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Well, it's been about forever since I last made an entry. I guess school really cuts into my self-reflection time. This has been festering my mind for a while, and I figured I might as well put it into words.
Last year, a good friend of mine asked me a question about reality. Basically, how could you know that what you see, what you feel, sense and so on, isn't just inside your head. (This would best be described as a Matrix affect). I answered that if my brain was truly making up everything aboout reality, why would it make up a person (in this case, my friend) who questioned it? How come my brain, who is supposed to have all this power over my conscience, allow for a creation of doubt? Basically, I told him that the only proof I had this all the world is real, is the fact that he asked me that question.
Well, he seemed pretty impressed by that answer at least. So, I've been pondering over it, learning about new philosophies, until I read about people like Plato and Socrates and Descartes, and a brilliant question popped into my head:
Do you believe that all knowledge is innate? I would ask this to my friend, if I ever saw him long enough to get an answer. Do you believe that all the knowledge you will ever know you knew at birth, but simply have to 'unlock' it through teachers and lessons and such? I believe, that in order to even consider the Matrix philosophy, you must believe that statement.
Here's why:
If all reality was truly created from my brain, wouldn't my brain have to know everything that I will ever encounted in my life? When you were seven, you didn't know what calculus was. When you were two, you didn't know what a duck-billed platapus was. If my brain really created my reality, it would have to 'know' what all these things in my world were. Thus, innate knowledge.
If I asked you what a philiokantheratus was, would you know? It I told you it has six scarothids and two lorwedins on its front garjinz, would that help? No, your brain has never heard anything like that before (for all my psychology alumni, we techinically have no schema for it). There are things in this world that our brains do not understand. So, my philosophy is that unless you believe that everyone's knowledge is innate and is unlocked over time, there is no possible way for you to believe in a Matrix reality. Your brain can only accomodate knew things, not make them up without your conscience knowing about it.
 Qua Quidam · Sat Oct 25, 2008 @ 07:33pm · 0 Comments |
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