meant to respond to this, deadgod, though I got side-tracked in the comment thread. You’re right. The two halves of the definition contradict each other, and if not a contradiction, then one renders the other impossible. I don’t live by the definition or anything, nor would I swear by it. I posted this because I looked up a word I’ve used hundreds of times, only to realize I had it all wrong. Thanks for the lesson above. There are many gaps in my reading.

  170. deadgod

      Of course, I didn’t mean to imply that you were defending “solipsism”. Lily – just wanted to show how the two definitions each directly manifest one of the basic contradictions of solipsistic – and, I think, all relativistic – epistemologies.

      It is uncanny to realize that one has had a word wrong ‘all these years’, or a spelling, or an attribution (‘no, I’m sure Dickens wrote Mill on the Floss‘ – that kind of thing).

      The side-tracks of this thread are pretty funny, though, eh? – especially the risibly insincere ‘sincerity’.

  171. yawn
  172. yawn
  173. Khakjaan Wessington

      @deadgod Thanks for confirming my diagnosis about you: sloppy thinker.

      How can an idea exist independently of the one w/ the idea? Cart before the horse. Your confusion is why it’s so hard to reach a solipsist. The epistemic structure goes like this: ego cogito –> sense certainty –> intersubjectivity –> ‘objectivity.’

      You presuppose ‘intersubjectivity’ or beyond with your supposed correction of my supposed error. Time does not exist for the solipsist. This is basic Hume.

      I didn’t misspeak, I just didn’t think you’d be so daft as to make this really basic error. Jargon is no substitute for analysis.

  174. Khakjaan Wessington

      @deadgod so as I said, it’s ad vericundium. You abdicate your control of the language to those who cannot even assemble an analytically coherent definition. This is the problem with freaks like you; you don’t bother to think. You allude and invoke instead.

      And like all intellectual cowards, you hate the results so you ignore the research. Winkler defends Berkeley & dispatches dismissive idiots like you far better than I could. So I wave my modus ponens wand and repeat my invitation for you to fuck off and die (you were invited, weren’t you?).

      As for your second point, you just ADMITTED to Lily that taxonomies fail, for the very same reason presupposed in my arguments: analytic definitions transcend supposed lexicographical ones. So my observation that your cockiness sends you into shit you cannot easily extract yourself from is accurate.

      I don’t know if I’m impressive. I just know an idiot when I see one.

  175. Khakjaan Wessington

      Wow, I organized my points and you still couldn’t parse them? Sad. I agree w/ the others: you reek of stoner-mysticism.

  176. Khakjaan Wessington

      @deadgod Funny how you can hold two opposing positions in the same thread and have no shame about it.

  177. deadgod

      Khakjaan, you’ve once again failed to explain your having put the cart of ‘blossoming’ in front of the horse of ‘starting’.

      “[B[asic Hume” is that “time” is an idea arising from impressions in the mind in order to explain the accident of those impressions having appeared in succession. (That “impressions” are impressed in a real temporal order, that “time” is real, is not dogmatically denied by the scrupulously empirical Hume; what is denied is knowledge of real temporal order.)

      Khakjaan, let me encourage you in the strongest terms to add Hume’s Appendix (to his Treatise of Human Nature) to the list of authors/books whom you mention but, painfully, have not yet read, along with – why not – Crime and Punishment and Meditations on First Philosophy.

  178. deadgod

      No, Khakjaan: (again), not ad verecundiam (which you’re too unconscious of Latin, or too careless, to spell properly).

      That is: not an appeal to the authority of two dictionaries, but rather reference to those definitions in accordance with previous discussants having brought them up. You’re courageous enough to understand the courtesy of following “reference” in a conversation, right?

      I don’t “ADMIT” that “taxonomies fail” generally, Khakjaan. I simply point out that two different dictionaries, using slightly different wording, illustrate – by contradiction between the halves of their definitions – the difficulty of consistently maintaining “solipsism”.

      I see that you’re having trouble with the difference between ‘dictionary definition’ and “taxonomy” – which means there wasn’t a compelling reason for the word “taxonomy” to occur to you at all. Oh dear.

