On Solipsism

At some point in life, we all stop and wonder if all of our surroundings are just illusions created within own minds, if we have so far only been dreaming up all that we consider as reality. Are we really just imagining it all? This idea, called solipsism, though not often taken seriously, is often used as a philosophical example when playing devil’s advocate in certain debates. For instance, when pondering what all in the universe we can really be sure of, a common counterpoint says that we can never really be sure of anything but our own existence, for how could we ever prove that the physical world around us really exists? After all, it has been shown scientifically that many diseases, and even dreams can trick each and every one of our senses into believing in a false reality. People see things that aren’t there and hear voices that don’t exist, yet often they still appear to be so real. So, can solipsism actually be disproved, and furthermore does it make any difference at all?

Solipsism cannot be disproved in the conventional, scientific manner, by collecting mounds of evidence and looking for inconsistencies. This is because, if solipsism is true, then all of that evidence would be imaginary as well, and thus we would have not advanced at all in our proof. However, I believe that we may disprove solipsism if we analyze reality itself through a thought experiment. It should be noted that much of the following is derived from the work of theoretical physicist David Deutsch.

The basis of this attempt to disprove solipsism relies on not only on our definition of reality, but our ability to define it. If solipsism is untrue, then reality is simply the universe around us and all is well, there are no paradoxes related to our perception. If solipsism is true, however, then the universe around us, everything that we see and smell and hear and touch and taste, is false, just an illusion caused by our own minds. In this latter case, despite everything being false, we would all argue that what we see certainly acts as realistically. People respond when you speak to them, and if you put your hand on an oven burner, you will certainly get hurt. As per Deutsch, if something acts real, we might as well just name it real. There is no purpose in believing in solipsism, for it only adds another complexity in our understanding the universe. Rather, we have much more reason to believe that the universe is real than that it is not, and without rationale and explanation, we really have no logical basis for presenting any theory as probably true, especially something as odd as solipsism.

If solipsism is true, then there is something rather peculiar that we must note. If everything we see and experience is a result of no more than our own imagination, then every bit of knowledge we encounter and every complex calculation is also a result of our imagination. Complicated mathematical proofs and all theories of physics, chemistry, psychology, and the like are all completely self-created. Each one of us has all of the knowledge of Einstein, the creativity and eloquence of Shakespeare, and the computational ability of the most powerful super computers. That seems pretty special. Unfortunately, it also seems pretty unlikely. But of course, things seeming pretty unlikely has never been the basis for any logical proof, so let me continue.

If solipsism is true, then by definition, we would have to say that the universe we experience is something other than reality. We would thus be completely unable to ever experience true reality, as everything we could experience would be a construct of our own mind. Furthermore, everything we could imagine, because it would be necessarily influenced by the false universe we experience, would also be a product of no more than our own thinking. Thus, simply because of how solipsism defines itself, we would have no manner at all of imagining or defining true reality. The closest we could ever come to pinning down exactly what “real” reality is would be to construct it in terms of the experiential “false” reality.

So, in order for us to say that the universe in which we live is not real, we would have to define what “real” means and what “not real” means. However, given a state of affairs in which we blind ourselves from reality, we could not possibly define either “real” or “not real.” The only way we could define “real” would be if the universe around it were real. Therefore, if we are able to define “real,” then the universe we experience must be the one that actually exists. QED ■

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