Saturday, February 07, 2004

I used the term a couple of times on my main weblog so it seems appropriate to add it to the defined terms if you will. The term being referred to is solipsism and I noted the following in a weblog entry about it:

[The] epistemological phenomenon of solipsism [is one] whereby the self knows nothing but its own states and their constituent modifications if you will. This is a core philosophical flaw of modern day liberal political views.

I had a footnote to this point and fleshed it out with the following text:

This is why certain kinds of people of the extremist liberal mindset such as the Deanings cannot be reasoned with. You can throw all the facts in the world at them and reason until your gray hairs fall out but they will not budge because so much of what you would say does not pertain to them personally.

This problem infects not only people in liberal extreme political viewpoints but also some people of more peripheral theological or philosophical viewpoints as well. Those who follow Rerum Novarum are aware of a couple of these viewpoints to which I refer so I will not belabour this brief weblog entry with examples.