Re: CHAT: mass-hallucination?

On Friday, June 17, 2005, at 08:28 , Chris Bates wrote:

>>  Unless, of course, you are
>> constructing a language for the inhabitants of the planet Solipsismus,
>> who
>> each believes that it alone exits and that the other inhabitants are
>> figments of its imagination.
>
> Would they have any word for "crime"? :D How can you harm figments of
> your imagination in a criminal way?
Presumably you cannot. But if any such crimes were possible, it might dawn
upon even the slowest witted Solipsismian that what is harming it and
cannot be controlled by its thought is actually another being.  This
always seems to me one of the weaknesses in the solipsist position.

I guess these inhabitants cannot have direct physical contact with one
another. Maybe the whole planet is a shallowish sea and the higher,
intelligent life there consists of immobile, sponglike creatures    :)

Tho quite why they would find it necessary to have language is a bit of a
puzzle. Maybe in their apparent loneliness they just like talking to
themselves     :))

Ray
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"A mind which thinks at its own expense will always
interfere with language."         J.G. Hamann, 1760