I'm Not Too Sure That I Exist

Everything we can see isn't really there anyway

I've been giving some thought lately to the possibility that I do not exist.

Allow me to explain.

The lecturer in a philosophy class points to a table. 'That table does not exist', he proclaims. 'But what do we mean by exist?' asks an egghead. 'Exactly', says the philosopher. 'And what do we mean by table?', interjects a wiseacre. 'Good', says the philosopher. 'And what do we mean by not?' asks a fellow-traveller. 'Well . . . quite', says the philosopher. 'And what do we mean by does?' asks an agitator. 'Hey -', interjects the philosopher. And what do we mean by that?', shouts a satirist. 'That'll do!' says the philosopher.

Later, one of the students is sitting on a bus and sees the philosopher get on. But instead of simply paying the fair, the philosopher starts arguing with the driver. 'Oh, no', thinks the student, 'we'll be stuck here for ages while he argues that he doesn't need to buy a ticket because the bus doesn't exist.'

Well, never mind the bus. Do I exist? I'm not too sure; suppose we start by trying to figure out who 'me' is. Whenever I refer to myself, I point to my chest. I do this, probably, because it's roughly my body's geometric centre. But it's not truly the centre of what I am. If any organ truly defines what is 'me', then it's surely my brain - and yet I don't point to my head. The other organs - my heart, lungs, liver - are not 'me' in the same sense that my brain is. The rest of my body is a sort of life support system for my brain, and for whatever goes on inside there. But although my neurology defines me as a person, the rest of my body does seem rather more than just a life support system. I might define myself not only by my head, but also by a sort of column that extends downwards into my chest. I don't feel quite the same way about my limbs. This is probably because I could live without them, although I wouldn’t want to of course.

And yet all of my body - head, torso, limbs - is only ostensibly anchored in corporeality. Indeed the material world - the nature of 'substance' - is inscrutable. In case you haven’t noticed, we're all hoodwinked by our perceptions.

If I look at an apple, for example, I see an apple - but things are not the way they seem. Rays of light travel from the apple, project the apple's image onto my retina; and my visual cortex, by some method as yet unexplained, constructs a mental image of an apple inside my head. In other words, I'm not seeing the actual apple that's out there; not really. What I actually see, is the mental image of an apple inside my head. As I write this I'm not seeing a small tree, a grassy field and a grey sky. What I actually see, are mental representations of a small tree, a grassy field and a grey sky.

Our brains somehow construct an internal representational model of the world outside ourselves. And yet we seldom trouble ourselves with this distinction. In fact we confuse the image of the apple inside our heads, with the real apple 'out there'. Carelessly, we take the mental image of the apple for the apple itself. But it is not the apple itself. It is a mental image of what we take to be the apple.

What on Earth should I think, therefore, when I view myself in a mirror? I do not see my body; I see a mental image of my body, and which I assume corresponds to my real body. Yet I cannot prove that this mental image of my body corresponds to my real body, just as I cannot prove that my mental image of an apple corresponds to the real apple. I assume they're the same, of course, but that is not at all the same as proving it.

The clever reader might at this point interrupt and say, 'Hey, there's no firm evidence, but at least we have corroboration. I might for example see a dimple on the apple, and, using my thumb, I can feel the dimple. Touch and sight agree'. This is true, and it's reassuring - but not entirely. We cannot feel the dimple directly - our brains somehow construct the sensation of touch, like they somehow construct the mental image. Again, we confuse our internal representation of the world with the world out there. The same is true of all our other senses: when we hear the birds, or when we smell a flower, it is as if what we hear and what we smell are the reality. But they are only our percepts of that reality. Our cognition is concerned, not with the real nature of things, but the appearance of things. We speak so confidently of seeing what's going on in the world around us. If we are honest, we only see what goes on in our own minds.

There is however a much bigger problem here.

Nothing we perceive is remotely what it seems to be. I refer to substance, or, as scientists more usually say, 'matter'. An apple is matter. And matter is composed of atoms. But we now arrive at an astonishing fact: atoms consist of mostly . . . nothing. There is a nucleus, around which the electrons orbit. But the nucleus is much smaller than these orbits. In fact it is very, very much smaller - one-hundred-thousand times smaller. Between the nucleus and the orbiting electrons there is nothing. That is to say, an atom mostly consists of empty space. Alternatively put, atoms are mostly not there; which also means, if we are honest, that we are also mostly not here. We ponder the emptiness of outer space, but overlook the emptiness within ourselves. The diameter of Pluto's orbit, for example, is two thousand times bigger than the diameter of the sun. This means that atoms are even emptier than the solar system. It also means that our bodies - and all other substance that we can see - is much emptier than the solar system!

