Copyright© April 13, 2006 by Biology Cabinet Organization.

By Nasif Nahle and Adip Said
April 10, 2006

Solipsism is the belief that nothing exists, except the own mind.

According to solipsists, the universe that we contemplate is an imaginary universe, and that everything that we perceive only exists in our imagination. Solipsists affirm that you only are sure about your own existence, no more.

The Solipsism is not a philosophical system of thought, but an extremely subjective belief. Solipsists found troubles when they should explain death; but when they face an alley without opening, then resort to what they call "free will", which actually is an irrational flee from the trouble proposed.

For example, when we point death as evidence against Solipsism, they claim that given that the person that has invented death has not yet died, that person cannot assure that his mind has died, and that is conceivable that the dying person continues being alive when we have seen his death.

As you can see, the solipsistic argument in the last paragraph is a sophism because as death is the end of the existence of all living beings, the person that has died cannot return to confirm if he or she has really died. Besides, as that person has die, he/she will not think anything because all mental processes stop when the brain dies, so that person will never know whether he/she was imagining a cosmos.

Solipsists presume that nobody is able to dispute their ideas because they can always contradict any rational argument through the story of "the brain into the keg"; however, as they declare that there could be ideas that differ from their ideas, they are also admitting the existence of independent minds that are so talented as to disagree with solipsism.

Another problem that the solipsists try to solve with a subtle answer is the existence of murders and poverty. If all the cosmos surges only from our imagination and only we are real and we play the game in our cosmos at our desires, why we cannot stop crime, poverty, disease, etc.? When solipsists have to answer this question, they adduce the existence of a Universal regulator, that is to say, a god. As you can see, this argument is a fallacy and senselessness because they admit that a not-imagined regulator exists independently from our existence. If solipsists admit the existence of another individual besides ego, why solipsists do not admit the existence of a reality independent from ego?

Biodiversity, genetics, behavior and spatial trips are stumbling blocks for the followers of Descartes. For example, was not it easier to imagine a Mars plenty of life? If we never imagined a spherical Earth, would not it be easier for us to imagine a plain Earth and some fabricated astronauts could see to a flat Earth from the outer space?  ? Is the fourth dimension (time) of the Universe something produced by our imagination? If we invented the nuclear particles of an atom, why it is so hard to understand their technicalities? If we created our own universe, why we have to learn the things that we by ourselves had invented? Do you remember the first time when you saw a bee? If you invented it, then you would be able to predict that you should not to touch it because it could sting you. Oh! It was a big bombshell for almost all us, wasn’t it?

However, the most serious problem faced by solipsists is the state of a person when sleeping or anesthetized. How a sleeping person is able to imagine that he is sleeping?  How an anesthetized person is able to imagine a cosmos in which that mind is anesthetized and are imagining some doctors and nurses doing a surgery when the anesthetized person’s intellect is so blocked as to imagine something?

Finally, where did you rise from, if it was only you who imagined your mother, your father, your relatives, your cosmos, etc.? If you revise your life, you will remember that you have grown from nothingness. You only have memories from two or three years old on. Who imagined your existence, thus you could exist? Could you imagine a world where you have forgotten something?

To conclude, solipsism is the major fallacy never invented by a philosopher at a loss.


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