weirdway

That's one perspective you could take. However the thing about subjective idealism is one has the choice to choose what they want to experience. I'm currently dabbling in solipsism but I see it as a tool, a means to an end or even just an experiment out of pure curiosity. Once I reach my final state, I'll probably drop it.

Solipsism isn't your only option. If you wanted to, you could choose to experience other "minds" just like yourself, with their own agency and will, completely independent of yourself.

I emphatically agree with all this.

The whole point of subjective idealism is to broaden the awareness of the various possible intents one could engage in. It's to open up the horizon, or to point out a sky beyond the sky. If someone walks away thinking "solipsism is the only way" then I am afraid they completely missed the boat. Subjective idealism allows for solipsism and in some specific ways solipsism is powerful, but if it becomes restricted to only solipsism that in my view is no longer the real subjective idealism anymore. Subjective idealism is a more general understanding that intents produce experiential results. That's it. If one intends to relate to experience as purely private, there is a concomitant experiential range for that, and one can cultivate insights and skills inside that range. But just as easily a person can intend that there are minds, spaces or even things outside themselves and that they're independent, and in accordance with that intent, there is also a corresponding experiential range. It is possible to cultivate insights and skills inside those ranges.

The only common denominator for subjective idealism is that you cannot claim that you're irrelevant in the manner your experience happens. So if a subjective idealist intends to experience an independent space of some sort, and they're saying it's only independent because they intend that it is and will relate to it in that way, then they're a true subjective idealist still. So as long as one acknowledges that experience is profoundly volitional in an intimate sense, one is a subjective idealist already. From there the field is wide open as to how specifically curate one's own willing/knowing/experiencing.

Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-09-25 12:19:02 (dnguu6r)