From a personal perspective, studying philosophy has various benefits: it forces logical and precise thinking, clarifies one's beliefs and motivations, helps one understand reality and knowledge better, and it can also be fun, or at least entertaining. Technically, philosophy is the study of several aspects of life as a thinking person: the ultimate nature of reality (metaphysics), existence and being (ontology), truth and how we know it (epistemology), how to interact with other people and things (ethics), how to think and argue clearly (logic). My philosophical ramblings on this site will begin with the first two of these: my own existence and from there delve into what is real. I hope you enjoy the ride.
As my starting point, I choose Rene Descartes' famous "cogito ergo sum", "I think therefore I am". It is hard to disagree with that; if some thinking is occurring some existing thing must be doing it and if I am aware of it, then it is surely me doing the thinking, so therefore I exist. But what is this "I" and what does it mean to "exist"? The "I" is clearly the "entity" doing the "thinking", or forming "ideas" in its "mind". And "exist" means having some sort of true reality or being.
Here we come across one problem common to all philosophy; the terminology used and the meaning of words. All those terms in quotations in the previous paragraph have been discussed, defined and argued about, some for millennia. Without getting lost in semantics or semiotics I will merely assume at this point that the reader (if this post and you too actually exist) has more or less the same understanding of those words as I do. This cannot always be assumed, however, and much of what passes for philosophy is often hair splitting, or confusion about the precise meanings of terms. That is not the fun part!
In any case, "I exist" is my starting "truth" for exploring reality and developing my personal philosophy. Beyond this it is hard to go without first making one or more assumption. Unless I want to stop here, I will need to propose some additional truths or tenets about reality. Those may not be absolutely provable from my minimal starting point, but they can be checked and tested in my mind to see how reasonable they are and where they will take me. This is a common feature of philosophy - making tentative assumptions or positing basic tenets. In Descartes case, he assumed that God exists and that God would not fool him with a fake reality, but I will try a different route.
Is there anything real apart from me? Is the "I" the only thing that exists? In principle, I could be a unitary thinking entity, a universe in and of itself, that is just mentally playing with myself, pretending, without knowing it, that there is a world of some sort beyond my thoughts. Yes, of course, it seems that there is such a world: I can see, hear, touch, feel, hurt, etc. But in truth, all those sensations or experiences are just sensory signals coming into my mind via nervous pathways. This is the basis of the "brain in a vat" concept of unreality. Similar to the Matrix movies, where a fictional "reality" is fed into a brain from some simulation machine, or virtual reality device. Even the concept of nerves and a brain might, in principle, be only figments of my data feed or subconscious imagination.
In addition to an apparent world around me, there also seems to be, in my mind, the passage of "time". Even alone in my mind, I sense that this thought comes after that one, and that there seems to be a progression of mental activity, even if there are no sensations coming from "outside". I also seem to have "memories" of events in previous times, as well as anticipations about future events. That is, I feel like I can recall as well as plan, so some temporal dimension must be needed in my existence, even if the memories are fake and the plans are meaningless. The concept and nature of "time" has perplexed and confounded philosophers for millennia, and physicists for at least a century. I am not about to solve the conundrum here, so will merely accept that the dimension of time is somehow part of my reality.
In my mental dialogue with myself, the world I think I see, hear and touch, and the "people" (real or otherwise) I seem to interact with are much more complicated than I am capable of imagining, and they bring concepts and ideas to mind that I am not capable of generating. I am not a perfect genius to be able to create all that I experience in my mind. I am not aware of continually and consciously creating reality around me, and to think that all of the external world I seem to experience is the product of some unconscious part of my mind seems highly unlikely. What purpose would that have? (Then again, is purpose necessary?) Yes, my mind can generate imaginary fantasies and I can have dreams, but they are either fuzzy, illogical (even to my own mind), limited, or difficult to construct in any detail, whereas the "reality" I seem to experience pours into my awareness willy-nilly and seemingly, at a huge data rate, without my own mental effort, even when I am not paying attention.
