Sound Phantom - The Tree

I guess all Descartes knew for certain was that HE existed. In scientific sense, you can't be privy to anyone else's mind. Their own sense of self is only available to you through your senses (as is everything that isn't your self). So you have to take on faith, as in educated deduction, that other people have minds or souls or whatever. Until recently (last couple of hundred years), at least in "Western" thought, animals were thought to be merely patterns, algorithms. The vivisection of creatures for medical research (which continues today by the way) was easily explained away by the notion that since they had no souls, they couldn't really feel anything either (Harari: Homo Deus). They were like moving plants that had automatic responses, as might a robot. The idea is alive and well, judging by my many arguments with people who think that shellfish couldn't possibly feel pain without a central nervous system like ours. Why is there a cut-off point betwee...

Where does the edge of one thing stop and the next begin? The table that you sit at seems to have a clearly defined edge, at least from an every day perspective. What if you were the size of a fly? A mite? An amoeba? An atom? the edge would no longer be a simple straight line, but a jagged, roiling cloud of haze. It would be like trying to define the edge of a cloud of mist. Thinking further, where does your body's edge stop? At you fingertips? Just past them? Is your breath still part of 'you'? What about your sight and hearing? Science has informed us that your are an island. There is only a sheen of perception between you and the outside world. You cannot exit your body, in any sense - you aren't looking at that distant building, it is reflecting light into your eye and your brain is translating that into the concept of 'distance'. Your eyes aren't lasers that reach out and touch objects, they are merely sensors into which light travels. If it feels a...