Bernard Shaw's Remarkable Religion: A Faith That Fits the Facts

The Marriage of Science and Religion 219
tific theory: by inference. Inference can never provide absolute certainty,
and many find that unacceptable. But absolute certainty is a delusion. It is
simply impossible to know with absolute certainty that life is not a dream.
Yet what reasons do we have for believing that it is a dream? Apart from
the fact that there are things we cannot explain, things we do not understand
or fit into the current scientific paradigms, I know of none. Realism
(philosophical, not Shavian) is the best explanation we know for our conscious
experiences. While solipsism can never be absolutely ruled out, on
the basis of what our best minds know, it is highly improbable. Even when
probabilities can be precisely calculated, it is possible to feel very certain in
what is strictly a uncertain world. According to contemporary science,
which declares that all of the molecules in your body are in constant, random
motion, there is a probability, which could be precisely calculated, that
your body could spontaneously levitate and hover in midair. If you, however,
reported that you had actually personally experienced such a levitation
to a physicist who unquestionably believed in the theories that make
that prediction and could calculate exactly the probabilities involved, she
would (kindly, I hope) suggest that you seek psychological help. There is a
point at which probability can be treated as certainty, even if philosophers
and logicians might object.
The kernel of truth (and it is only a kernel) at the heart of solipsism is
the fact that our own consciousness is the only reality that any of us can
know absolutely. The model of the world that occupies the bulk of our
consciousness is created through a process analogous to inference, which
Russell called “physiological inference” (Outline 13) or “animal inference”
(Human Knowledge 167). The truth of physiological inference, like
that of any other inference, is tentative and conditional; it is a function of
how accurately it predicts future events. Physiological inference is so accurate
in predicting the way things will happen in our everyday experience
that it allows us to behave just as if the model were the real thing. The new
computer-based science of virtual reality has made us aware how artificial
the model is. This amazing technology allows us to wrap a human body in
a costume designed to stimulate the senses in a patterned manner, just as
the real world does. Inside this wraparound machine, we are thrust into a
new world, a world that exists only for us and is not shared with those
around us—who, for now, do not exist for us. It is artificial solipsism. If we
do not think carefully about it, we imagine that what we experience while
we receive visual and tactile stimulation from the machine is an illusion,
but what we experience otherwise is reality. There is no real difference