This is an idea that likes to creep into my mind sometimes and bother me. It really shouldn't bug me since it can't hurt me, nor can I even attempt to begin to prove it one way or the other. But I can't help but wonder, Do people and events beyond myself have independent existence outside of me or are they all just projections for my senses that don't exist when I'm not sensing them? How do I know my friends are real when I'm not seeing them and, more interestingly, how do I know they have their own experiences and perspective from a point of view that is truly distinct from my own? Welcome to metaphysical solipsism.
Of course, if reality does not extend beyond me, writing this for people to read would be kinda pointless. I might get feedback on it from others, but it would be some sort of subconscious extension from my mind. No one will have really read it and anyone who says they have could not really apply it to their own life, no matter how much they insist they can. If people do really exist beyond myself, then they would read this and hopefully wonder about it, and possibly assume that it ultimately came from them and that someone else had not really sat at a table and typed it up on his laptop.
The reason I've put a decent amount of thought into this is because it's something I can't really come to a conclusion to. Because everything I can use to reassure myself that I really am one individual among many other very real individuals really comes from outside of me — I'm not the person behind an existential paper giving reasons for why my mind is not the only thing in existence, so I can't be sure of the paper's true, independent origins. I can hear a very religious person talk about how their religion confirms that reality is how it appears to be (multiple, real perspectives and minds that are not extensions of my own), but I can't experience his mind, so I can't be sure. Hell, if I could experience his mind like how he does, I'd be him and not myself anymore; how would one go about possessing two distinct and separate minds at the same time? This is something that I have to be inevitably agnostic about. I mean sure, being the only thing in existence is not practical for everyday life, but when you really have to think about it, it makes sense to leave open the possibility.
Everything I see, hear, touch, smell, and taste may seem to exist independently of my mind, but the only way I experience these things is through myself. I friend could tell me "I just had the most awesome time exploring the ruins of Angkor Wat!", but for all I know, the sight and sound of him as he explains this to me is wholly coming from my own mind, creating this illusion of his trip that I could never verify.1 Now you probably have a good idea why this idea bothers me — I can never be sure that anything's real. Scary, right? But I don't see why you can totally count out the possibility.
Life would be like a dream. Everything seems perfectly realistic and reasonable while you're experiencing it (unless you're lucid dreaming, of course2), but all of it is being generated by your mind. You think you are living in a real world that exists beyond yourself, but you're not. So that begs the question, could all we know really be a dream that our consciousnesses is fabricating while we sleep in some sort of higher, more complex world? Dreams as we know them are noticeably more fantastic than real life and feature feats and experiences that will never happen to us when we're awake. Plus they're a hell of a lot shorter. But why can't real life just be a dream that's longer and more boring? If we were to wake up into a higher reality, would this life seem just as short and fantastical as the dreams we have now? Maybe we dream in our dreams, ad infinitum, but we can't remember them once we wake up into real life.3 Unfortunately, since we can only compare two levels of dreams at the most (our regular dreams and real life), we can't establish much of a pattern between different levels. For example, if we could wake from this life and find that this higher reality is longer and less fantastic than this life (assume we still remember our regular dreams), we can consider that it also could be a dream and establish the pattern of increasingly lengthy and mundane realities/dreams as we wake up. So I kind of went off on a bit of a tangent there, but I feel it's still important to the overall idea of this article. Even if this is some sort of dream that we're having in a higher reality that really does contain many independent and distinct minds (that aren't an extension of my own), then what I'm experiencing now is all an illusion my mind has created. Like how in a (non-lucid) dream I don't realize that what's external to me is being created by myself, everything I experience, including things I wouldn't think I could ever come up with, is all in my head. If my calculus homework doesn't make sense, then...well, it really doesn't make sense — it would literally be a jumble of numbers, letters, and funny symbols that have no true rhyme or reason until my mind allows me to come up with an understanding for it, in the form of a professor explaining it carefully to me maybe.
