The Gulf Between Minds

One of the only things that almost all non-rationalists selectively understand after years of life is that there is a gap, a gulf, between minds that prevents one from seeing the actual thoughts, intentions, and perceptions of anyone else--or at least that is the nature of my experiences.  Not only does it not logically follow from it seeming like other people are real conscious beings communicating their thoughts that this is the case, but if it was not, it would be impossible for anyone to ever be deceived or taken by surprise by another person.  It is both logically possible and experientially familiar for people to act in random or deceitful ways.  Even non-rationalists can realize this on some level, as they might have experiences that bring them to mourn their inability to know if someone can be trusted--with trust being impossible when you can directly see someone else's mind.

One of the deepest paradoxes about even the closest human friendships is that no amount of time together, no amount of communicating with each other via technology or in person, and no sincere longing to actually see their minds will ever so much as prove that they even exist as anything more than sensory perceptions without their own existence or consciousness.  This does not mean friendships of practically unspeakable closeness cannot be formed, but it does logically follow that not even emotional or physical intimacy actually bridges the epistemological and metaphysical gulf between minds.  The ramifications of the inability of beings without telepathy or omniscience to know if other minds are even there go far beyond the more mundane things non-rationalists are likely to realize.

The gulf between minds is even part of the reason why proving that there is an uncaused cause is not the same as proving to myself that I am not the deity who created time and the cosmos.  I can prove that I exist with absolute certainty through the self-evidence of my own consciousness: I cannot perceive anything at all, even to deny that I exist, unless I exist in order to deliberate on or perceive in the first place.  I can prove that an uncaused cause exists with absolute certainty by deductive reasoning: something with the ability to create other things must have set the causal chain in motion because self-creation (of myself or the universe), infinite regression, and coming into existence without a cause are logical impossibilities.

However, nothing in proving the knowable logical facts about my own existence or that of the uncaused cause establishes that I am not the uncaused cause.  All it proves on that matter is that I exist and that an uncaused cause exists, not that we are distinct entities!  I can prove that by all appearances, I am not a deity, but mere perceptions, as opposed to logical proofs, can be illusory or misleading.  If I could gaze into other minds and know with absolute certainty that it does not only seem like there are other minds as I look within them, but that they are actually there, with no barriers to truthfully perceiving all other minds in existence, then I could know if the deity whose existence can be logically proven is my own self.

The gulf between minds, if minds besides my own are even there, is not the kind of thing that can be just taken for granted forever if one wants to pursue truth.  Even on a more personal or "practical" level (although friendship is a very abstract subject, like all philosophical truths and issues are to some extent), I cannot know if the friends I cherish and the ideological enemies I loathe are or are not just illusions, visual and auditory hallucinations that have neither bodily existence in the external world nor consciousness that inhabits a body on the physical plane.  Ironically, though human companions can be right before me, speaking and embracing me, they could be illusions of the senses or the mind from which the senses spring, while the uncaused cause, an unseen entity, can be fully proven to exist!  That I myself might be this uncaused cause is the part that so many Christians irrationally object to, as if a God who knows my limitations and wants humans to find the truth as the Bible proclaims would ever condemn me for realizing these logical facts.