Are you the only conscious mind? Are you the one? Does the universe revolve around you? Solipsism philosophy is scary. The science of Solipsism is presented here. From your point of view, the only sentience you have is your own. You can’t know or perceive whether anyone else is really conscious. What if they aren’t? What if you’re the only one? Everyone could be a philosophical zombie. This is the essence of Solipsism. What do you really see when you look in the mirror. A scientist might say that when you look through your eyes, packets of electromagnetic radiation, called photons enter the pupil of your eye, get focused by a lens, hit your retina and trigger electrical signals in your optic nerve, that travels to the LGN, then to visual cortex in the back of your brain, where it gets interpreted and is made available to your consciousness which may be located according to recent studies in a tiny area of the brainstem called pontine tegmentum and 2 small areas of the cerebral cortex connected to it.
A philosopher might say that the you are the consciousness behind your eyes. The you is your awareness of yourself and your surroundings, and your place in the universe.
A Solipsist believes that she is the consciousness behind her eyes, but the difference is she believes she is the ONLY consciousness. She believes that only her consciousness is fundamental in the universe in which she resides. Is there any irrefutable proof of anything other than the existence of yourself? If that is the case then is it rational to assume that anything else actually exists?
According to information theory, a closed system cannot generate something more complex than itself. But the universe is more complicated than you. How would you explain the fact that other people, whom you don’t think exist came up with the laws that explain your world? But maybe this complexity is part of the illusion too. Science doesn't claim to know the ultimate reality. But even if it did, if everything is an illusion, then science can only tell us what is true within that illusion.
Science treats reality as a foundation; the universe exists apart from our own mind and senses. It says that we going to see the same things whether we’re in a subjective or objective reality. Most scientist will say that it is objective. But science only assumes that objective reality exists.
But a paper published in 2019, by Massimiliano Proietti at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, this research seems to indicate that at the quantum level, two different realities could both be correct, suggesting that an objective reality may not actually exist.
If reality is subjective, could it all be a simulation, like in the movie the Matrix? But if we are living in a simulation, then everything is an illusion including what you know as you. The simulation can simulate consciousness in at least one of its characters - you.
But why would the simulation only simulate one conscious character out of billions – maybe to save memory space? But this would not make sense because then you would have to create a separate world for every conscious creature that you are simulating. This would increase the memory requirement.
Maybe advanced beings want to test the theory of Solipsism in a simulation? But what would be the purpose of that?
One question that even solipsists have to ask themselves is, “Are you even conscious?” Scientists cannot solve the problem because there is no such thing as “consciousness detector.” There is no objective measurement of consciousness. If there was, we could settle this question. This could be easily solvable in the future, some estimate that we will achieve this within 30 years. Once you can go inside my brain, you will know of sure whether I am conscious or not.
But what is consciousness? Can AIs be conscious? In many cases they are smarter than us. If we ask an AI of the future, he might say he is conscious. How will we know for sure? Their behaviors are also determined by the firing of electromagnetic signals inside a central processor. So are humans. Our processor is called the brain.
We all live in our own subjective realities. Our realities all interact and we are able to independently observe the same things. Shouldn’t that mean that we are all part of the same reality?
A Solipsist will say, not necessarily, because you could be a figment of my imagination, or maybe nobody exists and everything is imaginary. You think, therefore you are. You do not know if anyone else really thinks, and therefore you cannot know whether they are.
#solipsism
Solipsism is not disprovable. But this does not make it true. You could argue that solipsism is completely useless because it cannot be disproven, and it doesn’t give you much in the way of making your life better. But its uselessness does not make it false. Note that Solipsism is not synonymous with Narcissism.
0 Comments