This leads me to wonder, Am I literally all that truly exists with no higher reality to wake up from or is there some sort of higher reality (whether in the dream format I described above or in some sort of totally different way)? The latter would make sense, but the former's just weird (not to mention hard to comprehend). Where would I have come from if there's no higher reality (and, of course, presuming "my mother" is not a valid answer)? Would that even be a relevant question to ask if that's the case? It's hard, if not impossible, to truly imagine and appreciate since our minds (or, at least, my mind) are wired to want to know the cause of everything and assume that there has to be one.4 My experiences (or illusions) would form the only blip to ever appear in (and make necessary) objective reality and existence. It's like considering what the pre-Big Bang singularity existed in before the primordial explosion. But if this is just a dream, how will I know, when I wake up into the higher reality, that that is a reality in which everything external to me is really real? I guess it could be that I can't comprehend, in this reality, irrefutable proof against solipsism that I would find in a higher reality.
Whichever version it is, one thing that will spice it up is death. Would dying be waking up? Would I be dead, but somehow continuing the illusion? Or would reality and existence cease completely? If solipsism is reality, then dying will be quite an interesting experience (not that I'm in any sort of hurry to get there) and could be the ultimate proof of whether or not solipsism is true.5
One thing that could heighten one's awareness of whether or not the world is an illusion is a seeming discrepancy in reality; you left for vacation with the knowledge in the back of your mind that your dog has five spots, but you find six on him when you get back. There's always going to be a rational explanation behind it, maybe you counted wrong the first time or your mind accidentally changed it to the wrong number over time, but the perceived discrepancy you find in reality seems a bit disturbing and all of a sudden it feels like a mistake has been found in reality — like becoming lucid in a dream — making a consistent, non-solipsistic existence inadequate to support your experience. At least I'd entertain that thought in such a situation. Maybe others wouldn't. On a similar vein, incredible feats that humans have achieved might seem like a possible illusion, something that could only be achieved in a fictional story rather than real life. Take Dubai's Burj Khalifa. This incredible 2700 foot building took 5 years and $1.5 billion to construct. Even with thousands of years experience in building greater and greater structures, the fact that human beings and machines that we have constructed could build such an enormous building that is fully functional and safe in 5 years is quite impressive. Five years may seem like a long time (take out breaks, holidays, sandstorms, and other times when construction wouldn't have been going on), but for a bunch of people to plan, coordinate, pull resources together, and ultimately build such a structure in that time is phenomenal if you think about it. Sometimes it seems like a feat that you read about in a story that doesn't reflect real-life humans' actual capabilities. Other things like this include the ability of jumbo jets to fly, the resolution of the Hubble space telescope, and the building of the Great Pyramids (unless you're Giorgio Tsoukalos — then you can disregard that last one).
So which version of existence do I lean towards as I ponder this — that everything is as it seems and other people and events are truly independent of myself or that they're all illusions? If someone with the absolute truth6 held a gun to my head and made me pick, I would want to say the former until my mind asks me why not the latter. I suppose, though, that I would end up say that there are other distinct minds and events that are truly outside myself that I'll never be able to confirm. It's a hell of a lot more comforting anyway.
If one were to subscribe to solipsism (which they couldn't do since I'm the only one who could subscribe to it, of course), he or she would have a reason not to try in life since the results don't truly matter, nor be nice to anyone since there are no feelings that could be hurt or nerve cells to transmit physical pain. But I figure that since being nice, caring, and trying hard ultimately make me feel better emotionally, mentally, and physically, I might as well play along with the illusion my mind might be fabricating. It's not just that, however. That makes me sound totally detached from...well, reality (pardon the expression). I feel very real emotions and very real pain and pleasure that's deeply tied to what I perceive is reality. I care much more about the people, things, and experiences here than I do whether or not they're real7 and I'm more than happy to live life regardless of any metaphysical worries. Even though I sometimes wonder about where the boundary of existence extends to, what I experience, regardless of whether it's included in that boundary, is effectively real to me. So I'll live in it and presume, unless I'm in some deep thoughts or philosophical conversation, that there are no worries about what exists and what doesn't.
1 If he showed me pictures of his trip to Cambodia, for example, I couldn't be sure that my mind's not fabricating them in order to trick itself into believe my friend's story really happened.
2 Unfortunately, being aware of the possibility that life may be just like a dream hasn't resulted in me being able to fly.
3 When you try to think about your dreams, you're thinking about them in the awake state you're in now. You can't head back into your dream and then analyze what went on there. For all we know, many more extraordinary things may happen in our dreams that we just can't remember. Until technology develops enough for us to record our dreams, we can never be sure.
