A thought experiment in reality
This is similar to the idea of "reality as a simulation" wherein an individual is given the following or similar hypothetical: "What if, after you died, a man removed a helmet from your head and asked 'So how was the simulation, how many units can we put you down for?'"
I imagine all philosophical ideas or questions that scrutinize the integrity of reality in this fashion are inherently similar, but what if...
You are a married, middle-aged man with a nice house, two cars, a wife, and two children. One night after going to sleep as you normally do, you wake up in a hospital bed the following morning surrounded by concerned friends and family (or perhaps just medical staff). You are informed that (one of the following scenarios) last time you swore you thought you feel asleep behind the wheel and don't recall how you got home OR the last time you remember getting thumped in the head by a person or object later "coming to" was actually a serious accident. This incident occurred several years ago throughout which time you were in a coma experiencing life in real time (or perhaps much shorter, whichever makes it more surreal). After looking around the room in which you are in, you are aghast to notice a few magazines on the table beside your bed which feature the house you remember purchasing and your smiling kids you remember raising on the cover. Next to them are two model cars you remember saving up to purchase. As a final shock you see the woman you thought was your loving wife of 10 years wearing a doctor's gown asking in a rushed yet polite tone "Can I get some water for you, Mr. Johnson?" You struggle to shake an ominous feeling of dread and doom that you feel beginning to well up inside you and overwhelm your entire being as you begin to ask yourself.. "how long?"
How would you react to this? What would you do? What would you say? Would you trust anything or anyone ever again? Would you want to go back?
Is this a classic example of the solipsist's nightmare? My apologies in advance if any are reading. Or if this is more of a 'lounge topic' than a philosophical discussion.
I imagine all philosophical ideas or questions that scrutinize the integrity of reality in this fashion are inherently similar, but what if...
You are a married, middle-aged man with a nice house, two cars, a wife, and two children. One night after going to sleep as you normally do, you wake up in a hospital bed the following morning surrounded by concerned friends and family (or perhaps just medical staff). You are informed that (one of the following scenarios) last time you swore you thought you feel asleep behind the wheel and don't recall how you got home OR the last time you remember getting thumped in the head by a person or object later "coming to" was actually a serious accident. This incident occurred several years ago throughout which time you were in a coma experiencing life in real time (or perhaps much shorter, whichever makes it more surreal). After looking around the room in which you are in, you are aghast to notice a few magazines on the table beside your bed which feature the house you remember purchasing and your smiling kids you remember raising on the cover. Next to them are two model cars you remember saving up to purchase. As a final shock you see the woman you thought was your loving wife of 10 years wearing a doctor's gown asking in a rushed yet polite tone "Can I get some water for you, Mr. Johnson?" You struggle to shake an ominous feeling of dread and doom that you feel beginning to well up inside you and overwhelm your entire being as you begin to ask yourself.. "how long?"
How would you react to this? What would you do? What would you say? Would you trust anything or anyone ever again? Would you want to go back?
Is this a classic example of the solipsist's nightmare? My apologies in advance if any are reading. Or if this is more of a 'lounge topic' than a philosophical discussion.
Comments (6)
How is this substantially different from waking up from a dream? Are you a man dreaming you're a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming you're a man? How do you know you're not dreaming right now?
Quoting Outlander
And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself, "Well... how did I get here?"
https://genius.com/Talking-heads-once-in-a-lifetime-lyrics
Gotta go, it's feeding time in my vat.
To me, all such thought experiments seem like responses to deep rooted fear within the coding of one's consciousness. They're all based on the premise that reality is what 'another' or 'others' inform you instead of what you inform yourself from the data collected. The idea behind it seems to be that if many people tell you something ought to be one way or another then you have no choice but to conform.
However, what if, like Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, among other inventors, discoverers, leaders and pioneers in all fields of life, etc, you showed the rest of the people what reality was and they had no choice but to agree with your information because, strange as it might sound, that one person had a greater capacity to process data than the many.
Suppose one day, one time, a man woke up from slumber and urged others to follow him/her with the promise of helping them awake from the slumber they call life into a greater awakening of their true realities (which may be referred to as enlightenment/nirvana/heaven or whatever else).
Now, suppose the previous supposition is reversed and the many people are trying to influence the few.
At the end of the day its the same process and the outcome can only be determined by external and internal factors about the events (logistics and predispositions). For example, from the first hypothetical, dimensions like religions, spiritual and political movements have arisen. And from the second, what we refer to as trends, ethics, culture, etc, have arisen.
Here's the deal in my humble opinion. You ask this question for the simple reason that it's not possible to distinguish reality from a simulation. Ergo, nothing will be able to convince me - if I were the unlucky dude in a coma - that I actually "woke up" from a dream.
Shocked and amazed.
Quoting Outlander
Try to calm down and gradually assessed what just happened to me. I'd give the people around me the benefit of the doubt. Trust is important at this point -- well, trust is always important -- but, this is the time when your ego or self should let go of control and allow the surrounding reality to be the word of the day.
Let's not forget what we've learned so far from all this talk about philosophical foundations -- this is what the "get a grip of reality" is all about. Find a solid footing -- these people in the hospital room, what are they trying to gain by pretending? If it's a practical joke, wait until they reveal it's a joke.