rationalskepticism.org

Spearthrower wrote:

Frozenworld wrote:
Because that is all we have, sensation. Artificial or not that is still the final thing we know we have. Anything outside of our senses is a guess. We could be wasting our lives believing we are doing anything only for it to just be us lying to ourselves.

In the post you're supposedly replying to, I already addressed this. I addressed this adequately clearly and sufficient number of times that it is obvious you are working over-time to ignore the point.

You contend you can't know everything else, but that you can know your senses - but you've not shown that to be true: you haven't even bothered trying to justify it, merely asserted it.

The 'skepticism' you bring to bear on everything else is suddenly and conspicuously absent from your consideration of your senses.

This is a clear example of motivated reasoning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning

Motivated reasoning is a phenomenon studied in cognitive science and social psychology that uses emotionally-biased reasoning to produce justifications or make decisions that are most desired rather than those that accurately reflect the evidence, while still reducing cognitive dissonance. In other words, motivated reasoning is the "tendency to find arguments in favor of conclusions we want to believe to be stronger than arguments for conclusions we do not want to believe".[1]

Motivated reasoning is similar to confirmation bias, where evidence that confirms a belief (which might be a logical belief, rather than an emotional one) is either sought after more or given more credibility than evidence that disconfirms a belief. It stands in contrast to critical thinking where beliefs are approached in a skeptical and unbiased fashion.

It can lead to forming and clinging to false beliefs despite substantial evidence to the contrary. The desired outcome acts as a filter that affects evaluation of scientific evidence and of other people.[2]

Whatever 'justification' you employ to call into question the existence of everything else except your senses is equally applicable to your senses. Special pleading isn't going to change this. You've argued yourself into irrelevancy; from your 'position' nothing of any worth can ever be said - it's pseudophilosophy. Perhaps it makes you feel special, but for other people, it's really, really dense.

The problem is that there isn't really evidence to the contrary. All I have is my own senses to tell me what's going on. I can't exactly verify them without being able to go outside of them, which I can't. For all I know there is no world outside of me and it's all just inside my own head, like a dream. I don't really believe that but unfortunately I can't really say much besides that I don't believe it's all in my head. Motivated reasoning doesn't apply here.

There is some arguments that say that since our brains construct reality based on the input of our senses that this in a sense can support solipsism since we are only seeing a filtered view of reality itself. I have no counter point to this.

To be honest it's difficult to communicate the loneliness of understanding how all you have is your own senses and that everything around you could be a lie or not even real. Not that it is, but considering that possibility is what scares me. That I'm just living a dream and when I die nothing I will do will have mattered because no one was real. There is no point to helping others because they don't have emotions, etc. Again, not saying they don't. But I can't really verify it. I only have the words of what I can only believe to be "others" and have to take it on faith.

I know I have feelings and thoughts and all that, but with others I have to assume that. That's what hurts. What I "knew" to be facts (other people, external reality, etc) are more beliefs than anything else. And I don't know how to deal with that.

Some arguments like this can help: https://www.quora.com/How-can-you-theor ... rid=uHpSfZ

But at the end of the day the possibility is scary and still haunts me. It's leaving me scared to invest in life for fear it's not real.