I Am – You’re Not

Probably the single most important branch of philosophy is Metaphysics. It asks the question, “What is reality?” The next branch is Epistemology, or “What is knowledge?” In other words, I hear your metaphysics, now prove it. Together these two branches pose the ultimate question, “What is Truth?” These then form the foundation for Ethics, correct action, and this leads to Politics, the fourth branch, which looks at applying ethics to society. Finally, all this is expressed emotionally through Aesthetics, the manifestation of philosophy.

The Metaphysical view that I express as Romantic is summarized in this phrase. “We live in the real world and exist within our perceptions”. I came upon this as reconciliation between Empiricism and Rationalism/Idealism.

These two concepts come from the philosophical branch of Epistemology. The Empiricist point of view is that knowledge comes from experience. This forms the foundation of the scientific method and marks the beginning of the modern world. Rationalism and Idealism hold to the belief that knowledge comes not from the senses but from the inner world of the reasoning mind and the heart.

I realised that both approaches to Epistemology were responses to two different Metaphysical realities. This led me to create my Triune Theory of Reality. I admit that it is not very original and resulted from a cut-n-paste approach, and yet it seems to have stood the test of minor scrutiny by myself and others.

First there is Objective Reality. This is the physical world governed by the laws of science and can be known through the scientific method. In this reality, a thing is what it is. Everything in the universe is real, solid, and true.

Next there is the Subjective Reality. As we observe and interact with Objective Reality we perceive it more than we sense it. It’s like going through life wearing tinted glasses. The tinting is the result of each person’s unique psycho-emotional make-up, or what I call “the soul”. Thoughts, feelings, experiences, social programming, values, and beliefs all conspire to lend a personalised perception of reality. The Subjective Reality is a model of the world that we carry around in our heads and interact with and respond to.

The third “reality” is the Artificial, or man-made, Reality. This world is the result of human creation and must be constantly maintained through human time, energy, and skill, also known as production. Without production this reality will cease to be thanks to entropy. Artificial Reality has two components; the Material and the Social. The Material is primarily dependent on Objective Reality and the Social on the Subjective. Both create the world we live in.

According to Umberto Eco in his book, On Beauty, the marked difference between the Classical and Neo-Classical concepts of beauty and the Romantics that challenged them was determining the source of beauty. The Classical view was that beauty was inherent to the thing itself in the symmetry, lines, and form. The Romantics, with their emphasis on the individual and individual feeling, took the revolutionary approach best summarised by, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” The source of Beauty lies in the perceptions of the viewer and not the thing itself.

Who is right? They both are. The answer depends on your perspective. Likewise, when we question the truth about reality, and the ethics and politics that are built on our conclusions, perspective plays a large role. This is why the concept of the Triune Nature of Reality is important. Do we choose to take the Objective, Subjective, or Artificial perspective? Since most people cannot identify these different perspectives they assume that there exists only one point of view – theirs.

Here is the great human cognitive dilemma: There is a real world outwith human consciousness, but we can never know it. All that we can ever know is our perception of reality. In other words, it’s all just you.

It’s kind of strange when you really stop and think about it. The real world of the Objective exists independent of us. Life goes on whether you think about it or not. Reality does not care about your opinions, beliefs, desires, or hopes. It just is. All that feels real is our idea of reality, and since it is only an idea, then it isn’t real. We instinctively accept the unreal conceptual Subjective Reality of the as fact, but we must have faith in the real world of the Objective. It’s all turned around. No wonder we get confused.

In philosophy there is the concept of solipsism, from the Latin meaning “the self alone”. The notion here is that only the self exists because we cannot prove the existence of anything outwith the self. Sounds crazy, but when you consider that Objective Reality, including all the things and people in it, can never truly be known, then it’s a short hop to saying all that exists is my consciousness. I exist – but you don’t.

There is this idea of the philosophical zombie. It is presented as a thought experiment along the lines that every human, other than ourselves, is lacking in consciousness or sentience but only mimic the outward demonstrations of it. So for example, you poke a zombie with a sharp stick, it feels no pain but it cries out as if it did. The world and the people in it are little more than moving scenery.

The obvious problem with this idea is that I exist and you don’t, but from your perspective, You exist and I don’t. I have never heard anyone consciously voice this belief but you see people behave in a manner that can only be explained by presuming them to be solipsists, or extreme egocentrists.

Solipsism seems completely ludicrous as a philosophy despite the fact that you can reason out its premise. However, I’m looking at the uncomplicated version found in the most simplistic form. The more complex it gets the more muddy the waters become till you cannot see the solipsism for the trees.

Have you ever been in a situation where someone insults you, then you insult them back, and then they get angry at you for insulting them? How about being in a conversation where anything you say is not met with follow-up questions but with unrelated personal anecdotes?

In the first example, the person feels justified insulting you because as a zombie you have no feelings, but when you insult them back, well, you just hurt their feelings. In the second example, none of what you are saying is real because it does not relate to what is real to them, that is, their Subjective Reality.

On a deeper level, there’s religion. A person believes something because they feel it to be true. So for them the feelings signify truth. This disregards that other people with contrary religious beliefs have the exact same feelings about their faith. So if your feelings support your faith, then why don’t the feelings of others support theirs? The answer is because they do not have feelings. They are just zombies. Only you have feelings so only your feeling show truth.

Another sign of solipsism is called projection. This is when a person denies their own feelings and then projects them onto their perception of someone else. Suppose someone hates what they perceive in their minds as a particular group of people. They deny the hate but claim that group hates them, thus justifying any harsh actions towards that group. Their perceived enemy may not even know that they exist.

Looking at how the Subjective Reality relates to the Artificial Reality we need only see children in the marketplace with their parents. The child finds something they want and proclaims “I want to buy this”. This simple statement reveals that the child cannot conceive one of the key features of the Artificial Reality – economics.