Therefore, it seems unlikely or highly improbable that I and only I exist, and only as a mind, with no physical reality around me. One possibility that Descartes proposed was that there is another being of some sort (he called it a malicious demon) that is feeding me all these sensations in order to fool me into thinking that there is some reality beyond me. Why it would want to do that if it were only the two of us I could not say. However, to do so, this other entity would have to be separate from me since I have no experience of it. Moreover, there would have to exist some mechanism for it to feed me this stream of conscious experiences that seem to be separate from my own thoughts, being and mental activity. Thus, although I cannot prove it with certainty, there must surely be at least two entities and some connection between them in whatever "reality" is. Even if the second entity is my own subconscious mind, there must be some sort of separation between it and my conscious mind, so again, there are at least two separate parts one way or other.
If two beings or parts, why not more? Why not admit the existence of other minds, or at least some other entities, if only ones that generate the data for the second being to stream into my mind? Much of the data I experience seems to point toward a bigger reality, or "world" out there, so perhaps what appears to be a reality outside my mind actually does exist! Is that a leap too far? On what basis can I make this leap? For it not to be true, I would have to posit the following: my thinking generates what seem to me to be actions, including speech composed of words and sentences that seem to (imperfectly) capture and represent some of those thoughts. Said "actions" appear to elicit corresponding changes in the data stream: I "see" my "body" move, I "hear" my words, I "feel" changes within my "body". Moreover, these supposed "actions" sometimes appear to lead to responses from the supposed reality around me: my view of the "world" shifts, my "hand" touches something in my field of view, and sometimes, other "entities" seem to respond to me using similar words and sentences, which I "hear" and then decode to (usually) make some sense in my mind. Could all that be that second entity's activity, cleverly and carefully arranged to fool me? For what possible purpose? Solely its own entertainment?
Clearly any such entity capable of doing all that must be superior to my limited, slow self. The data stream coming into my mind seems far more detailed, quick and sophisticated than anything going out from my thoughts. If the other entity and its connection to me were the only things in existence, then I am clearly the lesser of the two and have no control over the other or the link between us. Perhaps the other entity is just insane after realizing he is alone with an idiot? But consistent and steady data streams are not what one thinks of as insanity. That does not seem a very promising way to build up a sense of existence or a philosophy of reality.
So, am I ready to take the leap and suppose that there is indeed some sort of physical reality apart from my mind, in which I exist? Again, that cannot be proven, but does not seem unreasonable, and the few conceivable alternatives are not very attractive. Perhaps it is I who am insane and just imaging everything? But then, what does "insane" mean? And how did I come into being, since I seem to be able to recall thoughts and sensations from only a finite past? I suppose that whatever I am could be somehow programmed to "forget" events further back than a certain time. On the other "hand" (so to speak), my "memories" could just have been implanted a few seconds ago and the thoughts I am having are just a test for some Artificial Intelligence developer, seeing where his simulation software will take him... Again, unprovable but not particularly happy to think about. In any case, some other entity would have to have programmed me or produced my detailed memories to feed into me, thereby "proving" that something other than me exists.
I should take a moment to talk about "proof" and how I can prove any conclusions I try to make. Strictly speaking, very few postulates or conclusions can be proven as absolutely true. There are mathematical theorems and geometry proofs, which once understood are seen as necessarily true, and there are deductive proofs such as syllogisms, which can be seen as certainly true, given their premises. But it is rare that other aspects of life -- cause and effect, the meaning of texts, scientific theories, and yes, reality itself -- can be proven to be true at that same level of undoubtable certainty. Even longstanding scientific "truths" can be and are questioned, or are subject to testing.
David Hume famously showed that inductive thinking cannot be proven by logic, but even he admitted that usually, inductive thinking is all we have to move forward. Thus, for instance, we get "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" as used in courtrooms. That is the best you can hope for in a murder trial, where someone can always put together a fanciful explanation that "it wasn't me", all evidence to the contrary. In such a case, and in most cases of reasoning, one has to look at the evidence on hand and draw the best conclusion one can, bearing in mind that there may be other evidence that one has not seen or that may arise in future, or that there may be a better explanation or hypothesis in the offing. In many cases, even "beyond reasonable doubt" is impossible, and we have to settle for "most likely", or "on the balance of probabilities" however understood and interpreted.
This question of "knowing" is what epistemology is all about: how do we know what we think we know? This involves examining "evidence", facts or inputs that bear on the question at hand. In this initial study, it means accepting and interpreting the sensations and data stream coming into my mind, trying to make sense of it all, and I hope, learning to trust my senses and deciding whether what they seem to be telling me is true and reasonable.
