Considerations on Consciousness
“The world is my representation.”
— Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation
There are billions of worlds, all created by our gift of consciousness. From our eyes, there is no singular world we are living in, but one we have created through our perspective on things. Every one of these worlds has its own main character, side characters, and plot. Every single view from each world is different, but always right in their own eyes. However, even if they are right, they may not be. They may be right with what they have seen, but not with what is actually true. So yes, there are billions of worlds around us, but the problem is that only one person lives in every one of them. But if we as individuals can’t see through any of these worlds, how do we know that there aren’t billions more?
When we look at a dog, for example, we see a living being. We see an individual with a brain that can clearly undergo emotions and triggers to execute certain actions. However, when we look at a dog, we see something less advanced than us. We see something that cannot speak our language, do physical actions like us, or think as we do. The problem with this is that it is almost entirely an assumption. A dog could be as consciously advanced as we are, but just can’t execute things outside of the mind as we do. Neuroscience can try to explain this, but we will never know the answer to this problem until we could truly be inside the mind of a dog.
The exact same goes for any living being on our planet with a working brain. Along with the fact that this can add countlessly many more worlds to my theory, it can also prove something about us. You can never explain the inner working consciousness of another individual, so they are just another version of you. A version of you with a different background, a different perspective, and a different influence, but they are equal with you down to their origin of existence. So you should treat them as another version of yourself, and someone whose emotions should be valued. Thank you for reading Social Science 43 and have a fabulous day.
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