4 Until, for most people, you get to "Where did God come from?"
5 See this article for more of my musings on the topic.
6 Now that is going to be metaphysically messy if we try to justify that for this article.
7 Whether or not they're real or not on an existential level, not a pathologically delusional level.
Of course, if reality does not extend beyond me, writing this for people to read would be kinda pointless. I might get feedback on it from others, but it would be some sort of subconscious extension from my mind. No one will have really read it and anyone who says they have could not really apply it to their own life, no matter how much they insist they can. If people do really exist beyond myself, then they would read this and hopefully wonder about it, and possibly assume that it ultimately came from them and that someone else had not really sat at a table and typed it up on his laptop.
The reason I've put a decent amount of thought into this is because it's something I can't really come to a conclusion to. Because everything I can use to reassure myself that I really am one individual among many other very real individuals really comes from outside of me — I'm not the person behind an existential paper giving reasons for why my mind is not the only thing in existence, so I can't be sure of the paper's true, independent origins. I can hear a very religious person talk about how their religion confirms that reality is how it appears to be (multiple, real perspectives and minds that are not extensions of my own), but I can't experience his mind, so I can't be sure. Hell, if I could experience his mind like how he does, I'd be him and not myself anymore; how would one go about possessing two distinct and separate minds at the same time? This is something that I have to be inevitably agnostic about. I mean sure, being the only thing in existence is not practical for everyday life, but when you really have to think about it, it makes sense to leave open the possibility.
Everything I see, hear, touch, smell, and taste may seem to exist independently of my mind, but the only way I experience these things is through myself. I friend could tell me "I just had the most awesome time exploring the ruins of Angkor Wat!", but for all I know, the sight and sound of him as he explains this to me is wholly coming from my own mind, creating this illusion of his trip that I could never verify.1 Now you probably have a good idea why this idea bothers me — I can never be sure that anything's real. Scary, right? But I don't see why you can totally count out the possibility.
Life would be like a dream. Everything seems perfectly realistic and reasonable while you're experiencing it (unless you're lucid dreaming, of course2), but all of it is being generated by your mind. You think you are living in a real world that exists beyond yourself, but you're not. So that begs the question, could all we know really be a dream that our consciousnesses is fabricating while we sleep in some sort of higher, more complex world? Dreams as we know them are noticeably more fantastic than real life and feature feats and experiences that will never happen to us when we're awake. Plus they're a hell of a lot shorter. But why can't real life just be a dream that's longer and more boring? If we were to wake up into a higher reality, would this life seem just as short and fantastical as the dreams we have now? Maybe we dream in our dreams, ad infinitum, but we can't remember them once we wake up into real life.3 Unfortunately, since we can only compare two levels of dreams at the most (our regular dreams and real life), we can't establish much of a pattern between different levels. For example, if we could wake from this life and find that this higher reality is longer and less fantastic than this life (assume we still remember our regular dreams), we can consider that it also could be a dream and establish the pattern of increasingly lengthy and mundane realities/dreams as we wake up. So I kind of went off on a bit of a tangent there, but I feel it's still important to the overall idea of this article. Even if this is some sort of dream that we're having in a higher reality that really does contain many independent and distinct minds (that aren't an extension of my own), then what I'm experiencing now is all an illusion my mind has created. Like how in a (non-lucid) dream I don't realize that what's external to me is being created by myself, everything I experience, including things I wouldn't think I could ever come up with, is all in my head. If my calculus homework doesn't make sense, then...well, it really doesn't make sense — it would literally be a jumble of numbers, letters, and funny symbols that have no true rhyme or reason until my mind allows me to come up with an understanding for it, in the form of a professor explaining it carefully to me maybe.
This leads me to wonder, Am I literally all that truly exists with no higher reality to wake up from or is there some sort of higher reality (whether in the dream format I described above or in some sort of totally different way)? The latter would make sense, but the former's just weird (not to mention hard to comprehend). Where would I have come from if there's no higher reality (and, of course, presuming "my mother" is not a valid answer)? Would that even be a relevant question to ask if that's the case? It's hard, if not impossible, to truly imagine and appreciate since our minds (or, at least, my mind) are wired to want to know the cause of everything and assume that there has to be one.4 My experiences (or illusions) would form the only blip to ever appear in (and make necessary) objective reality and existence. It's like considering what the pre-Big Bang singularity existed in before the primordial explosion. But if this is just a dream, how will I know, when I wake up into the higher reality, that that is a reality in which everything external to me is really real? I guess it could be that I can't comprehend, in this reality, irrefutable proof against solipsism that I would find in a higher reality.
