1.2.1.4 Solipsism and External Reality

Version 1.0 July 2016                                     (Previous Version)

We can't prove that anything other than our awareness exists.  We are not even sure what our awareness is.  We might be dreaming.  Are we some supernatural being’s mechanical toys?  Are we like in the movie “The Matrix� (episode 1) being fed a simulated environment? 

Solipsism is the belief that only my mind certainly exists.  Perhaps your mind exists also, but I am unsure, I can doubt you are real.  (If the rest of the human race, and all the animals too, were wiped out in some global catastrophe, and I were the only sentient being left alive, then my mind might be the only mind in existence, but I would not be a solipsist for being sure of that true fact.)

Solipsism is logically unassailable.  How could anyone else prove me wrong when, almost by definition, they are only figments of my imagination?  But solipsism has problems.

Believing that my mind is the only thing that exists make existence too hard to understand.  Why does my mind cause pain?  Why doesn’t it always feel pleasure?  Why can't I make things happen just by thinking about them?  If my mental events are the only things that exist, why do I have to go through tedious steps to quench a thirst or have a pee?  Why does my mind sometime not work well if I drink alcohol or stay up late?  Why are my perceptions so limited?

Since I apparently cannot always control the perceptions I receive, the emotions I feel and the thoughts I have, it would seem that, if I am the only thing that exists, a part of me, unknown to me, must be controlling these.  If this controller is unknown and uncontrolled by me how can it be part of me?  At the very least it is a very different part of me to what I think of as me.  Why would that other part of me do such strange things and cause me so much pain and confusion?

What we conclude if we are reasonable is that there is both “me� and something that is “not me�, and these together are what we call reality. 

If you still insist to me that my existence can be doubted I can rudely tell you to go away because you doubting my existence is offensive.  The same point was made by the English writer Dr Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) who thumped a table to refute the suggestion that nothing else but he existed.

We can anticipate what we can learn from other Chapters, because this approach is not simply a linear learning exercise: all the Parts reinforce the conclusions we reach in other Parts. 

·       Children begin life as solipsists, thinking they are all that exists.  But as they grow they come to a life changing epiphany: they are not the centre of the world.  Some over-protective parents foster a continuation of the delusion, to maintain a false sense of self-esteem, but the children eventually leave the parents’ world and most of us come to the same conclusion.

·       Those people who as older children or adults still act as though they are the centre of the world, who think or act as though other people don’t matter much, the rest of us judge to be selfish, or worse.  We think these people should grow up.  If they don’t, they should be put in their place, in a separate playground for the kiddies, as the rest of us interact positively with each other.  At the extreme end, we think such people are delusional, psychotic, or even sociopaths, people who need help, counselling, medication, imprisonment or isolation.