There’s nothing to be done.

Or so says the first line of dialog in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.

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ONE

Consider the similarities between our conscious and unconscious and the Christian doctrine of the relationship between Jesus and the Father.

I have no interest in taking this comparison too far and…

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I always saw the debate as a binary choice, but I think it’s important to look at those instances where we act, free of any conscious choice of our own will, and move from there.

Last time, my overview of these matters touched upon the concept that our primary actions are a stress response. That response is instinctual and varies from person to …

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It’s called the Argumentation Hypothesis. First introduced by the cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber, the theory states that our reasoning capacity evolved for social reasons, to convince others and rationalize our…

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For me, the second place spot went to Come From Away, which we saw in London and then again in …

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The Sibyl of Cumae

The priestesses of the oracles were called Sibyls. The most famous if these on the Italian peninsula was the Sibyl of Cumae, and the most famous of her stories is also the most frequently misrepresented.

The gods were terrible about fooling around with mortal women. So, …

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History reinvents itself; sometimes for better; sometimes for worse.

In this case, it’s factually better to realize that our early understanding of Renaissance Florence’s Neoplatonic Academy was overly romanticized and mythologized—but in the correction, I lost something important to me and …

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Only, they provided no definition.

This had me curious, so I googled some understandings of t…

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Here’s my answer.

A Non-Circular Argument for the Existence of the Self

I may not exist. My world may not exist, and this non-existing world may be experienced through the context of this non-existing self. Yet, even if a non-entity hallucinates a non-entity, the reality it proves is the existence of the hallucination—the thought.

The thought exists but perhaps not the “I” who thought it.

Therefore, thought is real, and we’ll define thought as the experience of the self and other, whether or not these things exist. Thought becomes the active subject. It is aware, whether the subject and object of its awareness are real or not. We’ll define this thinking awareness (which experiences the presumption of self and world) as consciousness. Consciousness is therefore real. Everything of which it is conscious may not be.

The experience of consciousness is the sum total of reality if nothing else is real, and it is the sum total of subjective reality if everything is real.

One might try to argue that the experience of consciousness is the sum total of subjective reality even if the world is real and the self is not, but that reasoning cannot hold. If the self exists in no other way, it would then exist as the subjectiveness of the experience of consciousness, the self as a projection of consciousness, as opposed to the self possessing consciousness. There’s no meaningful difference between the two concepts, only the acknowledgement that two are linked so that when one ceases to be, so does the other.

It is different with the world.

“My” relationship with “my” consciousness can be that complicated, enmeshed relationship without it changing anything. Even if we presume the existence of the self is some superficially corporal way, allowing for the reality of the body and the brain, these things alone would not produce the existence of “myself” any more than any other random body and brain. Whatever the chicken-and-egg of brain and the thought may be, it remains reasonable to argue that the experience of consciousness projects the existence of self.

If the world is a projection of consciousness, however, that is relevant. Then, the world would also cease to exist when consciousness ceases. The others whom consciousness experiences would only be a projection of itself. These are two vastly different outcomes, and this argument has not distinguished between them.

Yet, the experience of consciousness has direction from a perceived interior to a perceived exterior. In other words, it has orientation. In that orientation is the experience of the self, and self need not be anything more than its own experience. We need not imagine self as a homunculus at the other end of the mechanism that is this orientated consciousness. Self is not the homunculus but the mechanism, and the mechanism is real.

Whether the world is real or illusory, the self is real according to any relevant measurement. Thought exists and is perceived from a particular orientation that is the experience of the self.

Self is the orientation of conscious perception; therefore I am.

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Until I cease to perceive,

I’m Thaddeus Thomas.

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I would like to respond to his article, however, with arguments against some of his conclusions.

Parker's Ponderings

I Still Kinda Think the Simulation Hypothesis is Self-Defeating

I think that the Simulation Hypothesis is self-defeating. I’ve had this contention for a long time now and I’ve had lots of my philosopher friends tell me that it’s actually just a waste of time to chase down this or any other argument against the Simulation Hypothesis—indeed some have told me that it’s these kinds of questions that get philosophy progr…

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2 years ago · 6 likes · 5 comments · Parker Settecase

Where I come from on this issue: philosophical mind games aside, no, I don’t think we live in a computer simulati…

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WB was done with Henry Cavill as Superman, but Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson had dreams of taking over DC with his Black Adam character. To do that, Adam had to face up against not Shazam (as he had in the comics) but Superman, and Johnson insisted on bringing back C…

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