Of Knowledge - Sensation, Mind and Existence

While struggling with the ideas presented by René Descartes (1596-1650), John Locke (1632-1704), George Berkeley (1685-1753) and Bertrand Russel (1872-1970), many notions came and went in my mind.  This only made me want to delve further into what knowledge truly is and study the nature of mind.  What is mind?  Is there knowledge and if so, what is it?  These thoughts all started with my natural (and religious) inclination to prove objective realism but in the end, that proved to be more challenging and perhaps an impossible endeavor.  I wish to jot down my thoughts that are developing in my mind so that I can continuously reflect upon it, develop it, or perhaps come to a point of total rejection of the thoughts presented below.  I do not wish to convey that I am at a loss as these are what I believe to be certain at the moment but I only wish to accept that I’ve arrived at these thoughts recently and in a recent future, I may arrive at another. 

In consideration of René Descartes’ Meditations, there seems to be some problems with where he heads with scepticism and even where he begins.  Indeed, it was surprising to see Descartes write about the existence of God right after he explains his reason for sceptical thinking in his Meditations.  I can see that he implements an ontological argument similar to St. Anselm’s in this case but where he moves from doubting all obtained knowledge to any notion related to God seems problematic.  Any conventional concept of God, and especially the God of classical theism, must be taught and must be a knowledge obtained through teachings.  After establishing that all these knowledge can be doubted, one cannot talk about ideas in his mind being the proof of existence of God.

At this point, one might step back to solipsism and rethink where to go from there.  Solipsism by definition is a view that starts from the mind.  There are some who think that this step is too far into scepticism.  I disagree.  I believe that if one wishes to pursue a proper theory of knowledge, one must be sceptical in all matter – mind also.  One must not merely be aware that he has a mind because of an ontological sense of its existence but he must know where it came from and how it came about.  This is very similar to empiricism in the foundational level but there are some glaring differences later on.

Mind and its origin

Descartes states that he is a thinking being in his First Meditation.  Descartes points out that the claim itself is doubtful.  However, from this doubt he postulates that one can realize he is a doubting being and therefore knows that he has a mind.  This basis seems as firm as any ontological argument (ie. not so much).  Doubting the existence of mind does not prove the existence of mind.  I propose that the knowledge of us having a mind must be a matter that needs to be realized from another matter.  What we call our mind and their existence are not innate knowledge we are born with.  Mind encompasses all that we conceive: doubts, beliefs, interpretation of sensation, morality, knowledge, memories and etc.  How do we obtain all these and where did they come from?  I would argue that they are brought on through sensation.  From there we must ask: do we have a mind and so we perceive or do we have a mind because we perceived?  The answer seems simple enough at first (the former) but what is mind without any history of sensation?  We obtain the aforementioned aspects of mind by collecting sensory data: we see things and we (hopefully) learn; we hear things, we take in knowledge; we are warned of dangers through pain; we observe the behaviors of people and nature, and we make certain conclusions.  There must be a consciousness in order to take in the sensory data but is that consciousness considered a mind?  As Locke points out, this may be considered as a blank sheet of paper – a tabula rasa – without any knowledge but with certain natural powers.  I would like to express these powers as “tools” we are born with such as the ability to interpret sensory data and piece them together.

The next question that may arise is whether it’s possible to have a mind without sensation: if that proves true, we can conclude that sensation is not a pre-requisite to the existence of mind.  Let us look at a “blank person” example.  Imagine a person who is stripped of all sensation.  He cannot see, smell, feel, hear or taste.  Along with that, he also cannot move so as to not indirectly feel the surrounding.  Now, without any outside interference of his senses, he has no way to know what these properties are.  How does a blind man know he’s blind?  Because he is told, and people around him mention the concept of sight.  Going back to the blank person, he is still left with his consciousness.  Does he have a mind?  He has no way of knowing anything pertaining to this universe or any way of knowing a conceivable language (learning the first language tends to involve all five senses).  Are there shapes or color in the mind?  Even if we develop a technology that can interpret the contents of his mind (which there are some early prototypes), will we be able to see anything?  Possibly but what we call a mind and even the state of doubting comes after we are fully immersed by knowledge obtained through sensations.  One may argue that the existence of consciousness is still a mind but do we consider this blank state of mind to contain any thoughts?  We can imagine ourselves as a blank state when we are born, and as we perceive, we think.

Observerism

When we consider that perception comes before our mind, we must wonder how this affects knowledge.  At the start of sceptical thinking, all knowledge is perceived and because we are uncertain about perception, we doubted all knowledge based on perception.  However, if perception is the inevitable starting point of where we can gain knowledge and not our minds, we must inevitably use observational method using our senses to arrive at mind and knowledge (ie. scientific method).  In this sense, we are mere observers.  I like to use the analogy of a child playing in the sandbox.  We build sand castles; we combine different things in the sand; and we make and use tools to do many things to the sand.  However, we are still limited to the sandbox and we are unable to create or destroy anything.  It may look destroyed when we evaporate something but all particles in the universe stay the same no matter what – the law of conservation of mass.  The uncertainty and mistakes based on our observations, that we correct overtime, are inevitable.  However, this does not gives grounds for doubting all that we observe; this gives us grounds to pursue better tools for observing or better understanding of our surrounding.  Just because our eyes see lights bend when different mediums refract lights in a certain way, it does not give you probable grounds to doubt all that you see – it gives you grounds to study this particular and odd behavior of light.  The fundamental principles of what I present is same as empiricism but empiricism concludes that there is no reason to believe that anything exists outside of our perception.  However, if knowledge is based on perception and our experience, we have all the more reason to believe that there are plenty of things in the universe that we have not perceived.  As we perceive new matter and new knowledge, our mind develops.  Arguably, every moment is comprised of perceiving new things.  It is much more probable, then, based on our experience that there is an external material world that we have been perceiving and will perceive, rather than there is nothing beyond our perception.