1. An alloy of mercury with another metal or metals; used especially (with silver) as a dental filling.
2. A mixture or compound of different things.
~~~~~~~
A paper from Hume and the Skeptics exploring sensory input. Part I of III
Imagine a world of nothing. What springs to mind is likely a void with endless blackness—but even this is too much. Absolutely nothing. No colors, smells, objects or sounds whatsoever. When Descartes emptied his barrel of apples, this is what remained. For the sake of curious exploration, let us build a world in it.
Firstly, it must be mentioned that something exists, and while we cannot be sure of it, it can. This thing that exists we will call the floating cogito. It has all the properties of our sapient minds, the ability to mentally explore, imagine, problem-solve and especially, self-reflect. What it cannot do is hear, see, smell, feel or taste; but at the very least, it can think. Here we are generous in granting its capacities for the sake of argument, as were this creature real, having no input whatsoever would cripple its mental abilities to unimaginable handicap. Instead, we imagine this floating cogito to be much like ourselves when alone and ruminating; thoughtful, curious and logical, it seeks knowledge.
Being disconnected from what normally leads humans astray might be more a blessing than a curse for the creature (here I am fairly certain only very hard-nosed skeptics might agree), as fallible experience is not on its list of options. Instead, it floats in the void seeking knowledge. First, its self-reflection demands knowledge of its existence, and proving this theorem does not take long. Being the clever creature that it is, without any experience at all, it convinces itself of its own existence—beyond all doubt. Every moment it spends thinking about its thought, it knows it exists.
No comments:
Post a Comment