You experience your own mind every waking second, but you can only infer the existence of other minds through indirect means. Other people seem to possess conscious perceptions, emotions, memories, intentions, just as you do, but you cannot be sure they do. You can guess how the world looks to me based on my behavior and utterances, including these words you are reading, but you have no firsthand access to my inner life. For all you know, I might be a mindless bot.

Natural selection instilled in us the capacity for a so-called theory of mind—a talent for intuiting others’ emotions and intentions. But we have a countertendency to deceive one another and to fear we are being deceived. The ultimate deception would be pretending you are conscious when you are not.

The solipsism problem thwarts efforts to explain consciousness. Scientists and philosophers have proposed countless contradictory hypotheses about what consciousness is and how it arises. Panpsychists contend that all creatures and even inanimate matter—even a single proton!—possess consciousness. Hard-core materialists insist, conversely (and perversely), that not even humans are all that conscious.

The solipsism problem prevents us from verifying or falsifying these and other claims. I cannot be certain that you are conscious, let alone a jellyfish, bot or doorknob. As long as we lack what neuroscientist Christof Koch has called a consciousness meter—a device that can measure consciousness in the same way that a thermometer measures temperature—theories of consciousness will remain in the realm of pure speculation.

But the solipsism problem is far more than a technical philosophical matter. It is a paranoid but understandable response to the feelings of solitude that lurk within us all. Even if you reject solipsism as an intellectual position, you sense it, emotionally, whenever you feel estranged from others, whenever you confront the awful truth that you can never know—really know—another person, and no one can really know you.

Religion is one response to the solipsism problem. Our ancestors dreamed up a supernatural entity who bears witness to our innermost fears and desires. No matter how lonesome we feel, how alienated from our fellow humans, God is always there watching over us. He sees our souls, our most secret selves, and He loves us anyway. Wouldn’t it be nice to think so?

The arts, too, can be seen as attempts to overcome the solipsism problem. The artist, musician, poet, novelist says, “This is how my life feels” or “This is how life might feel for another person.” They help us imagine what it is like to be a Black woman trying to save her children from slavery or a Jewish ad salesman wandering through Dublin, wondering whether his wife is cheating on him. But to imagine is not to know.

Some of my favorite works of art dwell on the solipsism problem. In I’m Thinking of Ending Things and earlier films, as well as his novel Antkind, Charlie Kaufman depicts other people as projections of a disturbed protagonist. Kaufman no doubt hopes to help us, and himself, overcome the solipsism problem by venting his anxiety about it, but I find his dramatizations almost too evocative.

Love, ideally, gives us the illusion of transcending the solipsism problem. You feel you really know someone, from the inside out, and they know you. In moments of ecstatic sexual communion or mundane togetherness—while you’re eating pizza and watching The Alienist, say—you fuse with your beloved. The barrier between you seems to vanish.

Inevitably, however, your lover disappoints, deceives, betrays you. Or, less dramatically, some subtle biocognitive shift occurs. You look at her as she nibbles her pizza and think, Who, what, is this odd creature? The solipsism problem has reemerged, more painful and suffocating than ever.

It gets worse. In addition to the problem of other minds, there is the problem of our own. As evolutionary psychologist Robert Trivers points out, we deceive ourselves at least as effectively as we deceive others. A corollary of this dark truth is that we know ourselves even less than we know others.

If a lion could talk, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said, we couldn’t understand it. The same is true, I suspect, of our own deepest selves. If you could eavesdrop on your subconscious, you would hear nothing but grunts, growls and moans—or perhaps the high-pitched squeaks of raw machine-code data coursing through a channel.

For the mentally ill, solipsism can become terrifyingly vivid. Victims of Capgras syndrome think that identical imposters have replaced their loved ones. If you have Cotard’s delusion, also known as walking corpse syndrome, you become convinced that you are dead. A much more common disorder is derealization, which makes everything—you, others, reality as a whole—feel strange, phony, simulated.

Derealization plagued me throughout my youth. One episode was self-induced. Hanging out with friends in high school, I thought it would be fun to hyperventilate, hold my breath and let someone squeeze my chest until I passed out. When I woke up, I didn’t recognize my buddies. They were demons jeering at me. For weeks after that horrifying sensation faded, everything still felt unreal, as if I were in a dreadful movie.

What if those afflicted with these alleged delusions actually see reality clearly? According to the Buddhist doctrine of anatta, the self does not really exist. When you try to pin down your own essence, to grasp it, it slips through your fingers.

We have devised methods for cultivating self-knowledge and quelling our anxieties, such as meditation and psychotherapy. But these practices strike me as forms of self-brainwashing. When we meditate or see a therapist, we are not solving the solipsism problem. We are merely training ourselves to ignore it, to suppress the horror and despair that it triggers.

We have also invented mythical places in which the solipsism problem vanishes. We transcend our solitude and merge with others into a unified whole. We call these places heaven, nirvana, the Singularity. But solipsism is a cave from which we cannot escape—except, perhaps, by pretending it does not exist. Or, paradoxically, by confronting it, the way Kaufman does. Knowing we are in the cave may be as close as we can get to escaping it.

Conceivably, technology could deliver us from the solipsism problem. Koch proposes that we all get brain implants with Wi-Fi so we can meld minds through a kind of high-tech telepathy. Philosopher Colin McGinn suggests a technique that involves “brain splicing,” transferring bits of your brain into mine, and vice versa.