As another aside, babies are natural philosophers; that is, true scientists. Being born into a world means being confronted with all sorts of novel sensations, and slowly learning to make sense of them. Babies see shapes, colours, patterns and changes, and need to interpret them as things, separate objects and movements. They also see things waving around in front of them and eventually realize these are their mother or their own hands and find they have some means of influencing what happens. Their minds are constantly building, adding to, and revising their mental "model" of reality as new data is collected and their thinking abilities improve. In that sense, each mind is constantly using its mental model of reality to interpret what is happening around it. For instance, when driving a car, I have a mental map of where I am and where I'm going, and a constantly updating model of what is around me: that car in the other lane behind me gaining on me, that sign coming up that I cannot yet read, my position in my lane, how fast I am going, and so on.
Going back to my reverie, how sure can I be that I am not alone, but that some reality exists beyond my thinking mind? The answer is that I cannot be certain. I cannot prove absolutely that anything else really exists. Given the nature of the question, what possible evidence could I accept that could not just be part of my dream or subconscious imagination, or the data stream from that "other" entity? Nevertheless, as outlined above, I have some reasons to think that there must be something other than my own overactive mind. At least such an assumption is not unreasonable, given the data stream I experience, and it is surely preferred to the alternative. Therefore, I will go with it. A world outside my mind does exist! My model of said world may be inaccurate and is surely incomplete, but I cannot accept that it is entirely wrong or just fictional.
Note that I cannot yet refer to "you", "we" or another person since I do not yet know whether you or others truly exist. Therefore the next step is to decide whether or not there are other minds in the reality I experience. Here too, I could be in some sort of simulation or virtual reality, where a clever AI generates the appearance and feedback from what appear to be creatures similar to myself "out there". Perhaps all the "people" I see and interact with are just robots or holodeck projections programmed to interact with me? Or perhaps mindless zombie-like beings, pre-programmed to interact in certain limited ways with me. The belief that I am the only mind in the world and that all the other apparent people are either figments of my imagination or constructions of some other entity intended to fool me is known as solipsism, although how I ever came up with that word if I am the only mind that exists, I don't know. That reminds me of the joke about the solipsist professor; his best students feared that if he died, they would cease to exist.
Once again, we (oh sorry, I) cannot "prove" that you or anyone else actually exists as a mind apart from mine. Nevertheless, I can try to reason about this. When I am seemingly interacting with other apparent persons, I note that they appear to think, reason and act in ways similar but not identical to myself. Although each one is different, they appear to look similar to the way I look (shape, arms, heads, size, etc.), at least with consistent differences (beard, height, dress, voice, gender, etc.). Moreover, when they "speak", I can understand what they appear to be saying, and that seems to connect with my own "speech" and actions. That is, conversations seem to be meaningful most of the time. Moreover, those others' behaviours seems to be similar enough to my own that I can claim to understand them and what they are doing, at least much of the time. The interactions and relationships I seem to have feel like they are real. Also, there seems to be a lot more of "them" than would be necessary to simulate a fake reality for me, and my imagination would get rather tired dreaming up new and slightly different versions of "them" wherever I go. Moreover, I often hear or read ideas novel or even surprising to me - something that would be tricky if they were all in my own mind.
If these supposed other people seem to operate and exist in the same way that I do, perhaps the simplest explanation is that they actually do exist in the same way that I do. If I was looking at myself externally, and all I could see was the data stream associated with my external (non-mental) self, I postulate that it would appear more or less like what I perceive of these others, aside from differentiating details; that is, I suppose that I am pretty similar to those others; i.e. there is nothing special about my physical self, other than that is where "I" appear to reside.
Again, the alternative is that these others are somehow simulacrums, robots, or simulations designed to behave in ways similar to myself. In that case, what would be the difference whether or not they were "real" persons? It would be like a Turing test: if I cannot tell whether the "others" I perceive are persons like me or simulations of the same, then there is no meaningful difference. Then, rather than assume that I am the only "real" person and everyone else is fake or unreal somehow, I would rather go with the hypothesis that these others are indeed real people, like me in various ways, and most importantly, having minds of their own. I can see evidence of this in their behaviour, especially when compared with my own, over time as the interactions and evidence collects.
So where are we now? To recap, I exist, I am not alone, there is some sort of reality outside my mind, there are other minds similar to my own in this reality. Well then, hello reader, you real person, welcome to my thoughts! Stay tuned, more on reality next time...
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