This is a quote from another forum, it's interesting, I thought we could discuss it.
Do you believe that your senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch) give you reliably true information about the world around you?
Here are some things to consider:
Everything you sense is from the past, not the present. There is lag time between when your nerve endings come in contact with a hot skillet before your brain interprets that information as "i need to drop this because it's real frikken hot!" Essentially, no-one lives in the moment truly.
There is absolutely no way for you to know exactly what other's are experiencing. Perhaps all of our optic nerves deal with information a little bit differently and what I think of as orange and you think of as orange would really look more like what I think of as red, were I to see it through your eyes.
Our senses appear to corroborate the evidence that the other senses are giving. If a taco smells tasty and feels warm you can bite into it with a high degree of certainty that it won't taste like rotten baby bird mixed with crude oil. It will be tasty. When you say someone's name, your ears hear the sound and eyes tell you when they have turned their head to look at you.
Western philosophy is basically founded (with a few notable exceptions) on the presupposition that our senses are reliable. Eastern philosophy (though I know less about it) is basically founded on the presupposition that our senses are false (all is brahman, there is no spoon ;)).
Solipsism is the philosophy that proposes that indeed our senses are not verifiable and that the self is the only thing that is (I perceive myself, thus I exist, or "je penes, donc, je suis" as Descarte said). In Solipsism the idea is that everything perceived as outside the self is a construction of the self. If you hit a solipsist, they can't complain because their philosophy dictates that it was in fact their will that caused you to hit them
Do you believe that your senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch) give you reliably true information about the world around you?
Here are some things to consider:
Everything you sense is from the past, not the present. There is lag time between when your nerve endings come in contact with a hot skillet before your brain interprets that information as "i need to drop this because it's real frikken hot!" Essentially, no-one lives in the moment truly.
There is absolutely no way for you to know exactly what other's are experiencing. Perhaps all of our optic nerves deal with information a little bit differently and what I think of as orange and you think of as orange would really look more like what I think of as red, were I to see it through your eyes.
Our senses appear to corroborate the evidence that the other senses are giving. If a taco smells tasty and feels warm you can bite into it with a high degree of certainty that it won't taste like rotten baby bird mixed with crude oil. It will be tasty. When you say someone's name, your ears hear the sound and eyes tell you when they have turned their head to look at you.
Western philosophy is basically founded (with a few notable exceptions) on the presupposition that our senses are reliable. Eastern philosophy (though I know less about it) is basically founded on the presupposition that our senses are false (all is brahman, there is no spoon ;)).
Solipsism is the philosophy that proposes that indeed our senses are not verifiable and that the self is the only thing that is (I perceive myself, thus I exist, or "je penes, donc, je suis" as Descarte said). In Solipsism the idea is that everything perceived as outside the self is a construction of the self. If you hit a solipsist, they can't complain because their philosophy dictates that it was in fact their will that caused you to hit them
