Consider the words on the screen. There are two sources of information.

  1. The words, how they’re arranged and such.

  2. The meaning that you assign to the words. Meaning drawn from a lifetime of memories.

99% of the information comes from the assigned meaning. So 99% of what’s going on here is you talking to yourself.

  • Lvxferre
    1·
    1 month ago

    They aren’t different sources of info, but parts of the same process. And they’re three:

    1. The utterance. Like you said, the words and how they’re arranged and such.
    2. Your internalised knowledge. It’s all that bundle of meanings that you associate with each word, plus your ability to parse how those words are arranged.
    3. The context. It’s what dictates how you’re going to use your internalised knowledge to interpret the utterance; for example, selecting one among many possible meanings.

    Without any of those three things, you get 0% of the info. They’re all essential.

    So no, it is not solipsistic at all, since it depends on things outside your head (the utterance and the context), and those are shared by multiple individuals.