Hello. The others in one’s world are icons. Each one is the icon of a whole other world, very like yours but different here and there. Of course, the better one knows the other person the more the whole of them becomes real in one’s world. But each person’s world is unique because each person’s observations are unique.
Physicist David Mermin writes that a relative world cannot really be a solipsism because we coexist, and we communicate. Solipsism is: “… a belief that the world exists only in the mind of a single agent. This is wrong. … When I converse with you or read your books and articles in Nature, I plausibly conclude that you are a perceiving being rather like myself, and infer features of your experience.” (2014) But in fact it is right because each relative world exists only in the mind of that agent. Our worlds overlap, which is why Mermin is able to converse with someone and infer features of their experience. That we communicate means we live in the same universe.
2 responses to “Q & A”
Hello,
A
If it is the true, we live in personal parrallel worlds, what about others what are they in our world?
Hello. The others in one’s world are icons. Each one is the icon of a whole other world, very like yours but different here and there. Of course, the better one knows the other person the more the whole of them becomes real in one’s world. But each person’s world is unique because each person’s observations are unique.
Physicist David Mermin writes that a relative world cannot really be a solipsism because we coexist, and we communicate. Solipsism is: “… a belief that the world exists only in the mind of a single agent. This is wrong. … When I converse with you or read your books and articles in Nature, I plausibly conclude that you are a perceiving being rather like myself, and infer features of your experience.” (2014) But in fact it is right because each relative world exists only in the mind of that agent. Our worlds overlap, which is why Mermin is able to converse with someone and infer features of their experience. That we communicate means we live in the same universe.