Solipsism

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!