In Doubt We Trust

Or at least, I do. I think most agnostics would probably agree on that point – indeed, I daresay that not a few of us would add that those four words are pretty much the basis of the scientific method.

But doubt can leave one with little in the way of reliable facts. And action can only be based on reliable facts. Well, those or assumptions.

So starting here, I’m going to spend the next few entries of Militant Agnostic talking about the assumptions that I, as an agnostic, find it necessary to make in order to act with any particular certainty in this world. A lot of this is going to seem like philosophical hair-splitting to a lot of you, I suspect, but I make no apology for that. After all, I don’t see very many people at all apologising for their beliefs, so why should I?

The first assumption – and boy, this is The Big One, is this:

That Reality is Actually Real

After all, this reality is only provably real within its own axioms. We cannot isolate it and run tests on it the same way we can with many of its components. In fact, the only thing we can objectively prove the existence of is subjectivity

And so we can never be quite sure that it is truly real, which in turn leads to a number of other theories about it:

Solipsism:

There is no way that I know of to absolutely disprove the Solipsist Hypothesis. No way to say for sure that everything I experience is not merely an hallucination. I mean, you might think you’re real, but that doesn’t actually prove it. And the fact that the world appears to be vastly more complex than I could possibly imagine – well, maybe I just don’t give myself enough credit for the vividness of my imagination.

The elephant in the room for solipsism is that logically, if I am the creator of all reality, then I am, effectively, its omnipotent god. And yet I demonstrably do not control all of it, or indeed, very much of it. This problem can by side-stepped by positing that the solipsist reality is created by the unconscious mind, and that the conscious mind only lives in it. But to do this makes solipsism merely realism with the unconscious mind playing the role of universe – in which case you’ve added a layer of confusion but gotten no closer to the solution of any philosophical problem.

Now, I’m not saying that I think that solipsism is the truth, not for a moment. I think there’s a very low probability indeed – one in a googolplex, maybe – that it is true. But not no probability at all, and as such, I cannot rule it out. I do, however, hope that it isn’t true, as I find it morally repugnant – solipsism is the very antithesis of responsibility.

Simulation:

It’s also possible that the reality we experience (or think we experience) is actually some sort of simulation. Yes, yes, like the fucking Matrix. (Only, you know, with a better script and humans who are actually attractive in it.) I distinguish this from solipsism in that it has an external, rather than an internal, origin. If this world is a simulation, then it is something that was imposed on us by an other of some description.

I actually find this one even less plausible than I do solipsism, as it is unsatisfying without some sort of explanation as to the motives of the other responsible. Moreover, it is, by our current understanding of matter, energy and mind, staggeringly inefficient. I do find it less morally problematical than solipsism, but I dislike what it has to say about my status as a free-willed individual.

Furthermore, both these theories suffer from the converse problem to that of the inability to prove that reality is real: they are no falsifiable. We cannot devise any test we are actually able to carry out in order to prove or disprove either of them.

And so, at the end of the day, I must assume that this is the really real world, even though I cannot prove to my satisfaction that it is. I just have to settle for thinking that it is overwhelmingly likely that this is the real world, and move on to the next assumption.

See you next Wednesday.