Project 1 process

“I think me”. This is the summary of all my understanding of western philosophy. There is a sophisticated reason behind why the action ”think” comes first in the video, rather than the subject “I“. In modern philosophy, almost all logical deductions begin from experience: when all the theories hide in the darkness, the only thing that cannot be criticized is criticizing itself. Certainly, we are experiencing the process named thinking at this moment, which does exist. Thus, Descartes ‘quote “I think therefore I am” was firstly constructed from “think”. Then we move on, and the next step is questionable. Scottish philosopher David Hume would say, “Well, Descartes, I agree with ‘think’ in your sentence, but where is the ‘I’ comes from? Have you ever experienced ‘I’? No! You only experience thoughts and emotions, then how you can confirm the existence of ‘I’? ”

I give my answer to Hume. With the flame wavering, alternating of brightness and darkness only happens around the candle. Thinking keeps extending but never crosses a certain boundary. This is ‘I’, a container of thoughts and emotions. We never experience it, but we know our thinking occurs within a volume, at least not in our neighbor’s room. Therefore, we can infer the existence of ‘I’. With ‘I’ and ‘think’, the following steps are simple. We can think of anything, philosophical or non-philosophical, and everyone has their interpretation. For me, exploring philosophy is not about those ideas, but about changing my own perspective of viewing the universe.