Products are produced and sold to other people who exchange money, which is a symbol of their production, for products. The child produces nothing; therefore the child hasn’t any money to buy products. The child is dependent upon the production of his parents.

However, from the child’s perspective a new thing has entered their Subjective Reality and he wants it without any regard for the truth of economics. For him there is no Objective Reality or Artificial Reality and the rules they impose. There is only what he wants in his little subjective universe. This behaviour is not limited to children. Many adults decide that they want something and cannot conceive that it is unattainable according to the rules outwith their Subjective Reality. Like the child who throws a tantrum when his parent says no, these people throw tantrums when someone serves as the voice of reason.

Here’s another example of solipsism. Place where singles meet are called meat-markets. When it comes to relationships it really is a market with each person having a market value. In older times it was called the marriage market. Usually, the woman puts her goods on display to draw male customers and she decides from the bidders who gets the contract. Generally, the prime market time for a woman is her early twenties and for a man it is the early thirties. Recently, someone who discovered this point objected saying that girls her age, early twenties, find such men “creepy”. So let’s tear this statement down.

When a woman goes to the market and dresses to impress she expects to draw the attentions of men. If the men she draws are acceptable to her then all is well, but if the men are not acceptable then they are the subject of derision. If she finds him too old for her tastes he is a “creepy old man” if he lacks social skills, then she might say he is “a looser”. So the man’s actions are judged according to her Subjective Reality without any regards for the suitor’s feelings, personality, or character. After all, he is just a zombie.

Of course not all women are like the example and yes, all people judge others according to their Subjective rules. What makes this an example of solipsism is that the judgement is made without any regard for either Objective or Artificial Reality. The world is what it is, and what it is is how she perceives it to be. The man is creepy because she has determined it so. The only reality is the reality of her feelings about things.

I have always held that the worst quality a person could have is to be inconsiderate. Why? Because by its very definition – the absence of consideration – the offending person has no idea that they are being inconsiderate. They are so focused on their own Subjective Reality that they deny others their Subjective Reality. To be courteous is to remind yourself that others have the same human consciousness and feelings that you do. In essence, you remind yourself that other people are real too.

I subscribe to the Aristotelian idea that you are what you do. You are not your mind, your heart, or your ego. You are your will, because it is through will that you act or don’t act in the world. Through your volition you produce the words and deeds that define you as a person and set the course of your life.

But these actions do not emerge spontaneously. The building needs a blueprint, but the blueprint is not the building. The film needs its storyboard, but the storyboard is not the film. Our actions in the Objective Reality are the results of our thoughts and feelings in our unique Subjective Reality but not reality in and of themselves. Your thoughts and feelings are nothing more than your thoughts and feelings, however where the mind goes the body follows.

In 1925 Napoleon Hill published the book, The Laws of Success. The idea came from Andrew Carnegie who compiled a list of the great achievers of his day and commissioned Hill to interview them and discover the secret of their success. The book was the result. Twelve years later, Hill condensed the information and published the seminal work, Think and Grow Rich. This is seen as an early form of the current self-help phenomenon known as the Laws of Attraction which claims that human consciousness has the power to alter reality in sometimes miraculous ways.

However, this is just another conceit of the Subjective. It is important to understand the miracles that it can accomplish but also its limitations. It can lead us to great heights and accomplishments that appear miraculous but also to horrible disillusionments and even sins.

As Voltaire said, “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.” Belief in God has, in my opinion, brought more good than ill, at least the Christian God. Belief is quite possibly one of the greatest drives for human activity for right and wrong, but this is all the result of the Subjective driving human action in the Objective and the Subjective is ultimately a chosen illusion.

Because human beings live in the real world of the Objective Reality and simultaneously exist within the realm of their own pocket universe of their Subjective Reality, we are capable of incredible things but also prone to sometimes disastrous cognitive biases.

A cognitive bias is basically a faulty perception of Objective Reality that leads to a faulty representation of reality in our Subjective model. Here’s a list of some http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases or for something a bit more entertaining there’s this video.

An example of one such bias is the confirmation bias. This means that you can only see facts that support your preconceived notions. So if you believe that all Blacks are criminals, then you will only notice Blacks who are criminals and not notice those who are not.

Likewise, perhaps you judge an individual in the negative, then that is all you perceive in them and not the positive. If someone that you like gives you a gift you are grateful but if someone you do not like gives you a gift you think that they are insincere. Confirmation bias is one way that people sustain their subjective worldview whether their beliefs are valid or not and keep us in that state of solipsism.

Romanticism is all about individualism and individual feeling. The power of belief and emotion is to be embraced. However, on this path there is the danger of falling into solipsism, the danger of embracing your individualism and feelings but denying the individualism and feelings of others.

This is why Romantics must embrace the rule, “No man has claim on my life and I have no claim on the lives of others”. This means recognising the Natural Rights of others. It means reminding yourself that other people are people too and not zombies. I believe that by doing this mutual respect and courtesy that seems to be lacking in this day and age will make a return, for the sins of inconsideration, envy, jealousy, cruelty, selfishness, and arrogance all stem from the solipsistic belief that my reality is the only reality.

Imagine playing a competitive game against others. You are caught-up in the thrill and action of the moment and you think that you are doing pretty well. In fact, you think that you are winning. But then you look at the score and see that you are not doing as well as you had thought.

The scoreboard is Objective Reality. It is the final arbiter that governs all the little Subjective Realities under its gaze. It is the force of reason and the source of Natural Law. Every debate, argument, or conflict between the Subjective Realities of each unique individual should be decided through empirical means because that is the final word on Truth. Everything else is just self-centred egotism, also known as solipsism.