Descartes said, ‘I think therefore I am’. Is thought all that defines man of his being?
Self of man is rooted in the very consciousness of his or her world. Even in the womb a child is conscious of a world, which is part of another world. Its floating world is kind of a reality. It may not think or know of a far wider world lying beyond. Even so it is in development, a growth process beginning and end of which no one may determine for certainty. A newborn enters the world with little control over its body and having no thinking faculties so to speak. Is not the baby still a being in its own right?
Ability to think alone does not define the essence of a being.
2.
With great advances in our understanding of physiology we may now put the origin of thoughts, movements as belonging properly in the realm of physiology. Similarly a foetus linked to its mother by an umbilical chord while within the womb is a matter of physiology. But what makes it draw air in its lungs the moment the umbilical chord is cut off belongs to something else. What gave it a foreknowledge of a world that must be breathed in?
A baby has already certain experience of the outside world and it is picked up through the medium of its mother. By the same token we are conscious of a world, an inner world through the medium of our corporeal bodies.
Thinking only gives a handle to what impressions we may have of other worlds. It cannot however prove its existence or disprove it.
benny
Posts Tagged ‘everyday miracles’
Parallel Worlds
Posted in speculative philosophy, tagged Descartes, emotions, everyday miracles, foreknowledge, inner life and visible life, life, physiology, thoughts on December 28, 2008 | Leave a Comment »