Consolidation of the Mind, Being, and God
Just as Descartes uses triangles as a powerful tool of proof, a triangle can be created between the concepts of mind, being, and God. That is, these three notions have significant connection to each other. For the purpose of this paper, imagine that the mind, being, and God are each the vertex of a triangle with lines connecting them. The purpose of this triangle is not to add a mystical element to this paper but rather to use it as a tool to organize concepts and further analysis. Just as changing the angle of one of the vertexes of a triangle affects the whole shape, the interpretation of any of these three concepts has effects on the other two. For example, right triangles are defined by the presence …show more content…
Therefore, it could be posed: can the mind and state of being exist without each other? For the purposes of this essay, “being” will be defined as the state of existing. From this definition, if one did not have a mind, would one have a state of being? The answer to this is yes, as animals certainly exist but as far as we can tell they do not consider why they exist. However, this answer changes if you restrict being to include sentience. Sentience is characterized by sensation and consciousness. While this makes the answer yes, it does so in a bi-directional manner, meaning you could not have the mind without being or being without the mind. It is here that the Cartesian proof of existence is relevant. Descartes, a French philosopher, is well known for a series of writings known as his “Meditations”. In the second of the six meditations, Descartes, in order to prove this connection, takes everything he senses and remembers as false. Upon doing this, he realizes that since he persuaded himself of this fact, then he must exist. Even if he is being deceived by a more powerful entity, the fact that someone or something is deceiving him also results in the conclusion that he exists (Descartes 64). The result of this finding is that Descartes used his mind to prove the existence of his being and thus established the connection between …show more content…
Conventional Christian thought also establishes God as omnipotent and all-seeing. From this is can easily be established that Huang-Po and Descartes arrived at the same conclusion about God, despite having no relation or similarity to each other whatsoever. As well as this, Descartes also argues that the presence in his mind of an idea of a perfect God proves Gods existence and that this idea is innate to him (Descartes 80). This can be restated as: “there is no God outside the mind, nor is there any mind outside of God”, a replica of Huang-Po’s early statement. In light of this realization, the mind is most definitely linked to the idea of God. By synthesizing the findings of these two men, each from very different time periods and schools of thought, we can arrive at the following conclusion: if there is a higher power, it is perfect, omnipotent, and all-seeing; and fundamentally intrinsic to our mind and its ideas. While this is important, God still cannot be identified or measured tangibly. Due to the nature of our idea of God, our minds cannot fully conceptualize God’s existence or fully comprehend it. The larger context of this finding is that it helps define the boundaries of who we are and our place within reality. At the very least, even if it is found that a God doesn’t exist, the idea of a perfect being certainly does,
Just as Descartes uses triangles as a powerful tool of proof, a triangle can be created between the concepts of mind, being, and God. That is, these three notions have significant connection to each other. For the purpose of this paper, imagine that the mind, being, and God are each the vertex of a triangle with lines connecting them. The purpose of this triangle is not to add a mystical element to this paper but rather to use it as a tool to organize concepts and further analysis. Just as changing the angle of one of the vertexes of a triangle affects the whole shape, the interpretation of any of these three concepts has effects on the other two. For example, right triangles are defined by the presence …show more content…
Therefore, it could be posed: can the mind and state of being exist without each other? For the purposes of this essay, “being” will be defined as the state of existing. From this definition, if one did not have a mind, would one have a state of being? The answer to this is yes, as animals certainly exist but as far as we can tell they do not consider why they exist. However, this answer changes if you restrict being to include sentience. Sentience is characterized by sensation and consciousness. While this makes the answer yes, it does so in a bi-directional manner, meaning you could not have the mind without being or being without the mind. It is here that the Cartesian proof of existence is relevant. Descartes, a French philosopher, is well known for a series of writings known as his “Meditations”. In the second of the six meditations, Descartes, in order to prove this connection, takes everything he senses and remembers as false. Upon doing this, he realizes that since he persuaded himself of this fact, then he must exist. Even if he is being deceived by a more powerful entity, the fact that someone or something is deceiving him also results in the conclusion that he exists (Descartes 64). The result of this finding is that Descartes used his mind to prove the existence of his being and thus established the connection between …show more content…
Conventional Christian thought also establishes God as omnipotent and all-seeing. From this is can easily be established that Huang-Po and Descartes arrived at the same conclusion about God, despite having no relation or similarity to each other whatsoever. As well as this, Descartes also argues that the presence in his mind of an idea of a perfect God proves Gods existence and that this idea is innate to him (Descartes 80). This can be restated as: “there is no God outside the mind, nor is there any mind outside of God”, a replica of Huang-Po’s early statement. In light of this realization, the mind is most definitely linked to the idea of God. By synthesizing the findings of these two men, each from very different time periods and schools of thought, we can arrive at the following conclusion: if there is a higher power, it is perfect, omnipotent, and all-seeing; and fundamentally intrinsic to our mind and its ideas. While this is important, God still cannot be identified or measured tangibly. Due to the nature of our idea of God, our minds cannot fully conceptualize God’s existence or fully comprehend it. The larger context of this finding is that it helps define the boundaries of who we are and our place within reality. At the very least, even if it is found that a God doesn’t exist, the idea of a perfect being certainly does,