Have you ever heard that psychologists eventually go insane?
I have, and up until now I thought it was just a stereotype. Today, I believe
that as a future psychologist I may go mad one of these days. Believe me, if
you were told that everything that you know is not actually true but instead it
is just what your brain makes you think you know, you would be a little
disturbed too.
Let’s start from the beginning. We acquire information about
our surroundings through our senses. Let’s take the example of the hearing. Maybe
many of you knew it a long time ago, but I just found out that sound in
nonexistent. What we “hear” are just the vibrations of the air. Basically, the process
works like this: let’s say your phone falls from your hand and hits the floor,
the moment it hits the floor it shakes the air, the moving air will travel all
the way to our ears and produce a vibration in your eardrum, this will
translate into electrical energy, neurons will transport the signals to the
brain, and finally your brain makes its best to make sense of the electrical
signals and translate it into what we “hear.” It is a similar process for the
other senses.
So, if what we are conscious of is not what is actually out
there, but our brain’s interpretation of it, how do we know that what we know
is actually accurate? How can we be sure that everything, anything, we know is
actually true? What if our brain is making up the things we see, the things we
hear, the people we know, or our “reality”? Yes, it does sound crazy, but how
can you prove it is not true?
There is a condition called solipsism, which is based on the
idea that your mental stages are the only mental stages. People that have this
condition firmly believes that they are the only people that exists in the
world. For them, other people as well as everything else is a product of their
imagination.
The more you think about it, the more mind blowing it is. Why?
Because you cannot prove it wrong. You can present a very powerful and convincing
argument, but you cannot actually prove it. The conflict of proving that other
people also has a consciousness is called the problem of other minds.
If you want to get your mind blown a little more, I totally
recommend you to watch this video!
