Alright so allow us onto the topic of solipsism, we will undergo an expansive examination concerning concepts surrounding idealism, materialism and solipsism. We will periodically cite wiki documents on the subject as just a general reference guide for the purposes of this particular disquisition. So, starting out, the wiki article states, quote:
“One of the most fundamental debates in philosophy concerns the “true” nature of the world—whether it is some ethereal plane of ideas, or a reality of atomic particles and energy. Materialism posits a real ‘world out there,’ as well as in and through us, that can be sensed—seen, heard, tasted, touched and felt, sometimes with prosthetic technologies corresponding to human sensing organs. (Materialists do not claim that human senses or even their prosthetics can, even when collected, sense the totality of the ‘universe’; simply that what they collectively cannot sense cannot in any way be known to us.) Materialists do not find this a useful way of thinking about the ontology and ontogeny of ideas, but we might say that from a materialist perspective pushed to a logical extreme communicable to an idealist (an “Away Team” perspective), ideas are ultimately reducible to a physically communicated, organically, socially and environmentally embedded 'brain state’. While reflexive existence is not considered by materialists to be experienced on the atomic level, the individual’s physical and mental experiences are ultimately reducible to the unique tripartite combination of environmentally determined, genetically determined, and randomly determined interactions of firing neurons and atomic collisions.“ Unquote.
At one time, the true nature of the world may have been the most fundamental debates in philosophy, but it’s over. The question has been resolved, and now the debate should move on to broader concerns… like: what is the context of the fundamental debate about the true nature of the world? Yet even this postulation isn’t succinct, as it is a malformed proposition… due to a faulty presupposition taken as a default axiom. Of course the materialist wants to frame the argument to encompass a concern about the true nature of the world, as staging the discourse in this way provides a slanted bias towards materialism, as the focus of disputation is concerned with an inquiry into an object, in this case being a world, which already gets it wrong before the commencement of even one word of argumentation. We could just as easily say one of the most fundamental debates in philosophy concerns the true nature of a walnut. Or perhaps the true nature of tuna salad on rye. Nice try. But if you wanna propose the existence of a fundamental debate in philosophy you should at least get the subject of the dispute right. It isn’t a contention concerning the true nature of worlds, walnuts or tuna salads… the contention is concerned with the true nature of reality… Materialists don’t like to call it a question of reality, because if you call it a debate about the nature of reality, it frames the discussion more honestly, and begins the inquiry from more neutral grounds. But from this standpoint, you can’t even begin the debate about the true nature of reality before you have defined what reality actually is. This is why the materialist favors the advocacy of a world. Not only because this supposition gives him the advantage in discourse by biasing the rules of the discussion towards objectivity, but also because it offers a false dichotomy within the false assumption; that is, that the debate about the true nature of the world comes down to a choice of either an abstract ethereal plane, or a defined solid environment. Once again, this is the attempted advancement of an erroneous premise trying to pass itself off as a dictum of consensus. Let’s get it straight: this isn’t a question about the true nature of a location. To regard this as a foregone conclusion is an unwarranted, and possibly intentionally dishonest, assumption. Patience grasshopper. Don’t rush to get ahead of yourself. The properties of locations are of little concern to us, because locations are like walnuts or tuna salads. They are features of reality… and we are concerned with the fundamental nature of reality itself, not of the features of reality. If we can understand the true nature of reality we will know all about the composition of it’s features. But, as said before, we cannot discuss the possible true nature of reality before we have defined what reality is; and this is where materialism becomes defeated, for as much as the materialist would like to attribute reality to an object, he cannot deny that an object is just an inventory item within the perception of an experience, hence not something that is at all foundational. To identify what is foundational, one must simply discern that which gives all else it’s context, and in this case, it isn’t an object, or even the perception of an experience, as we must also continue to uphold the standard and establish what is the context of the perception of experience. This is where awareness can be established as the undeniable irrefutable fundamental default axiom of existence. And awareness isn’t a thing, nor is an extension or application of any thing. Awareness is no thing. A nothing. Pure potentiality with no identifications. The static suspended field of possibilities that gives rise to all things. And this is just a way of alluding to it with language, as the word "field” suggests some kind of spacial locality, but in truth, the truth of it is ineffable, as the essence is without quality or quantity. So much for reality being an object, huh? And I know you want to employ inferences and attributions in an attempt to respond to this dismissal, but philosophical integrity must be upheld, and the science, which is really just applied philosophy, finds it’s grounding in the truth, not in faith, superstition, deception or fiction… which is exactly what one is doing when they seek to employ inferences and attributions, reducing awareness to a mere byproduct of the phenomena found within the sensory perception experience. So do you see the difference here? It’s important to be able to discern between the evident and the imagined. There is pure awareness, the undeniable reality that needs no words, thoughts or narratives; completely free from any inferences or attributions, prefect and whole, unexpurgated in the immediacy of the all encompassing totality… and then there is delusion, the imagined reality that supplants pure awareness, which is a debatable chosen assumption that needs words, thoughts and narratives to support it, completely dependent on inferences and attributions, flawed and fragmented, transient and impermanent, divided in the latency or emergence of time relativity. One is raw truth, the other is a delusion that one chooses to assume as a truth. Materialism will implore you to consider awareness as abstract and objects as concrete, but this itself is an exercise of mental abstraction; as, it were actually the case, then materialism would have no need to implore you to consider it as such. If we understand that awareness is primary, then the source of projections becomes clear. The further you focus away from the center, the more you extend the attention into the realm of conceptualization; only, it isn’t actualized as it’s so often proclaimed to be represented. Pure awareness is what is actually most real, revealing the projections of external space and it’s inventory as the content of the abstract, projected and reflected back to the senses as a perceptual model. And this seems to be the major stumbling block that the materialist gets caught up on: perception. For the materialist, it is the be all and end all, which is why it would posit a real world out there, and maintain that anything that cannot be sensed cannot be known. It’s simple ignorance; as the truth shows that there isn’t any universe existing anywhere, so never mind the imagined inaccessible parts of a universe. This type of mindset is a debilitating delusion and it turns an existential explorer into an externalist; where now, everything and anything is attributed to extrinsic factors. Hence, the truth becomes reducible. The truth becomes a game of pointing. The truth becomes anything but the truth. This is how the truth of reality becomes an idea of physicality, communication, organics, sociality, environments, biology, physiology, elements, or genetics.
