Cogito ergo sum
This is how the weather should be all year round, Guaymas would be a paradise, once again I reaffirm my opinion that May is the best month inGuaymasWe'll have to take advantage of it.
Now, it's time to run, and it's time to do the runs earlier, especially the long runs, since at 8 a.m., the sun falls heavy.
So today, I left a little earlier. Before 5:30, Mariana and I were already jogging down the street. As always, she left the neighborhood and took her route, while I continued.
Now my ramblings ended very philosophically. I remember when I was in my first year of senior high school, I came across Rene Descartes in logic class. I had heard of him before and his famous "I think, therefore I am," but the truth is, I had never paid the slightest interest to him. But when I started senior high school, I was in a period of much questioning and discovered that Descartes' method was, precisely, systematic doubt. Then I understood that "cogito ergo sum" should be taken as "I doubt therefore I exist" and if I was sure of anything, it was that I doubted.
But what made me think the most was his “Evil Demon", the one who manipulates all our perceptions in such a way that we doubt that even the most obvious things are true. Since then, I've always asked myself: What if the evil demon is myself?”.
There is reason to wonder. To begin with, our sensory organs are incomplete and imperfect. Incomplete because their development depends on our evolutionary history. Through natural selection, they developed to perceive information that is fundamental to our survival, leaving much to be mucho out.
For example, in the case of light, we know that some animals perceive infrared, and others ultraviolet, which humans don't. Also in the case of sounds, we know that there are ranges that we don't detect, but other animals do. Furthermore, it's very clear that among humans, who share the same sensory organs, there's great variety in our perceptual abilities. Some people have better eyesight, hearing, smell, taste, or touch. Something well-known is that we don't all have the same color perception; some people have a degree of color blindness and don't realize it until very late in life. Another example: if I show you the inside of a watermelon, we'll both say it's red, but is the color we're seeing the same? How can we know if your red isn't my yellow? for example.
But that's not all. Despite how incomplete and imperfect our sensory organs are, the information our sensory systems can perceive is many times greater than our nervous system's ability to process, so each individual generates a different model of the world. As if that weren't enough, our understanding of the world depends largely on how our nervous system is integrated and how it functions.
I ended up asking myself: "How can I know that I'm not a mentally ill person locked away in the Fray Bernardino Psychiatric Hospital and that everything I think I perceive is the result of my sick mind?" The reference to the Fray Bernardino Psychiatric Hospital is relevant since it was half a block from the house where I lived in high school.
For me, the certainty of the external world comes from empirical knowledge, in its simplest form: if someone and I share a perception that we can both independently verify is true, it means that what we perceive exists. I think that's the simplest way to explain the scientific method. But if that person and I agree on its existence, then for me that person exists. Since I'm the one doubting, I know that I do exist.
I must confess that this is a recurring theme in my musings; systematic doubt remains my way of interpreting…ALL.
In the last chapter of my book “HISTORÍA DE LA TIERRA, UNA COSMOGONÍA PERSONAL" I deal with this and other topics, I invite you to read it. Available on Amazon from June 4th.
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