Descartes famously said “I think therefore I am”.

Now, I’ve swallowed the social theory‍-​of‍-​mind pill, so, if at all, I’d say “We think, therefore I am”, but that’s not my thesis, writing this.

The complete picture this essay will take is still cloudy in my mind, but I think I’m just going to add some qualifications to Descartes’ idea about the uncertainties of reality.

As we all know, the gist of of big D’s argument was that you just very well be a brain in a vat (or locked in the Matrix, or a simulation, or deceived by demons, or whatever, depending on the fictions of your society), and every one of your experience are fabricated by unknown agencies. You know nothing of reality for certain. What you do?

As the popular explanations of CES, goes, D threw out every single assertions, and tries to reproduce as much of it he could from nothing at all.

I shalt follow in his footsteps.

I’m going to posit a stronger version of the brain‍-​in‍-​a‍-​vat hypothesis. Truly, the brainvat hypothesis itself implies you have never known brains or vats, thus having no Justified True Belief ™ about them.

The stronger hypothesis denies Cartesianism, that there is a meaningful mind/body separation. You aren’t just a brain in the vat, you are a brain in the vat attached to electrodes, being stimulated by them in arbitrary ways.

This leads to something less allowing, less forgiving than generic brainvat.

…

Once, during a Youtube explanation of Cartesian skepticism, the speaker said something to the effect of “you don’t even know that the person thinking is you. It could be someone else and you’re just witnessing their thoughts”. I heard that, and I had a mind of pure incredulity. That was wrong! It seemed so wrong, I didn’t even understand how the thought entered one’s mind.

Now, I do (think I) understand that this is really my own brain‍-​in‍-​a‍-​vat‍-​with‍-​ectrodes model, but wearing a strange, dualistic guise.

Really though, this isn’t ‘dualism’, it’s trialism. There is your consciousness, a mind (potentially yours) that you witness, and the greater world.

It’s strange, owing to the bizarre idea that your mind and body may be fully distict from ‘you’ (the soul). Not even quite the ‘unfree’ will, that classic “you can do what you will, but you can’t will what you do” (or maybe it was “will what you will”?). No, this is something horrifying‍—that consciousness is epiphenomenal. That your soul is a passenger strapped in, along for the mind and body’s ride.

Funnily enough, I’ve seen a spiritualist espouse that exact philosophy with that same terminology.

My model collapses these three distinctions into one system.

In this world, these is, in fact, a ‘you’, but there in the temple of the mind, nothing is sacred. Unseen agencies may influence your mind in unknown ways. Your will is violable, your thoughts, public, your desire, mutable. Your truth, deceptive.

Dramatic asides aside, what can we honestly say is existant and truthful in this minimalism world where solipsism is the null hypothesis?

Earlier, we said that everything was suspect, that nothing was asserted.

Properly speaking, even the lofty platonic realms of mathematics are inaccessible this hypothetical mind. Consider this proof that 2=1:

Most people can be fooled by this erroneous proof. Most people probably couldn’t even point out the flaws without reference to an unreliable media, like reality or memory.