Does Anything Exist?

Descartes, Sense-Perception, The Matrix, A.I., and The Nature Of Reality

The other night I awoke from a dream and heard certain definitive sounds. Keep in mind, I’m entirely copaceptic. Or, at least as much so as anyone else I know. Keep in mind, too, I’m living in Alabama, temporarily, in a complex so quiet that you can go days without hearing a sound.

I live alone. So there is no other possible sound of the source except a neighbor, I presume. Only the sound was coming from inside my apartment, from the kitchen or main room.

I heard silverware being put away, a buzzing noise, some kind of bang. Usually, if you tell someone this, they say it is the building shifting (only this is a new building). Or the heating system clicking on (but that’s not a sound that heating system makes). Or any other number of explanations.

There are always ‘explanations.’ Or, perhaps more accurately, ways to explain these matters away. I heard what I heard. I opened the door to the bedroom, which I keep locked at night, and found nothing there. Then I tried to go back to sleep and it happened again.

Maybe it’s ghosts, some will say. Not personally a fan. Ghosts don’t read my books (real people don’t either, it seems, but that’s another story). Anything is possible, of course, but my best guess is that my brain created the noise.

The brain can do that. When they put people in a sensory deprivation tank, they find that, after a few days, they start hearing noises…