I think therfore I am

[NeverAmI]

ooh great question. i read a book once which talked about the lives of deaf-blind people. one deafblind man in his early 40's was asked what he thought about suicide, because the interviewer thought it was something he must have contemplated given his circumstances. the deafblind man replied (quite sadly, i thought) that in many ways he felt disconnected from other people and so alone in his own world that it was like he was already dead. so there'd be no point to commit suicide.

also, one of my INTJ friends actually described a method of torture that he had in mind (and intjs seem to be scarily good at stuff like this!) should a murderer kill any of his family. it involved keeping the person locked away in a dark room forever and removing each one of his senses. he'd be alive, but not sensing anything. if existence is only through ones senses, then a total shut down of those senses should equate to a practical death. this might be what happens to brain dead patients being kept alive by life support. since their minds have shut down, you could say they effectively don't exist anymore, though their body is obviously still present.
i guess if you believe in souls though it would be a different story. if your existence is not solely defined by the existence of a working physical body and sensory input system, then maybe even without all these things - maybe before the universe itself existed, you existed, because your soul was still there.

oh my.. i've gone off on a tangent, i'm so sorry

HAH yea, deprivation chambers are an interesting field of study too. Although I doubt there would be many willing to spend any significant amount of time in that total isolation. Very dire ethical implications.

 

[Satya]

There is a fundamental rule in mental health. Perception is reality.

Take for example an individual who geninunely feels they have been discrminated against. Even if every other individual feels that individual has been treated fairly, in that individual's reality, they have been discriminated against.

Every individual is living in their own little dream because their thinking is biased by limitations in their perception.

That is why empathy and measurement are such dangerous things. They destroy your personal reality by challenging your perceptions.

There is nothing more that I love than destroying a person's reality, or forcing others to destroy mine.

 

[NeverAmI]

didn't it work out like this.

I doubt my existence, therfore I exist

Not 100% on this, just speculation, but here it goes:

I doubt my existence.

Doubt is thought.

therefore I think about my existence

If I think about existence then I must exist.

 

[Barnabas]

Not 100% on this, just speculation, but here it goes:

I doubt my existence.

Doubt is thought.

therefore I think about my existence

If I think about existence then I must exist.

close enough, or not if your a philosopher

 

[TinyBubbles]

There is a fundamental rule in mental health. Perception is reality.

Take for example an individual who geninunely feels they have been discrminated against. Even if every other individual feels that individual has been treated fairly, in that individual's reality, they have been discriminated against.

Every individual is living in their own little dream because their thinking is biased by limitations in their perception.

That is why empathy and measurement are such dangerous things. They destroy your personal reality by challenging your perceptions.

There is nothing more that I love than destroying a person's reality, or forcing others to destroy mine.

but isn't the lack of empathy equally "dangerous"? a lot of our reality is defined by what other people tell us. if they weren't empathetic to our concerns, our reality would become that of a world in which no one cares, so even when we are genuinely victimized, we'd stop seeing ourselves as victimized and might overburden ourselves unnecessarily trying to cope with it. might even lead to the development of destructive habits in order to cope, which might have easily been avoided had our genuine concerns been empathized with, and our own resolve to improve the situation be strengthened by the faith of another person.

 

[middle1]

I'm actually doing a humanities research paper on Descartes, and I'm embarassed to say I haven't started it yet, but you guys have provided some interesting insight ; )

I have his Discourse on my nightstand that has yet to be read.

I think NeverAmI summed up Descartes thought pretty well.

 

[bamf]

Not 100% on this, just speculation, but here it goes:

I doubt my existence.

Doubt is thought.

therefore I think about my existence

If I think about existence then I must exist.

Yup, that's basically what it was. Because he was the thinking about himself, he had to be something. He could just be a part of a dream, but in being part of a dream, he still is something. We could have no idea what "reality" is, if there is a different one outside of our perspective, but for the mere fact that we can even think about existence, we are something. What that something is (if I remember right) isn't something he was comfortable explaining. We simply are something.


Edit: actually, only I am for sure something (from my perception). You all could be parts of me and my thoughts (and as Humes would say, I have no reasonable explanation to believe either over the other)

 

[NeverAmI]

close enough, or not if your a philosopher

Well if it isn't exact, then please clarify!

 

[NeverAmI]

persistence of observed matter (Inferred through senses and memory), manipulation of matter by entities outside of our own personal influence, and probability seem to be the only shared grounds for our 'reality.'

Oh, perhaps shared symbolical representation as well?

 

[Barnabas]

Well if it isn't exact, then please clarify!

I'm no philosopher.

it was a joke NAI.

 

[NeverAmI]

I'm no philosopher.

it was a joke NAI.

Sorry, lol!

 

[acd]

Nope. I am matter, a form a body and energy.
I grow and eat, breathe, sleep, feel and emote and all the other stuff as well as think and all those things in conjunction make me alive. I'm not a fan of this conclusion because it asserts that humanity is pretty much the pinnacle of existence.

 

[under skies]

I've always loved Descartes for the conversations this piece provokes. (Solipsism, ahoy!)

I'm not sure how he tied his belief in god into that. Many philosophers frown at that part and wonder why Descartes couldn't doubt god when he could doubt everything else so easily. It's a curious footnote.

Well, his conclusion evidently "present[ed] itself so clearly and so distinctly to [his] mind that [he] might have no occasion to doubt it." He only set out to doubt that which he didn't feel he could prove. He thought he was proving the existence of God and so had no reason to doubt himself once he reasoned through it.

I don't know. I, myself, hold bias because I've always liked that one bit the best.



For anyone who is interested and doesn't want to look it up, here is an excerpt dealing with how he relates the idea to theology--

After this, and reflecting upon the fact that I doubted, and that in consequence my being was not quite perfect (for I saw clearly that to know was a greater perfection than to doubt), I bethought myself to find out from whence I had learned to think of something more perfect than I; and knew for certain that it must be from some nature which was in reality more perfect. For as regards the thoughts I had of many other things outside myslef, as of the sky, the earth, light, heat, and a thousand more, I was not so much at a loss to know whence they came, because, remarking nothing in them which seemed to make them superior to me, I could believe that if they were true they were dependencies of my nature, inasmuch as it had some perfection, and if they were dependencies of my nature, inasmuch as it had some perfections, and if they were not true that I derived them from nothing--that is to say, that they were in me because I had some defect. But it could not be the same with the idea of a Being more perfect than my own, for to derive it from nothing was manifestly impossible; and since it is no less repugnant to me that the more perfect should follow and depend on the less perfect than that out of nothing should proceed something, I could not derive it from myself; so that it remained that it had been put in me by a nature truly more perfect than I, which had in itself all perfections of which I could have any idea; that is, to explain myself in one word, God.