Hi all,
This is an interesting discussion. We have two representatives in Elizabeth and Tekla, each vouching for, respectively, some form of idealism and some form of realism. A classic debate (about which, by the way, existentialism has little to say).
You're right, Elizabeth; nobody will ever be able to prove to your satisfaction that anything exists outside of the workings of your own mind. Just remember, though, that a mind requires a brain (although, to be fair, even Descartes wasn't convinced of this; all he knew with any certainty was that he was "a thinking thing," a substance endowed with the power to think, as evidenced by his ability to doubt even his own existence). Hilary Putnam once posited a peculiar thought experiment often referred to as the
Brain In A Vat argument where he highlighted the difficulty for us to know with any certainty that our inner experience did, in fact, mirror anything in the "outside world."
On the other hand, Tekla is right, too, when she says that we cannot fly off rooftops. Regardless of specific philosophical beliefs, anyone attempting to do so will have his or her universe end in a most brutal way (unless, of course, they live in the world of
The Matrix, which is basically a movie adaptation of Cartesian belief in philosophical dualism... and can you see the irony, here, in having the Hollywood illusion factory trying to teach us something about the illusory nature of the world?).
I keep thinking that Elizabeth is trying to make us see something about our psychological circumstances whereas Tekla is approaching the issue from the standpoint of some demonstrable reality that has little to do with what we feel or think about the world. Neither is wrong, in my opinion. The key words, here, are "psychological" and "demonstrable." Psychological "facts," like an idiosyncratic belief or emotion, very often are, indeed, solipsistic (they belong to us and to us alone, and nobody can even begin to have access to them in the way we do); on the other hand, what's demonstrable about our (objective) world changes constantly with the state of our scientific knowledge (for example, we'll certainly be able to pitch ourselves off rooftops once we've learned how to harness the force of gravity and have suitably strapped ourselves into an anti-grav backpack).
Since the publication of Fritjof Capra's 1975 book,
The Tao Of Physics, there's been a lot of attention devoted to the parallels between our inner (psychological, spiritual) experience and the structure of "objective" reality (see, for instance, the work of
Ken Wilber), culminating in the recent publication of
The Secret. All this says to me is that we all try to inform our lives with the kind of meaning that makes most sense to our own particular experience. Hence Elizabeth's conflating this with existentialism. I think this is why debates such as this one generate so much passion; we see our own experience denigrated when someone disagrees with our philosophical stance.
But all is not lost: we can still talk and explore. That, to me, is what matters above all else.
Love,
CJ