So, continuing on with the wiki document, it states, quote:
“As a correlative, the only thing that dreams and hallucinations prove are that some neurons can reorganize and 'clean house’ 'on break’ (often reforming around emergent, prominent or uncanny cultural themes), misfire, and malfunction. But for materialists, ideas have no primary reality as essences separate from our physical existence. From a materialist "Home Team” perspective, ideas are also social (rather than purely biological), and formed and transmitted and modified through the interactions between social organisms and their social and physical environments. This materialist perspective informs scientific methodology, insofar as that methodology assumes that humans have no access to omniscience and that therefore human knowledge is an ongoing, collective enterprise that is best produced via scientific and logical conventions adjusted specifically for material human capacities and limitations.“ Unquote.
This is basically a paragraph of junk, but again, more expressions of the same convoluted misconceptions. Explaining dreams or hallucinations as a result of fluctuating neurons is an attribution made through the workings of an ideological utility. And assumptions that ideas have no primary reality as essences separate from the physical existence are yet even more of the same thing: inferences and attributions. It’s true that there is no separation between the mental and the physical, but it isn’t true that the physical is the context of the mental, or that the physical and mental are 2 distinct equal aspects that function in a correlative relationship. No, it isn’t a dual. Let us not forget the resounding implications of non-duality. There is only one medium, if you could call it that, and this framework informs the reality; which is a much better consignment of information then any biased perspective that establishes a methodology based on it’s abstractions formulated through the very same perspective. And so, if this is the perspective approach of materialism, it isn’t peak efficiency… as any approach that isn’t rooted in the truth, even if very rational, very reasonable, very pragmatic and very scientific, will still fall short of it’s mark. Idealism holds true to many of the same values purportedly revered by materialism, but founds these standards on the absolute undeniable truth, as opposed to on an inaccurate conditional chosen assumption. There is a slight difference.
And concluding the wiki document, it states:
"Modern Idealists, on the other hand, believe that the mind and its thoughts are the only true things that exist. This is the reverse of what is sometimes called classical idealism or, somewhat confusingly, Platonic idealism due to the influence of Plato’s Theory of Forms, which were not products of our thinking. The material world is ephemeral, but a perfect triangle or "beauty” is eternal. Religious thinking tends to be some form of idealism, as God usually becomes the highest ideal (such as Neoplatonism). On this scale, solipsism can be classed as idealism. Thoughts and concepts are all that exist, and furthermore, only the solipsist’s own thoughts and consciousness exist. The so-called “reality” is nothing more than an idea that the solipsist has (perhaps unconsciously) created.“ Unquote.
I don’t think one should generalize and portray all modern idealist belief as being in some unified consensus. The mind and it’s thoughts are not the same, and there are those that believe in the mind alone, those that believe in the thoughts alone, and those that believe in a combination of both. And then there are those that believe in none of these, preferring to remain idealist neophytes and cling to esoteric concepts of god and divinity, which gets even further splintered down, as the definitions and interpretations of god also vary widely. The Plato concept about eternal forms, or the notion of subjectively realized universal archetypes that transcend any particular subject, are nice ideological novelty items, but these proposals are more ventures into the realm of abstractions, and hence can be mostly dispensed with as extraneous materials. There are many different styles and positions in idealism. You have classic idealism, pluralistic idealism, actual idealism, absolute idealism, objective idealism, transcendental idealism, subjective idealism, and Neoplatonism; but the one that most resembles pure solipsism is a form of idealism not listed in this enumeration and was forged into being by the Meta Sage himself. It’s called Meta Idealism, aka, Pure Potentialism. Meta Idealism is the indivisible truth, not a position or view, that awareness is the absolute foundation upon which all formulations of existential manifestation are established. This is the most pure form of solipsism. Perhaps even better described as meta solipsism; which is a non-position that is not really all that concerned with classifying what the only thing that can be known for sure to exist is, then it is with dropping attachments to false identifications with existential phenomena, in order to uncover an obscured oneness with true empty nature. This is the most pure and unadulterated form of solipsism. This is where idealism and solipsism become indistinguishable.