But do we really want to escape the prison of our subjective selves? The archnemesis of Star Trek: The Next Generation is the Borg, a legion of tech-enhanced humanoids who have fused into one big meta-entity. Borg members have lost their separation from one another and hence their individuality. When they meet ordinary humans, they mutter in a scary monotone, “You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile. ”

As hard as solitude can be for me to bear, I do not want to be assimilated. If solipsism haunts me, so does oneness, a unification so complete that it extinguishes my puny mortal self. Perhaps the best way to cope with the solipsism problem in this weird, lonely time is to imagine a world in which it has vanished.

So we back in the mine
Got our pickaxe swinging from side to side
Side-side to side
This task, a grueling one
Hope to find some diamonds tonight, night, night
Diamonds tonight

Heads up
You hear a sound, turn around and look up
Total shock fills your body
Oh, no, it's you again
I can never forget those eyes, eyes, eyes
Eyes-eye-eyes

'Cause, baby, tonight
The creeper's tryna steal all our stuff again
'Cause, baby, tonight
You grab your pick, shovel, and bolt again
And run, run until it's done, done
Until the sun comes up in the morning
'Cause, baby, tonight
The creeper's tryna steal all our stuff again

Just when you think you're safe
Overhear some hissing from right behind
Right-right behind
That's a nice life you have
Shame it's gotta end at this time, time, time
Time-time-time-time

Blows up
Then your health bar drops and you could use a one-up
Get inside, don't be tardy
So, now you're stuck in there
Half a heart is left, but don't die, die, die
Die-die-die

'Cause, baby, tonight
The creeper's tryna steal all our stuff again
'Cause, baby, tonight
You grab your pick, shovel, and bolt again
And run, run until it's done, done
Until the sun comes up in the morning
'Cause, baby, tonight
The creeper's tryna steal all our stuff again

Dig up diamonds and craft those diamonds
And make some armor, get it, baby
Go and forge that like you so MLG pro
The sword's made of diamonds, so come at me, bro, huh
Training in your room under the torchlight
Hone that form to get you ready for the big fight
Every single day and the whole night
Creeper's out prowlin', hoo, alright

Look at me, look at you
Take my revenge, that's what I'm gonna do
I'm a warrior, baby, what else is new?
And my blade's gonna tear through you, bring it

'Cause, baby, tonight
The creeper's tryna steal all our stuff again
(Gather your stuff, yeah, let's take back the world)
Yeah, baby, tonight
Grab your sword, armor and go (it's on)
Take your revenge (whoa), oh-oh, oh-oh

So fight, fight, like it's the last, last night
Of your life, life, show them your bite (whoa)
'Cause, baby, tonight
The creeper's tryna steal all our stuff again

'Cause, baby, tonight
You grab your pick, shovel and bolt again
And run, run until it's done, done
Until the sun comes up in the morn'
'Cause, baby, tonight (c'mon, swing your sword up high, c'mon)
The creeper's tryna steal all our stuff again (swing your sword up, oh)

In formal psychology, lucid dreaming has been studied and reported for many years. Prominent figures from ancient to modern times have been fascinated by lucid dreams and have sought ways to better understand their causes and purpose. Many different theories have emerged as a result of scientific research on the subject.^[6][7] Further developments in psychological research have pointed to ways in which this form of dreaming may be utilized as a therapeutic technique.^[8]

The term lucid dream was coined by Dutch author and psychiatrist Frederik van Eeden in his 1913 article A Study of Dreams,^[5] though descriptions of dreamers being aware that they are dreaming predate the article.^[5]

Psychologist Stephen LaBerge is widely considered the progenitor and leading pioneer of modern lucid dreaming research.^[9] He is the founder of the Lucidity Institute at Stanford University.

Definition

[edit]

Paul Tholey laid the epistemological basis for the research of lucid dreams, proposing seven different conditions of clarity that a dream must fulfill in order to be defined as a lucid dream:^[10][11][12]

1. Awareness of the dream state (orientation)

2. Awareness of the capacity to make decisions

3. Awareness of memory functions

4. Awareness of self

5. Awareness of the dream environment

6. Awareness of the meaning of the dream

7. Awareness of concentration and focus (the subjective clarity of that state)

Later, in 1992, a study by Deirdre Barrett examined whether lucid dreams contained four "corollaries" of lucidity:

1. The dreamer is aware that they are dreaming

2. They are aware actions will not carry over after waking

3. Physical laws need not apply in the dream

4. The dreamer has a clear memory of the waking world

Barrett found less than a quarter of lucidity accounts exhibited all four.^[13]

Subsequently, Stephen LaBerge studied the prevalence among lucid dreams of the ability to control the dream scenario, and found that while dream control and dream awareness are correlated, neither requires the other. LaBerge found dreams that exhibit one clearly without the capacity for the other. He also found dreams where, although the dreamer is lucid and aware they could exercise control, they choose simply to observe.^[2]

History

[edit]

Eastern

[edit]

The practice of lucid dreaming is central to both the ancient Indian Hindu practice of Yoga nidra and the Tibetan Buddhist practice of dream Yoga. The cultivation of such awareness was a common practice among early Buddhists.^[14]

Western