      You’re ‘impressively’ willing to mention books you haven’t read, Khakjaan, but what I mentioned was “the magically impressive […] word ‘taxonomy'”.

      Fail better!

  179. Khakjaan Wessington

      @deadgod Thanks for confirming my diagnosis about you: sloppy thinker.

      How can an idea exist independently of the one w/ the idea? Cart before the horse. Your confusion is why it’s so hard to reach a solipsist. The epistemic structure goes like this: ego cogito –> sense certainty –> intersubjectivity –> ‘objectivity.’

      You presuppose ‘intersubjectivity’ or beyond with your supposed correction of my supposed error. Time does not exist for the solipsist. This is basic Hume.

      I didn’t misspeak, I just didn’t think you’d be so daft as to make this really basic error. Jargon is no substitute for analysis.

  180. Khakjaan Wessington

      @deadgod so as I said, it’s ad vericundium. You abdicate your control of the language to those who cannot even assemble an analytically coherent definition. This is the problem with freaks like you; you don’t bother to think. You allude and invoke instead.

      And like all intellectual cowards, you hate the results so you ignore the research. Winkler defends Berkeley & dispatches dismissive idiots like you far better than I could. So I wave my modus ponens wand and repeat my invitation for you to fuck off and die (you were invited, weren’t you?).

      As for your second point, you just ADMITTED to Lily that taxonomies fail, for the very same reason presupposed in my arguments: analytic definitions transcend supposed lexicographical ones. So my observation that your cockiness sends you into shit you cannot easily extract yourself from is accurate.

      I don’t know if I’m impressive. I just know an idiot when I see one.

  181. Khakjaan Wessington

      Wow, I organized my points and you still couldn’t parse them? Sad. I agree w/ the others: you reek of stoner-mysticism.

  182. Khakjaan Wessington

      @deadgod Funny how you can hold two opposing positions in the same thread and have no shame about it.

  183. Khakjaan Wessington

      @deadgod Either you savor ornate trolling, else you really don’t get my point. I’m out of patience w/ you.

      I made some easily falsifiable claims, which you chose to ignore for some bizarre reason. Most recent example: I said: “You presuppose ‘intersubjectivity’ or beyond with your supposed correction of my supposed error. Time does not exist for the solipsist.” You ignored.

      Hume deals with time. Sorry if your reading comprehension skills stopped you from getting that. You know, that whole causality section. But I can see you were busy outlining key passages, rather than considering their meaning. Lazy.

      You dodge the crux of the argument because your position has no merit. Whether not appealing to the dictionary, or to the dead masters (poor student though you are…), or questioning whether I’ve even read them, you dissemble and dodge at every turn.

      Your own Hume quote only confirms my point, or are you so poorly read, you didn’t see solipsism’s call sign? You know the big ol’ “IMPRESSIONS IN THE MIND” part? You are making a huge error by treating subject as object. I can’t believe you have the temerity to question whether I read the guy when you can’t even read what’s there in front of you. Impression = apprehension of the experience of = phenomenology shorthand.

      Man, you can’t read for shit.

  184. Khakjaan Wessington

      Wow, you wore your desperation up front w/ the spelling flame? Yup, lead w/ merit, that’s your motto.

      Picking up the dictionary means you abandon your own language authority. There are times when this is an appropriate activity, but someone never explained to you that it’s not ALWAYS an appropriate one.

      You mistake bad definitions for bad concept. Your whole engagement w/ me in this thread has been all about this. It’s asinine.

      You really have a rigid and incomplete knowledge of the concepts to which you appeal. All my uses of jargon were valid, which just goes to show the extent of your failure to educate yourself. It also points to your unwillingness to even try to grasp your interlocutor’s point. That means you’re chicken and that means you’re a useless conversationalist.

  185. deadgod

      can’t read for shit

      That’s gorgeous, Khakjaan.

      There is no “Hume quote” in my post ‘to confirm’ anything; there’s a Hume paraphrase, of which your lexical cuisinart manifests not one eyelash flicker of sensation (why – there‘s a Humean “word”!).

      I retract my recommendation actually to read the books which you think smart people are impressed by, and recommend instead that you stick to your state Traffic Code.

