by Michael Swain

Created on: October 02, 2008

Quite simply, we don't know as much as we think, and since all things are questionable, the only way we can know taht we exist is to accept certain aspects of life as given fact, despite there being nothing on which to base such assumption beyond the information fed to us by our own senses.

Our senses are our way of connecting with our world. We don't simply know that we exist within the world about us, but we feel it, see it, hear it, smell it, taste it. These senses are our way of defining ourselves and our world, and our perspective is wholly concerned with the way our minds consider the experiences brought back to it by our senses.

We could question the validity of these senses, ask whether all people really see colours as the same (or whether for example my blue and your yellow are the same, or indeed whether you see an entirely new colour, that I will never see), whether sounds and smells really do occur or whether there is another explanation, but when all is said and done it is easier to accept that the obvious answer is the correct one. Are my senses simply an illusion - do i think that I think, when actually, I am not?

This kind of mental gymnastics is confusing and ultimately leads nowhere. The fact is that I perceive - I perceive myself and i perceive what I believe to be others like me. this perception is borne out with the evidence of my five senses all acting in conjunction to agree about what they are seeing. This is the Primary evidence, and it is fleshed out with a mass of secondary evidence - communication. Not only do we put out signals, but we understand agreed signals with others and these signals work not just with one other person, but with many. In fact even when spoken languages don't match, physical languages and semiotic languages can still speak to people. We tell of our experience of the world and through communication (which in itself is a validation of existence) with others we learn that many others see the same world, albeit always through a unique point of view.

This uniqueness is in itself a further indication of a creative process resulting from a world that - in order to create - must itself exist. But humans are, by definition, human, and as such are finite beings capable of limited understanding, reasoning and philosophy. In the end we must reach a point where we accept that we can not have all the answers, but it's a fair assumption to go ahead and accept that we exist. After all there are other more pressing concerns to devote your existence to.

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