This is a lot like saying that I did it because it was the thing I was going to do in the context in which I did it. Looking at it from a deterministic standpoint, that’s precisely correct, but also useless. Things are as they are, and will be as they will be, but the state of our minds informs how things are and how they will be. What beliefs we hold and what conduct we hold ourselves to will shape future events. Looking back, second-guessing, is often a worthwhile, productive thing to do. Understanding the past can influence what will happen, going forward.
Our choices might not be real, but they’re meaningful to ourselves and those who share this world with us. Like our pain, or our joy. Even this discussion we are having right now is part of the flow.
(I’m a little hungry; think I’ll go make a sandwich. Only without the bread, because, oh gods, NOTHING HAS MEANING ANYWAY! Except it’s easier to handle with the bread, so, maybe I’ll do it with bread and just refuse to call it a sandwich. Only, that makes communicating tricky. . . .)
Well, if nothing has reality in and of itself anyway, then really, there is no ‘bread’ per se, only ‘that bit of stuff over there’. Only, you know, ‘there’ doesn’t have meaning in and of itself, either.
So, yes, I’d have to agree that attempting to claim nothing has reality in and of itself does make communication difficult. Also pointless, because the thing you’re attempting to communicate with isn’t real.
That sounds like you’re setting yourself up for failure, though. Seems to me that, having found demonstrable proof that you have an existence in some form (ie: you experience things), you’re forced to either a)conclude that you do, in fact, really exist, or b)establish that you can’t trust anything you tell you.
Solipsism. Boooooring. Basically makes me the center of the world, and I don’t really want that job. Also it seems a little unkind to the rest of you. Some assumptions seem worth making, particularly since I don’t necessarily have better reason to think that the thing doing the experiencing exists, either.
(Just as a fun thought, I might be basically a prerecorded “experience” being played for something I can’t imagine being. “I” might have been played over and over again millions of times for a mass audience of … something weird … and be unaware of it because awareness of it isn’t part of the experience.)
(That’d be … odd.)
(I guess it’d explain some of the more surreal parts of my life. I mean … Mr. Nauplius, falling for me? What kind of script writers does my life have?)
Anyway, can you draw a bright line between what goes on inside your head and what you experience coming in from outside?
And yet, no matter how boring it might be (and it should be, because we all know this is some basic crap), you can’t actually refute it. Instead, you have to retreat to ‘but I don’t want it to be like that’. To which, I can only offer this about existence:
You say you don’t have reason to think that the thing doing the experiencing exists… then how can it be experiencing? To be experiencing, first… it has to be. And you know that. If your current perception of yourself is a pre-recorded experience, then the first-person observer in that math is still not the recording, but the entity it’s being played for. Just because your awareness of what you truly are may be flawed doesn’t mean that first-person observer doesn’t have to exist in some form for ‘you’ to be experiencing anything.
As for drawing a bright line? Of course not. I can’t even actually draw a bright line around my own concept of myself. But the fact of the matter is: there is only one thing anyone can prove exists, beyond the ability to question without resorting to flagrantly illogical self-deceptions: and that is that the first-person observer exists. Without that, there can be no observation. That’s the only bright line that’s possible.
Now, it’s certainly a stretch to say that it’s at all plausible that the first-person observer is the only thing that does exist… but that’s not what’s being said, no matter how much you might want me to be saying that.
What’s being said is only this: The first-person observer must exist. It is inescapable. There must be an ‘I’ in some form.
Which means that your basic premise: that only the Totality is ‘real’ and the individual is an illusion, that…
… simply can’t be true. At least one being must exist… even if it is unaware of its true self. Beyond that, the sheer implausibility that one mind is, in fact, the totality of all existence means that the only rational position is that, at the very least, other minds are likely to exist. Other ‘seperate beings’. Obviously, it doesn’t rise to the level of indisputable, but to dispute the idea that minds exist beyond the one offering the dispute… well. Even if the denier eventually prevails and establishes there wasn’t anyone else there to argue with… that means the ‘other’ person they defeated was themselves. So win or lose, it’s a self-defeating proposition.
The first-person observer must exist. The second-person observer as a separate being is functionally inescapable. To assert neither is real… would require asserting that you aren’t making the assertion… because you’re not real to make it.