I think…… Therefore I am?

We are used to doubt. We live, so we are told, in a cynical age. We doubt our leaders. We doubt the intentions of our enemies. Sometimes we doubt our friends, our family and our lovers. But where does the doubt stop? Is there anything we can know for certain?

Philosophers have pondered this very question for centuries. The most famous of these was probably Rene Descartes who said that only one (or actually two) things can be known for certain – that we exist. In his famous saying “I think, therefore I am” Descartes is putting forward the very understandable idea that if we think, then there must be someone actually ‘doing’ the thinking. There can be no thought without a thinker. Therefore the thinker must exist. QED. The only other known Descartes proposed was one that is usually forgotten. He said that God too must exist. This was hardly a surprising statement at the time but one which I shall be ignoring in this post.

The question is, of course, was Descartes right or can we actually doubt our own existence? On the face of it that seems to be a rather silly question. How can I (or anyone else) possibly doubt their own existence? I mean, if I didn’t exist then who exactly is putting this argument forward? How can I think I might not exist if there is someone having those thoughts? It seems pretty air-tight doesn’t it? Maybe not.

I have read that the Buddhists believe that the self, the essential ‘I’, is an illusion that needs to be overcome to reach a state of enlightenment. It’s an interesting idea which, as far as I know, has been shadowed by some scientific work into mental processes. If true then we do not exist in the way we think we do. Descartes himself postulated the idea that all of our sense impressions could be manipulated by a ‘demon’ and, therefore, we should not wholly trust them. This idea probably influenced the creators of The Matrix where evil machines enslaved people by plugging them into a virtual world. Realistically there is no way we can tell if we live in such a world or not. If all of our sensory input is false it would be impossible to tell what was real and what was manufactured. Taking it a step further it is entirely possible that in such a world the people we meet and form relationships with are virtual creations with no independent basis in the ‘real world’. But we are real – right? Maybe not.

If it is impossible to tell if an individual is real or virtual then is it not possible that we might be one of these virtual creations? To appear real to us a virtual person must be programmed to pass a version of the Turing Test. It must be able to respond as we would expect a real person to respond to the many situations that make up what we call reality. If a simulacrum can pass as a person we would undoubtedly treat them as a person. Of course one of the ways to do this is to programme the simulacra to believe that they are real. If the virtual person thinks and believes they are real, then they are much more likely to act as if they are. That being the case, how do we know for a fact that we are real? Is it not possible that we are well programmed simulacra designed to think, feel and believe that we are real in order to present a believable face to others who are in fact real? How could we possibly know the difference between real people and simulacra if the virtual people were manufactured to a high enough standard? If you and I are just sophisticated programming how would we know? Are we certain then that we do actually exist? Does the fact that I think prove my existence? Maybe not.