I’m not sure I entirely understand your post, but I think a discussion of solipsism is interesting.
Just as a starting point, here’s the definition from wikipedia:
“Solipsism (Latin: solus, alone + ipse, self) is the philosophical idea that “My mind is the only thing that exists”. Solipsism is an epistemological or metaphysical position that knowledge of anything outside the mind is unjustified. The external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist. In the history of philosophy, solipsism has served as a skeptical hypothesis, and is considered impossible to refute.”
For the sake of convenience, I’m going to talk about Rene Descartes for a bit, but that’s just for my own convenience (and because many of you will be familiar with Descartes), not because these ideas can’t be understood without this kind of name dropping (which I may well do throughout).
Solipsism is very similar to (and often inspired by) Descartes’ conclusion, “I think therefore I am” (often expressed as cogito ergo sum), although Descartes ended up going beyond a solipsistic point of view.
Descartes arrived at this point by pursuing his skeptical project to doubt everything he possibly could and see if there was anything he could know with certainty.
He justified this approach by an appeal to various observations about the fallibility of his own intuitions as well as the use of a thought experiment known as the Evil Daemon (which is an extreme version of the same kind of idea you’re talking about with your reference to The Truman Show). An other thought experiment with a similar purpose is the Brain in a Vat.
You can read about both of these thought experiments on Wikipedia:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_Daemon
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat
Both of these presuppose an outside force which is capable of tricking us about any and all of our observations. How can we know we aren’t being fooled? We can’t. Despite this nearly total uncertainty about what we believe, we are left with that inescapable premise: “I think, therefore I am.”
Although I believe there are some problems here, I like this approach very much.
“Assumptions have all the advantages of theft over honest toil.†- Bertrand Russell
If an argument, no matter how complex, no matter how many premises it contains, contains one false premise (or assumption), the conclusion is not certain. If we engage in philosophical thought without examining our basic beliefs, we risk making this kind of mistake. Therefore, I am very sympathetic with Descartes’ project to doubt everything he can, and a solipsistic point of view. But I feel compelled to go further.
To me, conceptions such as mind, self, and thought, all rely on further assumptions. I can find no support for these assumptions. My conclusion is that even solipsism (as defined above) relies too much on assumptions. The only conclusion I can come to is that there is no basic belief, no starting point, no first premise, that we are justified in believing.
I could discuss my reasons for this further, but feel I’ve typed enough for the time being.
What do you think?
