A Thought Experiment

ExistencePrecedesEssence said:

Ignorance

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Yet constructed fixtures of the world can be just as ignorant when man is left to his own vices.

faith guardian said:

It is not hard to see that infants have a personality of their own from day one. The belief that we are the sum of our experiences is only partly true.

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We are all born with a blank slate however. Tabula Rasa.

phsyxx said:

Trust you to come up with an answer like that quatona.



Yes. So we wouldn't know if this place was a world, would we - we wouldn't know if it was real.

If you were a clean slate though, working on the assumptions that you had an uncanny ability to understand every word spoken, and that this is a world, and it indeed 'exists' - what would your view on the current moral climate be?

As in - you haven't brought your own morality into play - you observe others....

you see a man running upto a woman and taking something from her, she shouts, points, exclaims....

What do you make of it?

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Once you understand that man is naturally good with civilization being acquired forms of corruption one can make sense of things entirely on their own.

phsyxx said:

Yeah...sorry quatona - I suppose my feeling was that the reaction to the initial post was a bit lacklustre - and that I was trying to push for some sort of answer.


But if you were to be an entirely clean slate - then would it be possible to do anything? If you had no mastery of language - would you be able to formulate any kind of thought?

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Chances are that such a consciousness would be a momentary one without imagination of the future beyond momentary feelings of existance.

phsyxx said:

Yes, it would only be an instant before you would be exposed to stimuli.

Erm...babies seem to be hard-wired to learn language, imitate and develop by the examples around them.
Whether or not this is an evolutionary by-product to create social cohesion, as humans require numbers for survival, hunting and protection - plus if the baby were not to imitate its peers then it would not learn the necessary survival skills, plus it would run the risk of not fitting in with the tribe - and therefore would put its own survival at risk.


In answer to what this thread is about, I wanted to develop it to the point where we could explore the possibility of this "clean-slate" developing his/her own beliefs.

Imagine if an amnesiac found themself on another planet - completely empty and devoid of human life - and there was no way they would ever get their memory back -

then what kind of beliefs would they start developing?

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Those few moments of a clean state offer insight that indeed a clean receptive state does indeed exist for each individual and interestingly enough proves that all human beings are born equal.

ManOfTheAmish said:

Once you understand that man is naturally good with civilization being acquired forms of corruption one can make sense of things entirely on their own.

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By stating naturally good, and then in the post before this you computate with the statement of being born with a blank slate you contradict your appeasement.

Consciousness allows for imagination to occur, because your imagination is made of the nothingness of possiblity that surrounds you. Consciousness is what allows imagination to be called imagination instead of just normal non-conscious thought. Imagination is thought not capable of happening because imagination cannot have action in the actuality of existence, but it disconcerns itself with reality, which allows itself to have the dreams and satisfaction of the dreamer. To see this beauty of thought transcending everything, not capable of happening, yet affecting the individual, is to see the beauty of possiblity.

The consciousness is the soul reason we look ahead, and look past, it is rarely that the consciousness is used to observe the "now" for it is not the "now" that concerns the consciosness. It is the future, and past that intrigues the consciousness, and the possiblity of everything around it. This is why you daydream.

faith guardian said:

It is not hard to see that infants have a personality of their own from day one. The belief that we are the sum of our experiences is only partly true.

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From day one, eh? What personality can you possibly discern from a bright pink thing that just wriggles, screams, eats and sleeps? The thing can't even smile!