Whichever version it is, one thing that will spice it up is death. Would dying be waking up? Would I be dead, but somehow continuing the illusion? Or would reality and existence cease completely? If solipsism is reality, then dying will be quite an interesting experience (not that I'm in any sort of hurry to get there) and could be the ultimate proof of whether or not solipsism is true.5
One thing that could heighten one's awareness of whether or not the world is an illusion is a seeming discrepancy in reality; you left for vacation with the knowledge in the back of your mind that your dog has five spots, but you find six on him when you get back. There's always going to be a rational explanation behind it, maybe you counted wrong the first time or your mind accidentally changed it to the wrong number over time, but the perceived discrepancy you find in reality seems a bit disturbing and all of a sudden it feels like a mistake has been found in reality — like becoming lucid in a dream — making a consistent, non-solipsistic existence inadequate to support your experience. At least I'd entertain that thought in such a situation. Maybe others wouldn't. On a similar vein, incredible feats that humans have achieved might seem like a possible illusion, something that could only be achieved in a fictional story rather than real life. Take Dubai's Burj Khalifa. This incredible 2700 foot building took 5 years and $1.5 billion to construct. Even with thousands of years experience in building greater and greater structures, the fact that human beings and machines that we have constructed could build such an enormous building that is fully functional and safe in 5 years is quite impressive. Five years may seem like a long time (take out breaks, holidays, sandstorms, and other times when construction wouldn't have been going on), but for a bunch of people to plan, coordinate, pull resources together, and ultimately build such a structure in that time is phenomenal if you think about it. Sometimes it seems like a feat that you read about in a story that doesn't reflect real-life humans' actual capabilities. Other things like this include the ability of jumbo jets to fly, the resolution of the Hubble space telescope, and the building of the Great Pyramids (unless you're Giorgio Tsoukalos — then you can disregard that last one).
So which version of existence do I lean towards as I ponder this — that everything is as it seems and other people and events are truly independent of myself or that they're all illusions? If someone with the absolute truth6 held a gun to my head and made me pick, I would want to say the former until my mind asks me why not the latter. I suppose, though, that I would end up say that there are other distinct minds and events that are truly outside myself that I'll never be able to confirm. It's a hell of a lot more comforting anyway.
If one were to subscribe to solipsism (which they couldn't do since I'm the only one who could subscribe to it, of course), he or she would have a reason not to try in life since the results don't truly matter, nor be nice to anyone since there are no feelings that could be hurt or nerve cells to transmit physical pain. But I figure that since being nice, caring, and trying hard ultimately make me feel better emotionally, mentally, and physically, I might as well play along with the illusion my mind might be fabricating. It's not just that, however. That makes me sound totally detached from...well, reality (pardon the expression). I feel very real emotions and very real pain and pleasure that's deeply tied to what I perceive is reality. I care much more about the people, things, and experiences here than I do whether or not they're real7 and I'm more than happy to live life regardless of any metaphysical worries. Even though I sometimes wonder about where the boundary of existence extends to, what I experience, regardless of whether it's included in that boundary, is effectively real to me. So I'll live in it and presume, unless I'm in some deep thoughts or philosophical conversation, that there are no worries about what exists and what doesn't.
1 If he showed me pictures of his trip to Cambodia, for example, I couldn't be sure that my mind's not fabricating them in order to trick itself into believe my friend's story really happened.
2 Unfortunately, being aware of the possibility that life may be just like a dream hasn't resulted in me being able to fly.
3 When you try to think about your dreams, you're thinking about them in the awake state you're in now. You can't head back into your dream and then analyze what went on there. For all we know, many more extraordinary things may happen in our dreams that we just can't remember. Until technology develops enough for us to record our dreams, we can never be sure.
4 Until, for most people, you get to "Where did God come from?"
5 See this article for more of my musings on the topic.
6 Now that is going to be metaphysically messy if we try to justify that for this article.
7 Whether or not they're real or not on an existential level, not a pathologically delusional level.
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