#Solipsism

Solipsism is a philosophical concept that suggests the only thing that can be known to exist is one's own mind or self. According to solipsism, one cannot be certain of the existence of anything external to their own consciousness, including other people, objects, or the physical world. In essence, it posits that the individual's subjective experience is the only reality that can be truly known.

The term "solipsism" derives from the Latin words "solus," meaning "alone," and "ipse," meaning "self." Solipsism holds that the self is the only thing that can be directly experienced and verified, while everything else is seen as potentially illusory or unknowable.

Solipsism poses significant challenges to our common sense understanding of the world, as it rejects the notion of an external reality shared by multiple individuals. It questions the possibility of truly knowing anything beyond one's own thoughts, perceptions, and sensations. This philosophical position often leads to questions about the nature of knowledge, perception, and the limits of human understanding.

The recent forum topic on solipsism got me thinking about this. Last-Thursdayism is a belief (which, to my knowledge, no one actually holds) that the universe,  everything within it, including our memories, popped into existence last Thursday. Similar to solipsism, you apparently cannot prove it wrong, as one cannot prove that anything exists outside of their own mind and experiences, right here, right now. Here's an interesting variant: Imagine there was a group of people that believed that the universe was created last Thursday at noon, and would end next Thursday at noon. It seems as though come next Thursday they would be proven wrong, but they wouldn't. Instead, come noon on Thursday they would celebrate the beginning of the universe, claiming that the previous week never happened. This cycle would repeat every week, and they could always claim that they were never actually wrong, we just remember them being wrong, but that never happened. After all, those are just our pre-imposed false memories of before the universe existed. Now here's something which might get some Christians riled up. Suppose that the Christian God is real. Now suppose that God is omnipotent and omniscient with one exception: All of His power will disappear next Thursday at noon, and even He doesn't know it. There is no way for Him to know this, and there is no way for Him to stop it from happening. Christians, you cannot prove this wrong. Not even next Thursday at noon, because who is to say that you will immediately recognize all of God's power as gone. After all, all of His recent actions will still be in effect.

Here are some challenges:

Good luck!

Solipsism generally holds that only the self can be known to exist. But just because something is possible does not mean it is likely. If solipsism is false, it makes sense that the universe seems to have consistent laws and that past experiences are consistent with future experiences. Dreams, in contrast, barely make any sense and rarely remain consistent. So if humans were brains in a vat, I think the probability of our experiences being consistent with an outward reality would be very low.

I have the same doubts about the zombie theory. If your brain is generating consciousness, it seems unlikely that it would be the only brain to do so. It also seems unlikely that a non-conscious brain would lie and say that it was conscious, or be somehow programmed to act outwardly like a conscious mind. Even if this is a non-physicalist correlating effect, whatever external cause is putting minds into brains probably wouldn't stop with one individual.

You might be on the Truman Show, or the victim of some elaborate government conspiracy, but neither of those things is very likely. I'm not sure how solipsism is more significant than any other theory that is technically possible but very unlikely.