But if an apple is so insubstantial, if it's hardly there at all, then how can we see it? Light rays (photons) strike the apple, scatter off the electrons that are orbiting its atoms, then enter our eyes. If light did not do this, if light instead passed right through the empty space in atoms, then we'd see right through apples; in fact they'd be invisible! In other words, solid surfaces are entirely an illusion - a hoax, even. We only see the apple, because photons cannot pass through the empty space in atoms - the electrons stop them.

If we took out all empty space, and just considered the substance of which atoms are seemingly made, then hardly anything is left. In fact the 'substance' of the human body would occupy a volume that is smaller, even, than the ink in a full stop! When I consider this, I find myself wondering where I am. I consist, after all, of mostly nothing. There is no such thing as 'sturdy'. Sturdiness does not exist. A rain cloud has a bodily appearance when viewed from a distance. But the closer we get, the more diffuse it becomes, until finally its surface disappears and we just have droplets with gaps of air in between. There is no true surface to the cloud, when you get close. And similarly, we just think that something is solid - that's the way it looks at our scale. But in reality there's no such thing as 'solid'.

The astute reader will probably think, 'Hang on, if we're mostly empty space, then how come I can sit on this chair? I am made of mostly nothing, and the chair is made of mostly nothing. Why don't I just pass right through the chair?' This reflects another curious property of the electrons. If you press atoms together, the electrons repel one another. Without this force, then we'd be able to walk through walls - but that's supposing we hadn't fallen through the floor first. And the apple would never have bounced off Isaac Newton's head: it would've passed right through him. As I hinted earlier, the sense of touch is not at all what seems.

Well although we consist of mostly nothing, there are at least those atomic nuclei. Are not these 'solid'? Things get stranger still, when we dissect these. There are protons and neutrons, but these in turn are composed of quarks and various other exotic particles. If we keep dividing, smaller and smaller, then all we end up with are curiously fuzzy packets of what seem like energy. Of course, we know that energy and matter are interchangeable - that's the idea captured by Einstein's famous equation, E=mc². These minute, fuzzy dots are what, somehow, underwrite our whole awareness; our noumenal 'reality'. And thus it is that, if we keep dividing and dividing, examining matter on smaller and smaller scales, when trying to locate the substance of which our bodies are made, then we just disappear. There is no ultimate fragment of reality. 'Substance' is far more like a flux of energy, than a solid body as such. Indeed in Chinese thought, matter and energy are not considered as separate entities.

Electrons, photons, neutrons and protons are sometimes conceived as 'particles'; sometimes as 'waves'. In fact the wave theory of matter, which we get from quantum mechanics, destroys the idea of 'matter' as something existing spatially, with no temporal aspect. Plop a stone into a pond. Is the ensuing wave at a certain point, like the stone? No. It is all over the pond's surface. And we must know the time that has elapsed after the splash, before we can know where the ripples are. In fact the waves connect the past to the future. Similarly, a 'particle' somehow has time within it: and it is not at a 'point' as such: rather, it is everywhere . All seemingly physical objects, including our bodies, have time within them. There is no such thing as 'timeless' matter. What we see as solid substance, is more aptly described as an organized system of vibratory, streaming energy.

Existence is, therefore, a very strange concept - we cannot prove the existence of an objective, real world. An apple consists of mostly nothing; and it is perceived by a brain which also consists of mostly nothing. Solidity is not just a sensation; it is also a subjective sensation; and we are composed of tiny specks of energy, floating in a void. We live out our lives in a perpetual state of self-deception, aided by the human mind: that weaver of illusions; that conjuror of false tangibility. In reality, we are impalpable beings.

The world we see is not made of things, but fleeting sounds, ephemeral smells, transient sights; for we are perturbations in a field of energy. Our sensations are more delicate, more fugitive and more startling than we give them credit for. Perhaps the visual and the tangible are deceptive screens? It is impossible to prove that images caused by electric currents in my head, are generated by sense impressions from outside my body - they might just as well be an illusion or dream. Who knows.

It is for this reason that, when my earthly pilgrimage finally draws to a close, I shall consider my ambiguous ontological status, ponder the illusory nature of reality, and console myself with the thought that since life is an ethereal apparition, then I was never too sure that I existed anyway.

Bibliography

The Nature of the Physical World, Sir Arthur Eddington (1935).

Mind, Brain and the Quantum, Michael Lockwood (1989).

The Propensity to Believe, James E. Alcock. In 'The Flight from Science and Reason', Gross P.R., Levitt N., Lewis M.W. (Eds), New York Academy of Sciences (1996).

The Order of Time, Carlo Rovelli (2008).

The Science Delusion, Rupert Sheldrake (2012).

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