A better Explanation of the Fallacy of Solipsism

After my last entry was published on MySpace I was asked to explain further my reasoning with regard to solipsism. I also realise I wasn't very clear ion expressing my ideas, so hopefully this will give a clearer picture.

Solipsism rests on a subject-object ontology. It depends on 'I' being here on one side, interacting with, experiencing, the 'World' on the other side. This articulation of life is what leads into the problem of solipsism. In fact, it seems the fallacy of solipsism itself makes apparent the flaws in this conceptual approach to life. If life can be made to present this problem then the criteria we are approaching it through must be wrong.

The correct approach is to see 'the world' as not something out there in opposition to the 'in here' of the conscious self. The self happens, occurs, through the world. It is not 'in' the world. 'Life' is a network which includes and is constituted by different levels of interplay and relationships. 'Life' is not a category within material reality, material reality is a category within Life. Likewise, objects and subjects do not exist 'in' a Real System: a System articulates itself into objects and subjects. To say 'Life' is much the same as to say consciousness, for this is the sine-qua-non, that which must be the principle axiom of any discussion (even though in discussions about truth and reality we often forget that reality is only reality subject-to-consciousness).

This may be tricky to explain due to the way we are taught to think of the world. But the world is 'shot-through' with consciousness. Nowhere can we point to something and say "that is independent of consciousness". What of a stone? Well, how is it that we see it? It occurs as an element of a conscious, sensory panorama. It is embraced, enabled by, the world of consciousness. Consciousness is not 'in' me, passively apprehending the inert non-conscious world. We are a system. 'I' am a category within this conscious panorama just as the stone is. We both 'exist' (to the extent that we do exist, that we are manifest in form), by virtue of, as aspects of, a cohesive holistic system. It is only by analysing that we fragment the system into parts and claim they are independent and singular entities in themselves. It is by this process that we assign consciousness as a predicate of individuals, instead of seeing individuals (and all 'things') as a predicate of consciousness. It is by this process that we create the notion of an 'ego' which then separates itself from the 'world' and begins to wonder whether the world it is part of actually exists at all.

Stupid really, but then no one said the ego was clever.