Monopoly on the truth? We don’t even have a monopoly of self…

Our skepticism often reveals epistemic problems revealing what we don't know about reality, but what about self-knowledge? In my last post I presented my readers with a poem that introduces a skeptical problem about self-knowledge. It asks "what if I was born five minutes ago, all my memories implanted and fake?" For someone new to philosophy, this question might sound quite ridiculous. But notice that you cannot disprove this question in any way. Do you really know for sure that you did NOT wake up just five minutes ago, and with all your memories leading up to that point being fake and implanted by an outside force? Well you can't know for sure now can you… Why? Because there is no way to disprove the problem.



Even I cannot be sure I didn't just now wake up, with memories that seem very real, but are nevertheless fake. Perhaps someone else wrote those previous sentences to get me to question the circumstances of my existence and as my first lesson? Yes it seems superstitious to entertain the idea, but that's only because we have this feeling from our corrupted memories that gives us a perspective of time and age. We believe we have lived in the past (beyond five minutes ago). But that belief is just another corrupted memory. We have so many corrupted memories that we have become "accustomed" to how familiar they are, and in comparison to this new question being posed. But as you all can tell by now, logic demands that "familiarity with our past" could simply be the familiarity with an artificial past. What's even more damaging than this, is that for this skeptical problem to have weight, we don't need an outside agent to give us these artificial memories. All we need is a touch of insanity. Are you absolutely certain that you are not insane? Ever seen Shutter Island?  Most crazy people don't know they're crazy..  They think they're getting saner.  


You might be thinking, "well..  psh!  That's just ridiculous because there is absolutely NO WAY it could persist this long.  I would have discovered SOMETHING contradictory that led me to doubt all of this!"   Well who says the previous moments, of any perceived moment happening (including now), is not a false memory?  If experience over time is perceived by our memory, and if your memory is artificial or corrupted, then any given moment in time might be fake.  Even two days from "now" would seem like two days had passed, and that you have existed for at least two days from reading this blog, but those two days from now might be artificial memory.  And in your delusion that "two days have passed," your memory of reading this blog would be fake as well!  You will still be unable to prove you existed beyond five minutes ago "two days" from now! There is no telling how long you have actually existed!  But as I will show, this also entails that you might not exist at all!  ;)       

If you cannot disprove you were not born into this world "just then," then how do you know we were not born "just now"? The argument destroys all knowledge, all free will, and it ultimately takes the concept of "self" and reduces it to a momentary delusion. We could be another person's split personality. Ever think of that? Multiple personality disorder, or more professionally referred to as Dissociative Identity Disorder exists, and therefore it is quite possible you exist in this moment with corrupt memories, and born of a delusionary dream of another person. This is an actual possibility within what you call, or remember to be "reality." Think about that. Not only can you not justify your identity's existence or your identity itself within a skeptical problem of science fiction, but you cannot disprove it isn't happening right now as a mental disease of another person. If that were the case, it would mean that your whole personal identity that you believe to exist right now is actually a dream of a mental patient. I have thus reduced your identity to a dream. This is largely the kind of skepticism Descartes uses in his Meditations on first philosophy. He reduces all knowledge until he knows only one thing: That he doubts or "there is a doubter." And because doubting is the beginning of thought, there is a doubter he refers to as "self" and that self is thinking. Therefore he came to the conclusion "so long as I am doubting/thinking, I am existing."


But again my people of the sentient puddle… Descartes' arguments fail to persuade us beyond this one gram of knowledge that claims feebly to the hope that "so long as we are doubting we are existing…" He still could not persuade with any certainty or satisfaction that we are not just brains in a vat, a mental patient's dream, or that we were born just five minutes ago…with all our memories fake.  But he does assert with this argument that there has been born another separate consciousness, it's age indeterminable, that is doubting and perceives itself with a reflective "I", a thinking being. Isolation from other agents is what really defines the self. We believe via experience that our conscious operations are separate from other operations by other agents in the world around us.  We continue with a feeling that we are free to judge all separate agents from ourselves (including ourselves as we reflect upon our circumstance of existence).


What does it all mean? Well it means that we cannot be sure of anything really. We cannot claim a personal monopoly on absolute certainty. As beings capable of knowledge, we have no way of knowing for certain whether or not we possess absolute truth. This creates a responsibility on us for acquiring knowledge in a careful and humble manner; never to assert the truth or conclusion without having inferred such conclusions from the facts. 


Ultimately, we accept the reality in which we are presented as an axiom derived from the experience that it is the first and only reality we have perceived and remember, and more importantly, all other perceived agents accept this reality also.  


Addendum:


I wanted to add a quick response to a question posed after reading this:  "Then how can you be sure there is no god?"  Well I don't claim to have a personal monopoly on that knowledge.  I don't have access to the "absolute" truth of such a claim.  HOWEVER!   Both the atheist and theist (non-religious and religious) are operating on belief axioms which they universally agree are practical assumptions prior to the arguments they are debating:  1) reality exists, thus the laws of nature limiting that reality exist.  2) Other agents exist: People with personal identities exist in which we are in communication with.  3) That reality in which we all suppose to exist within is the first reality in which we are presented at birth, and it is the primary source in which we must derive all supposed knowledge from.  


So, if we accept the axioms entailed by assuming we exist in a reality with humans and natural laws, then both atheist and theist can argue on those same axioms without addressing radical skeptical dilemmas introduced below the grounds of those axioms (such as in this post).  

 
- Phaedrus