How do we know that those around us are real?

Question

I know that I have a mind, that is clear to me. But the content of your mind is kept pivate from me. All I can observe is your behavior. How can I tell that everyone else but me are not zombies, void of conscious? And how can you do the same? It may be absurd or arrogant to ask such a question, but given the fact that we cannot explain consciousnessin a physical world, it is a perfectly rational question. Perhaps everyone else is normal and I am a freak.

Answer 1

Have you studied Philosophy?
It sounds like it.
I think this question proves there are limits to what reason can prove.
Knowledge of others, like many things in life is intuitive.

I have studied Philosophy some, and I have come to the conclusion that Human Beings are not as rational as we think we are. Much of what we do is intuitive, for some, maybe everything is intuitive. Often even the decisions or realizations we think are rational have some other basis. I think even the desire to be rational is in fact an emotional desire, the desire for ordered thinking in a chaotic world. One of my favorite authors, Frank Herbert, talks about how to understand something you can't stop it, or break it, understanding has to flow with the working of the subject. In a similar vein Tolkien has Gandalf say 'He who destroys something in order to understand it has left the path of wisdom.'
All that to say it is in the interest of Academics to categorize everything, even thought, but categorizing is not necessarily the most useful way to understand the world around us. Like the Theologians and their Atheist pupils are learning, the ability to describe something doesn't make it real, and the inability to describe something doesn't make it unreal.

Answer 2

Salam

Allah taught you about every single creation that exists on the face of this earth that you can and cannot see as a mercy to you. Take it or leave it as many choose to leave it for some earthly desire.

He called you to see, and if you want to dream about it that is fine, he has been calling you to see what you have been granted as a mercy from the very first day mankind and the devil was placed on this earth. The frequencies of intention.

Answer 3

As I was told by a philosophy professor, we can only describe relationships.

As in: something is hot to the touch. We are describing a relationship where we place our subjective relationship to the object that we determine to be hot. If you put that object in an over that is 'hotter' than the object, then it has to heat up to become as 'hot' as the inside of the oven. We then may say that the object is 'hotter' than it was before it was in the oven.

If the criteria of another person is the same; their heart pumps like yours, they think in similar ways that you do, they drive a car like you do, you are describing similarities in relationship to you. You have the choice to decide what to look for as differences or similarities of another person in relation to you.

So if you react to outside stimulus in a similar manner of another person; you breathe through your nose or mouth, you see through your eyes, you type with your fingers, you bleed if you are cut, you can assume that you are similar to them in how your body functions and your nervous system responds.

If you are real, then they also may be presumed to be real.

Answer 4

'Reach out and touch somebody's hand'... its a Supremes song me thinks..... hope that helps