This post is going to serve as kind of an overview of my philosophical take on life, with much more to come in future posts.
When I first started thinking about life deeply, I realized that there is really no way around the subjective nature of perception. Because perception is the basis for all knowledge, and even truth itself, it made sense to me to start my philosophical understanding of life by breaking down perception. In this post I’ll share with you a refined version of that breakdown. The first breakdown is between that which arises from outside of one’s self or from energy and that which arises from within one’s self.
Attributes of perception that seem to arise from energy:
Sensory input. The body seems to be built to detect selected input from energy. The five senses are hardwired into my perception and are triggered by energy.
Influence. All the tools my body has are built to gather or relay sensory input, which gets analyzed by my brain in the process of decision-making. Once my brain gets ahold of it, influence is what sensory input turns into. This seems to be what the body is designed to do; to collect, relay, and process input to turn it into influence. My brain’s ability to process environmental input, and how it does so, is also influence. A particularly strong form of influence comes in the form of needs. The body brings with it needs. The body needs air, water, food, shelter, and safety; all necessary in the name of preserving the body.
Attributes of perception that seem to arise from within:
(all of which will be detailed further in future posts)
Choice. Aka, free will. I seem to innately possess this ability.
Motivation. The only intrinsic (non-influence based) motivation is emotion.
Belief. Those perceptions that one identifies as true. My ability to believe something is true seems to be innate.
Going back to the original question; what is I?
I would first exclude anything that arises from energy. It has been argued that we are energy, but my problem with this is that within that context there’s no reasonable justification for perception, nor for energy to be influencing itself. So, I reject that premise and attempt to eliminate that which arises from energy. I posit that I am what remains upon successful completion of that task. I am what arises when an entity has the innate ability to choose, to believe, and to feel, which could be conceptualized as the innate abilities of a spiritual self, which exists outside of, or apart from, energy.