There isn't one unique electrical impulse inside my cranium. My mental gears have been fashioned by the blacksmiths of great thought, and anything my brain's incessant rotations turn out has little or nothing to do with me, in an actual sense, and everything to do with those before me. No so-called thought, no neurological paroxysm crossing the miles of synapses in my head, is my own. Everything I know, understand, perceive, and observe about the world is irreversibly colored by the lenses through which I am required to focus in on the universe. These lenses are not of my making. They are the lenses of F.S. Fitzgerald, A. Einstein, B. Dylan, M.L. King, Jr., P. Picasso, S. Freud, everyone I've ever met in my entire life, television. If I were to remove these lenses I would be blind. The world would not just be blurry in a myopic sense. The world would disappear completely. The world would not exist. That is the essential significance of my borrowed thoughts, my hijacked brain. Is it possible for any man to use his own mind freely? How do we know the world truly exists before us if nothing in our cognition comes from our own selves? Perhaps the greats have been fooling us all, pulling the wool over our eyes. Perhaps nothing they have ever said has ever really existed. After all, their minds were equally borrowed from their predecessors. Perhaps nothing exists at all. My mind is not mine, and so what it tells me can not be trusted. In all practicality, I'm being told right now by my "inner voice" that the world exists, that I'm being completely illogical. But tell me why I should listen to this inner voice? It's not my inner voice, after all. Everything about me is stolen. There isn't one original thought in my brain. And so perhaps there isn't thought at all. And since me being requires me thinking (thank you, Descartes), that would mean, therefore, that I am not. I do not be. I don't exist. And neither do you. Neither does our universe.
So why am I still doing homework?
[1.28.04]
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2 comments:
So, just because your education is based upon what others have said (what do you expect it to be based on?), and it's not all your own discovery, therefore the world doesn't exist?
First, you don't need to think in order to exist. That's not what Descartes said. He said that because you are thinking, you cannot doubt your existence, because in doubting, you are thinking. And thinking requires existence. In any event, just because Descartes' cliche` is famous doesn't mean it's true.
Second, just because some of your thoughts aren't original doesn't mean they're not thoughts. Therefore, even if you did need to think in order to exist, you'd still qualify.
Third, you are too influenced by the moderns. Learn about the ancients; that'll challenge your worldview, which is what you seem to want, judging by your post.
Fourth, you say: "How do we know the world truly exists before us if nothing in our cognition comes from our own selves?" Isn't that exactly how you know the world DOES exist? If all your thoughts are proceed from interaction with external things (people, objects, etc.), then there must be an external world!
Fifth, you're still doing your homework because you live in the real world. And no amount of Cartesian philosophizing will change that. Which, in the end, is the best argument for the existence of you and the universe.
Silly.
i second that!
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