How can I prove that everything I see really exists and isn’t just an illusion/ image created by my brain? How can I really know that once I look away from something that it is still there and doesn’t turn black? I thought about the mirror, but maybe the image in the mirror is also just created. The people I hear talking behind me could also be gone but I only hear the audio and once I turn around they appear visually. I thought about using a camera but the content that is saved on the camera could also be fake.
Can someone tell me how to prove that others really exist?
How can I really know that people are responding to this question and not only AI? I have absolutely no proof that this forum could be real. Look at ChatGPT.
I have so many questions.
This is a great philosophical question, people have been asking themselves this for a very long time. Some have answers: You may have heard “Cogito ergo sum.”, by Rene Descartes. The context of this quote is that it is a logical conclusion, after the border began purposefully trying to show what really REALLY exists, as he chose to doubt about the existence of everything.
After a lot of thinking and writing he came to the conclusion that there is no way for you to know that your life isn’t just a hallucination, projected unto your brain by a daemon, however, there is one thing you CAN be sure of: If you are asking yourself these questions, you are thinking, that is undeniable you 100% experience your thoughts first hand, and therefore it is safe to say that because you can think, you can be sure you exist. Cogito, ergo sum. (I think, therefore I am)
If we don’t have the baseline of trusting our senses, which should include perception of our own thoughts; how can we make that statement? Why should one trust perception of thought over other senses?
Who is to say that the words in your head is even your own? Maybe you are just along for the ride.
Correct, but you exist for sure, because you are hearing that voice, whatever it actually is. Even if it is a hallucination, it is you perceiving it. So at least of your own existence, you can be sure.
Descartes didn’t use that as a conclusion; he used it as the basis from which he built up to “prove” the existence of God.
That said, that’s still the only conclusion I can reach with certainty, making me a weak solipsist.