Uploaded April 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
In this video I talk about the "solipsism problem", and why it's relevant to you as an English as a second language speaker and learner.
Julian Northbrook is on a mission to change the way people learn English for the better. Subscribe to this channel for videos about learning English and the psychology of the "Good Language Learner": doeng.co/SUBSCRIBE
Go here to get the free training:
doeng.co/FREETRAINING
Sign up for daily email tips:
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Read the Good Shadowin Guide:
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Transcript:
How can we prove that everything is not an illusion? I'm Julian Northbrook from https://doingenglish.com. And this is a question that I've been thinking about a fair bit recently, how can we prove that everything is not an illusion? And, we can't. It's as simple as that. This is related to something that philosophers called the problem of other minds, or what is also often called the solipsism problem. We believe ourselves to be conscious, but how can we know that everything, including material things, or even a single proton isn't also conscious, or conversely, that we're not actually the only consciousness in all of the universe? Evolution has given us the ability to intuit the feelings and emotions of other people, but we can never actually get inside of other people's heads. And therefore, we can never actually experience the world as they do through their eyes.
We can only guess, but what if that guess is all an illusion inside of our own heads? What if we simply imagined the whole thing? What if I am the universe, experiencing myself in the false belief that I'm not the only one, and that when I die, the universe simply ceases to exist? I can't know. And that's the problem. And it sounds absolutely bat-shit crazy, but you can't actually disprove it. And we'll never be able to disprove it, not at least until we develop what neuroscientist, Christof Koch calls a consciousness meter, a mechanism of sorts that will be able to measure consciousness, like a thermometer measures temperature.
And again, this all sounds pretty crazy. And when you start to think about this stuff, it makes your head spin, it makes the mind boggle. But you can also think of it on a practical level related to the speaking of English as a second language in the real world. Say, you go to a job interview and you don't get the job, and you believe it to be because your English was no good, or say, you say something and somebody else doesn't understand you, and you believe that it's because your pronunciation is bad or because your English was bad, or you encounter some asshole, and we've all encountered them speaking a second language, that laughs at you or takes the piss out of you, puts you down because of your English, perhaps you made a mistake.
We make assumptions about these situations. "I didn't get the job because my English is terrible." "This person laughed at me because my English is bad," and blah, blah, blah, blah. But these things are all just an illusion inside of our own head, something that we have constructed by way of interpretation for what we've experienced, but we don't actually know what is really going on because we cannot get into the heads of those other people. We cannot experience the world through their eyes. Perhaps you didn't get the job, not because of your English, but because the interviewer was a racist asshole. Perhaps the person laughed at you because they have some kind of deep, emotional problem themselves that they are struggling to deal with and a serious lack of self-esteem, and the only way that they can manage that is to put other people down.
We simply don't know those things. We don't know what goes behind the things that happens to us and the things that people say and do. Therefore, to my mind, there's no point in paying too much attention to that illusion that we create that tells us that we are crap, we are no good, we deserve not to get the job, or we deserve to be laughed at.
Anyway, food for thought, something to think about. I think that's enough existential crisis for me for one day, enough for lots of people one day, to be sure. Head over to doingenglish.com/emails, and sign up for my free daily English email tips. And this is me, Julian Northbrook, signing out from another video. I'll see you in the next one, guys. Bye-bye.
#DoingEnglish #JulianNorthbrook #learnEnglish
In this video I talk about the "solipsism problem", and why it's relevant to you as an English as a second language speaker and learner.
Julian Northbrook is on a mission to change the way people learn English for the better. Subscribe to this channel for videos about learning English and the psychology of the "Good Language Learner": doeng.co/SUBSCRIBE
Go here to get the free training:
doeng.co/FREETRAINING
Sign up for daily email tips:
doeng.co/EMAILS
Read the Good Shadowin Guide:
doeng.co/SHADOWING
Transcript:
How can we prove that everything is not an illusion? I'm Julian Northbrook from https://doingenglish.com. And this is a question that I've been thinking about a fair bit recently, how can we prove that everything is not an illusion? And, we can't. It's as simple as that. This is related to something that philosophers called the problem of other minds, or what is also often called the solipsism problem. We believe ourselves to be conscious, but how can we know that everything, including material things, or even a single proton isn't also conscious, or conversely, that we're not actually the only consciousness in all of the universe? Evolution has given us the ability to intuit the feelings and emotions of other people, but we can never actually get inside of other people's heads. And therefore, we can never actually experience the world as they do through their eyes.
We can only guess, but what if that guess is all an illusion inside of our own heads? What if we simply imagined the whole thing? What if I am the universe, experiencing myself in the false belief that I'm not the only one, and that when I die, the universe simply ceases to exist? I can't know. And that's the problem. And it sounds absolutely bat-shit crazy, but you can't actually disprove it. And we'll never be able to disprove it, not at least until we develop what neuroscientist, Christof Koch calls a consciousness meter, a mechanism of sorts that will be able to measure consciousness, like a thermometer measures temperature.
And again, this all sounds pretty crazy. And when you start to think about this stuff, it makes your head spin, it makes the mind boggle. But you can also think of it on a practical level related to the speaking of English as a second language in the real world. Say, you go to a job interview and you don't get the job, and you believe it to be because your English was no good, or say, you say something and somebody else doesn't understand you, and you believe that it's because your pronunciation is bad or because your English was bad, or you encounter some asshole, and we've all encountered them speaking a second language, that laughs at you or takes the piss out of you, puts you down because of your English, perhaps you made a mistake.
We make assumptions about these situations. "I didn't get the job because my English is terrible." "This person laughed at me because my English is bad," and blah, blah, blah, blah. But these things are all just an illusion inside of our own head, something that we have constructed by way of interpretation for what we've experienced, but we don't actually know what is really going on because we cannot get into the heads of those other people. We cannot experience the world through their eyes. Perhaps you didn't get the job, not because of your English, but because the interviewer was a racist asshole. Perhaps the person laughed at you because they have some kind of deep, emotional problem themselves that they are struggling to deal with and a serious lack of self-esteem, and the only way that they can manage that is to put other people down.
We simply don't know those things. We don't know what goes behind the things that happens to us and the things that people say and do. Therefore, to my mind, there's no point in paying too much attention to that illusion that we create that tells us that we are crap, we are no good, we deserve not to get the job, or we deserve to be laughed at.
Anyway, food for thought, something to think about. I think that's enough existential crisis for me for one day, enough for lots of people one day, to be sure. Head over to doingenglish.com/emails, and sign up for my free daily English email tips. And this is me, Julian Northbrook, signing out from another video. I'll see you in the next one, guys. Bye-bye.
#DoingEnglish #JulianNorthbrook #learnEnglish
