Dream like quality.

2. Are the bodies the figment of someone’s imagination? Dream like quality. Copies of same figure. All copies. Not other minds. Maybe they are projections of the mind of the solipsist? Shadows of the Solipsist mind?

3. Existence of other minds- opposite of solipsism? Identical because they share the same attribute- The mind! Some figures positioned in foreground suggesting that they have more reality than those in background. In solipsism this cannot be. (In solipsism no one is more real than any other person- all figments of imagination.

4. Knowledge of other minds • How can we know that other minds exist? We cannot feel what other people feel- all experiences are private and immediate. • You can look at the behaviour others exhibit. (Behaviourism) • Problems-People can lie.We can’t experience what others feel. Does this make solipsism strong? • I know I exist because I think, feel etc. I can’t deny my own existence. But I can deny the existence of others.

5. Critique • G. E Moore- solipsism deniesestablished fact. Circumstantial evidence for the existence of the material world is overwhelming- we experience pain, happiness and love for others. If figment of imagination, how could we love or hate them? • How could our mind create such a complex world? • If the solipsist did created the world surely it would be more appealing? • Can one’s perception, within one’s mind exist without an external something to exist in, such as a biological brain? • Other people’s skills. If the solipsist created a famous poet in his mind, why doesn’t the solipsist have the capacity to imitate their skill? If the solipsist created the poet’s poems for them, why can’t the solipsist create equally talented poems for themselves?

6. Hinduism • Advaita is one of the best known Hindu philosophical systems, and literally means “non duality” • Adi Shankaracharya- established the singular reality of Brahman- the soul and Brahman are one and the same. • In the Hindu model of reality, Brahman, the God-Head, plays a game of hide and seek with himself. In this game, called Lila, he plays the individual people, the birds, the rocks, and forests ,all separately and together, while completely forgetting that he is playing a game. Each Kalpa, he ceases the game, wakes up, applauds himself and resumes it. So one of the main points in “Waking UP” and being enlightened, is knowing one is simply playing a game, currently acting as a human being, having an illusion of being locked within a bag of skin and separated form the whole of the cosmos. • “Namaste,” the formal Indian greeting, means literally “The God within me, blesses the god within you”, recognizing “each other’s” separateness as part of the game that God plays.

7. “ For the enlightened, all that exists as nothing but the Self, so how could any suffering or delusion continue for those who know this oneness?” (Isha Upanishad.) • Philosophy of Vedanta- “I am the Absolute Truth” This indicates solipsism. The “real” world is but an illusion in the mind of the observer. When the solipsist understands the “maya” or illusion of the world, then he escapes the mundane and reaches the state of everlasting bliss, realizing he, the self, is the whole universe, thus making himself God.

8. Solipsism • Solipsism is first recorded with the Greek presocratic sophist, Gorgias (c. 483-375 BC) who is quoted by the Roman Skeptic Sextus Empiricus as having stated: • Nothing exists; • Even if something exists, nothing can be known about it; and • Even if something could be known about it, knowledge about it can’t be communicated to others.