July 17, 2017 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
09:52
3744 IS EVERYTHING SUBJECTIVE? | The Daily Argument
One of the oldest problems of philosophy is proving the validity of objective reality - how do you know that your waking life is not also a dream? Hundreds of years ago, René Descartes wrestled with this problem – that we might just be a "brain in a tank" being manipulated by some demon for his own devilish fun!If you've ever been told that "nothing is objective" and "truth is relative" and "everything is subjective" - or ever doubted the validity of your senses, you desperately need arguments against this mad perspective! Take 10 minutes, gain a lifetime of sanity and defense against the dark arts of sophistry!Your support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
So, busting out of the studio, as you can see, and I'm going to start a new segment called The Argument of the Day.
For fun and profit, I'm going to give you my best thoughts of the day.
I'm going to start out with...
I'm working on a new book.
The book, The Art of the Argument, will be out in August.
It's going to be fantastic, and you'll hear all about it, and I hope that you will help drive the sales on day one to shoot it up in the rankings.
I'll keep you posted as that goes forward.
I'm really, really happy.
It's my first book since my daughter was born.
I've been doing a little bit of the old parenting, so it's been eight years since I've written a book.
I think I've gotten better, and I think you'll really, really like the book.
So, I'm working also on a new book called An Introduction to Philosophy.
It's going to be a relatively short book, action-packed, and packed with the best arguments I can come up with to help clarify your thinking, and hopefully the thinking, of course, of those around you.
Here's one that I'm working on.
There's an old problem in philosophy, which could be called the matrix problem, the Cartesian demon problem, the, you know, brain in a tank, sort of Hitler in South America, post-Second World War theories kind of problem.
And the problem goes something like this.
Okay, so you think you know what is real.
You think you know what is objective.
But, but, what if, my friends, you're a brain in a tank?
Matrix style, you're being harvested for your Duracell-like power by Alien robots.
What if you're just a brain in a tank and all that you see, all that you feel as the song goes is simply the result of wiring being plugged into your brain and giving you the illusion That you're somewhere out there in the real world doing things, but you're just a brain in a tank.
Well, interesting question.
And my response to it goes a little something like this.
I think it blows it out of the water.
And hopefully you can put that deep in the rear view and get on with productive stuff in your thinking.
So, if the hypothesis is...
That your consciousness may just be...
This might be just stuff coming in through wires into your brain, even this video, this audio.
If the hypothesis is, consciousness is a brain in a tank being manipulated or controlled by some external consciousness, well...
Then you have a problem of infinite regression.
And this is from an old story about, you know, the world is flat.
This is some old mythology.
You know, the world is flat, and underneath the world, the world is held up by an elephant.
People say, well, what's under the elephant?
Well, underneath the elephant, you see, is an alligator.
Oh, what's underneath the alligator?
Well, a rhinoceros.
What's underneath the rhinoceros?
A giant turtle.
What's underneath the giant turtle?
Oh, no, no, no!
It's turtles all the way down, all the way to infinity is turtles.
You see the logical problem, right?
So here we have the proposition that consciousness is a brain in a tank.
Well, some external consciousness must be creating and manipulating that brain in a tank.
Someone had to build the aquarium, someone had to build the housing, someone had to wire it up to your brain, your consciousness, or whatever.
So, here you have a problem of infinite regression.
If your consciousness is a brain in a tank, why is the external consciousness that is delivering the appearance of The synthesis of reality to your brain.
Why is that not a brain in a tank?
Now you could say, of course, sure, it is a brain in a tank, and it's being manipulated by an external demon, right?
So there's you, and then there's a super demon who is manipulating your consciousness to give you the appearance of reality.
And then, you see, there's a super super demon Super, super demon.
Outside of that demon, it's also manipulating the universe to give that outer demon.
And then there's a super, super, super demon.
You see this goes on.
It's like this repeat and fade, except you never fade.
So, each one Of these layers goes on forever.
It's a problem of infinite regression.
It can't work.
It doesn't work logically.
Plus, you know, conservation of matter and energy, if your hypothesis as to what goes on in human experience requires the multiplication of infinite universes, Let's just say, Occam's razor baby, slice and dice that fruit ninja style, let's just make it a little simpler than you think it is.
The simplest explanation is often the best, usually the best.
And so, you can't just have this principle that consciousness is always manipulated by an external consciousness, because you go on forever, right?