      If I truly “savor[ed] ornate trolling”, I’d continue to give you an directed opportunity to projectile-drool at this site.

  186. deadgod

      Khakjaan, you’ve once again failed to explain your having put the cart of ‘blossoming’ in front of the horse of ‘starting’.

      “[B[asic Hume” is that “time” is an idea arising from impressions in the mind in order to explain the accident of those impressions having appeared in succession. (That “impressions” are impressed in a real temporal order, that “time” is real, is not dogmatically denied by the scrupulously empirical Hume; what is denied is knowledge of real temporal order.)

      Khakjaan, let me encourage you in the strongest terms to add Hume’s Appendix (to his Treatise of Human Nature) to the list of authors/books whom you mention but, painfully, have not yet read, along with – why not – Crime and Punishment and Meditations on First Philosophy.

  187. deadgod

      No, Khakjaan: (again), not ad verecundiam (which you’re too unconscious of Latin, or too careless, to spell properly).

      That is: not an appeal to the authority of two dictionaries, but rather reference to those definitions in accordance with previous discussants having brought them up. You’re courageous enough to understand the courtesy of following “reference” in a conversation, right?

      I don’t “ADMIT” that “taxonomies fail” generally, Khakjaan. I simply point out that two different dictionaries, using slightly different wording, illustrate – by contradiction between the halves of their definitions – the difficulty of consistently maintaining “solipsism”.

      I see that you’re having trouble with the difference between ‘dictionary definition’ and “taxonomy” – which means there wasn’t a compelling reason for the word “taxonomy” to occur to you at all. Oh dear.

      You’re ‘impressively’ willing to mention books you haven’t read, Khakjaan, but what I mentioned was “the magically impressive […] word ‘taxonomy'”.

      Fail better!

  188. Khakjaan Wessington

      @deadgod Either you savor ornate trolling, else you really don’t get my point. I’m out of patience w/ you.

      I made some easily falsifiable claims, which you chose to ignore for some bizarre reason. Most recent example: I said: “You presuppose ‘intersubjectivity’ or beyond with your supposed correction of my supposed error. Time does not exist for the solipsist.” You ignored.

      Hume deals with time. Sorry if your reading comprehension skills stopped you from getting that. You know, that whole causality section. But I can see you were busy outlining key passages, rather than considering their meaning. Lazy.

      You dodge the crux of the argument because your position has no merit. Whether not appealing to the dictionary, or to the dead masters (poor student though you are…), or questioning whether I’ve even read them, you dissemble and dodge at every turn.

      Your own Hume quote only confirms my point, or are you so poorly read, you didn’t see solipsism’s call sign? You know the big ol’ “IMPRESSIONS IN THE MIND” part? You are making a huge error by treating subject as object. I can’t believe you have the temerity to question whether I read the guy when you can’t even read what’s there in front of you. Impression = apprehension of the experience of = phenomenology shorthand.

      Man, you can’t read for shit.

  189. Khakjaan Wessington

      Wow, you wore your desperation up front w/ the spelling flame? Yup, lead w/ merit, that’s your motto.

      Picking up the dictionary means you abandon your own language authority. There are times when this is an appropriate activity, but someone never explained to you that it’s not ALWAYS an appropriate one.

      You mistake bad definitions for bad concept. Your whole engagement w/ me in this thread has been all about this. It’s asinine.

      You really have a rigid and incomplete knowledge of the concepts to which you appeal. All my uses of jargon were valid, which just goes to show the extent of your failure to educate yourself. It also points to your unwillingness to even try to grasp your interlocutor’s point. That means you’re chicken and that means you’re a useless conversationalist.

  190. deadgod

      can’t read for shit

      That’s gorgeous, Khakjaan.

      There is no “Hume quote” in my post ‘to confirm’ anything; there’s a Hume paraphrase, of which your lexical cuisinart manifests not one eyelash flicker of sensation (why – there‘s a Humean “word”!).

      I retract my recommendation actually to read the books which you think smart people are impressed by, and recommend instead that you stick to your state Traffic Code.

      If I truly “savor[ed] ornate trolling”, I’d continue to give you an directed opportunity to projectile-drool at this site.