From: homer@theory.TC.Cornell.EDU (Homer Smith)
Subject: Re: Define Scientology...
Organization: Me
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 15:25:37 GMT

     Gisle,
 
     You yourself bring up the subject of solipsism, by which I
presume you mean the theory that there is no provable external reality at all
and that all that may exist is myself and what I am conscious of in my
own conscious pictures.
 
     In this framework, I would be very hard put to prove to myself
that you actually exist and are not just a figment of my own
imagination or ongoing dream existence.  In fact I can think
of no experiment that you or anyone could do that would prove
to me that anyone exists but me and my dream.
 
     Psycho philosophically I would LIKE to assume that
others exist, but having thought about this long and hard, it
is clearly only an assumption to me.

     Given that no proof can be forthcoming about your existence
as an actual sentient conscious being to me, it is clear that 
even if you DO exist, there is nothing observable that I can
observe that would prove this to me as certainly as I know I exist.
 
     Yes I am certain I exist, and surely if you exist as I do, you
are certain that you exist.  
 
     I conclude that I exist by direct observation and a direct
call to Descartes, I can doubt I am, therefore I am.
 
     A nothing could not doubt whether or not it was a nothing or a
something.

     Now is this not science to you?  It's observation, no? 
I know I exist because I SEE I exist.  Of this I am perfectly certain.
This is not a theory, or an assumption, or a probability.  It is
direct certain knowledge and ascertainment of myself through myself.

     Yet such a claim that I exist
has no provable external manifestation and in fact is possibly
totally unobservable and unprovable and untestable by anyone else.
 
     I can't prove to myself that YOU exist, even if you do.

     I often ask the people (usually girls) in my dreams if they 
are real, usually when I know I am dreaming.  They invariable say
yes.  I look into their eyes, and they sure look alive.  Then I
wake up.  Were they real?  
 
     I got a LOT of girlfriends if they were!
 
     The point is I don't know if they exist, and I assert that
I can only really know for sure if I exist.
     
     Does this make my existence and its study somehow less a science?

     My point is that there are untold numbers of things that I can
alone observe about myself, that I can never hope to show anyone else,
and I MAY EVEN BE ABLE TO PROVE THAT I CAN NEVER SHOW THEM TO ANYONE
ELSE!
 
     At best they might hope to observe them in themselves, but then
they could never prove to me that they had, as I can't even be convinced
that they exist.

     I find it hard to swallow, that you, a figment of my imagination,
are asserting with great authority, that because I can not demonstrate
to YOU what I have observed for myself about myself, that this
therefore is not a science.

     I also take you to task for denying me the word science for such
a study, without telling me what else I should call it.
 
     Since my studies of myself through my own consciousness amount
to the greatest certainty and veracity that I am capable of, surely
this knowledge so gained is of equal or even superior quality to any
knowledge that I might have gained about more normal subjects of
science, that is external 'reality'.
 
     I object to the word religion only because it has such a
derogatory meaning in the world at large, especially when it comes
to the scientists of the world, to whom it means blind faith, being told
what is true, suspension of the critical faculty etc.
 
     And yet true 'scientists' spend all day long studying an external
reality that they can not prove is there, and write their papers
to people they have not established the existence of, and they get 
to call what they do 'science' as if their study of the external 
is somehow more respectable or right than my study of the internal.
 
     Pray tell, if I can not prove that others exist, and I can not,
and I can not prove that external manifestations exist corresponding
to my internal states, then what am I to call this rigorous study 
of the internal?
 
     Perhaps if it is not to be called science, then perhaps
the Scientologists will take up this new word too that you give me,
and apply it to themselves and leave the word 'science' to those 
who would study what they can never know for sure.
 
 
     Homer