Thursday 17 September 2009

Considering the Self

Yaye, good evening again everyone.

In this happy little post, I believe I shall now depart a little from what I learned from my little reading group directly and happily type some thoughts of mine concerning perception and considering others. As I stated in my previous post, using ideas from the first two meditations of Descartes can often be very scary, due to the fact that this may often negate all arguments that follow. However, we have concluded that what we perceive to be physical does exist physically (that is objects), and also we have concluded that other consciousnesses exist as life forms as we believe them to. (This can become a little more complex later, but for the moment we did not worry about this little friendly matter).

I believe that we can use ideas from Descartes yet still retain our conclusions and "expand our minds" a little.

Before I continue, I believe I must state that this is where I have trouble converting my thoughts into words and I apologise greatly for any silliness and questions are very welcome (these very much help me to explain). Also, they are very raw thoughts as I have not studied Philosophy formally.

So, let us assume I am sitting in a room with another human (to keep matters simple for the moment) named John. John is a Cartesian Mind like me(or soul or consciousness or self), complete with human body.

Now, it is my belief that the consciousness is somewhat seperate from the body and the consciousness is not physical. However they are, naturally, connected. The body is the generator for the consciousness. The body also feeds information to the consciousness via the five senses. This may be either concerning physical objects external the body or from " within" the body (for instance pain, hunger moods via hormones etc.). It may also be noted that the body has great influence on what the consciousness "decides to do" and the main form of the consciousness (I hope to discuss this in great detail later as well).

On the other hand, the consciousness is the operator of the body. This may be perhaps considered a little bit like an astronaut wearing a special space suit on a "strange" planet.

So I am with John in a room. We are both looking at one of the walls in the room.

But John and I have a disagreement. He is absolutely certain that on the walls of the room are painted green. I, on the other hand, see that the walls are painted blue. I believe this so clearly and cannot understand why John would think otherwise. (Assume that we have agreed on the definitions of blue and green at a different time).

Therefore, what should I conclude?

I believe this is where the pixies from the previous post help us. I believe that Descartes very much indicates the potential limitations of the five senses. In many ways, John and I are the same. He believes in his beliefs as much as I believe in mine. So it would be perhaps unfair to conclude that I am 100% correct about the colour, in spite of how strong my belief is, since John is in the exact same situation except that blue is replaced with green.

Really, it is difficult to know what to do. Logically, since you believe this so strongly, it may be best to try to preach to John about this and try to explain why you believe this is the case. However, also, it is best for me to listen to him and try also to see why he believes this as well. This process may be completed until an agreement is met.

Either we agree on one colour, or we agree that we can not agree and go our seperate ways and respect the other's beliefs.

End.

^^ Phewy, that was very fun I believe. I am very sorry if this is silly of me to write this. I think that this little example may be used for very much any belief. When considering other matters like Science, where there is evidence, you are also interpreting the evidence in a particular way that may differ to the interpretations of others. Also, for matters for instance with fossils, there are lots of other factors to consider and methods that have their own limitations.

I believe my conclusion is that however strongly I believe in something, another individual most possibly believe just as strongly in something else.

2 comments:

  1. your way of speaking is most interesting. and your thoughts are quite simply fun to read if a bit long haha =). while expressing curiously deep thoughts and queries in an uncommonly simple down-to-earth way. it makes me want to try it sometime. although my current blog is devoted quite much to poetry. so i guess a secondary one might be in order someday if i get down to it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. ^^ Yaaye, thank you very much Sean. ^^ I am indeed very happy that you would perhaps wish to type some thoughts also. I believe your poetry is very magical and blessed however.

    ReplyDelete