Now, maybe, at some point, perhaps, At the number 666, you say, that's it baby.
We stop at super super super 666 demon.
That's the last one.
Okay.
Well, then you have not solved the problem at all.
Because what you said is, consciousness can exist without external manipulation.
Because the last demon in the chain, who's manipulating all the demons underneath him, brain and tank down to you, If that consciousness can exist without external manipulation, exists in a real objective universe without being externally manipulated, then you've already established the reality that consciousness can exist without external manipulation.
If consciousness can exist without external manipulation, you don't need all these demons, because why not you?
If a consciousness can exist without external manipulation, just in an objective universe, why not you?
You don't need all these additional layers, these additional universes, all of this unprovable stuff about external brain in a tank, wiring, blah, blah, blah.
So, this hypothesis can be discarded.
Again, simplest explanation is usually the best.
Like that old argument back in the day, way back in the day, in the days of Ptolemy, they thought the circle was the perfect divine shape and therefore the orbits of the planets had to be circles.
It couldn't be ellipses.
It couldn't be a squished egg.
It had to be a circle.
So that meant things were a problem because using circles you can't predict the placement of the planets in the night sky.
Secondly, of course, a lot of astronomers back in the day thought that the Earth was the center of the solar system and everything spun around the Earth.
A big problem, right?
Mars, as the Earth accelerates around the Sun, Mars appears to go backwards and comes forward.
It's called the retrograde motion of Mars.
How do you explain that if the Earth is the center of the solar system?
Well, you have to create massive reams of calculations, hundreds of calculations that you've got to go through in order to find where Mars is.
Very complicated.
As soon as things get really, really complicated, you're probably on the wrong track when it comes to philosophy and ethics, too, for that matter.
So, how did they solve this Ptolemaic problem of hundreds of calculations being required to find Mars?
Nice and simple, baby.
All they did was they put the Sun at the center of the solar system and then click!
Everything fell into place.
The idea that we're a brain in a tank being manipulated by an external demon first was argued famously by Rene Descartes, who said, I may be fooled in everything, but the one thing I can be certain of is that I exist to be fooled, right?
The root of, I think, therefore I am, or as Monty Python added, I drink, therefore I am.
So, we do have one problem, though, which remains.
We do experience this subjective universe, reality, right?
We do experience this every night when we go to sleep and we dream.
So how do we know that our waking dream is not just another dream?
How do we know for sure?
We go to sleep and we experience this subjective universe.
How do we know when we wake?
Well, there's a difference, though.
There are a couple of differences.
The first thing, of course, is when we sleep, objects do not have permanent constancies.
So you've got a rock turns into a unicorn, turns into an elephant, turns into a color, you know, you can fly and then you can't, and you know, I just had this dream the other night, no, last night, about a guy who was my boss years ago, who's dead now, came back to life, had a conversation with him about something, so the dead can arise back to life, necromancer style.
So how do you solve this?
Well, when you're awake in the external objective world, Objects have constant properties.
The laws of physics are the same everywhere you go.
Water is never fire and so on.
Whereas in dreams this can happen.
So you have two different states.
Constant properties and physical laws and inconstant properties and inconstant physical laws.
Secondly, of course, when you walk to a mall in the real world, you can have like a drone.
Let's say you're being followed by a drone.
Let's say you insulted the Turkish government and you're being followed by a drone everywhere.
So you walk to the mall, the drone records you walking to the mall.
Your subjective experience walking to the mall objectively recorded by the drone matches your subjective experience.
You go to sleep and you dream that you're on a rainbow-colored unicorn flying over an old volcano.
Well, that's your subjective experience.
What does the camera point it at you all night record?
Well, it just records you maybe tossing and turning a little bit, snatches of songs or whatever, but you're not actually...
the drone doesn't record you flying over the volcano.
So, your subjective experience is not matched By external methodologies of objectively recording what's going on.
So we have a bunch of disparities here which help us differentiate between dreams and waking.
And it's fascinating to me.
You know, my daughter at the age of sort of two could figure out the difference between dreams and waking life.
And it has to do with this.
Inconstant properties, randomly changing things versus constant properties and objective verification.
When she dreamt of me in her dream, I could never repeat back to her.
What she experienced, but she, when I was there in real life, I could do so.
So I hope that this helped.
This is going to be a new segment, Argument of the Day.
