The below email sets forth an "essay" I submitted in 2018 for my 50th college reunion and for the "book" of classmates' essays that were solicited, compiled and distributed in connection with the 50th reunion event.
To: davidmpc@mac.com
Sent: Wed, Sep 5, 2018 2:41 pm
Subject: Final version of Rob's Shattuck's essay
Rob Shattuck
September 5, 2018
How much during one's lifetime does one dwell on the question of "what am I"?
Or on the corollary question of "what is the universe"?
How many Dartmouth '69's doing their essays in their 8th decade of life have those questions on their mind?
It is such questions I choose (or am compelled) to discuss in my essay.
More than a half century ago I learned Descartes "I think; therefore I am."
I translated, and continue to translate, that as, "I am a thinking thing," with the added refinement, "I am a self-aware thinking thing."
Defining myself as a "self-aware thinking thing," I have been a lifetime watcher of what goes on in my head.
To give a current flavor, I ran across the below on Facebook recently:
I experience that a lot during my nights. I ask my wife about her experience. She doesn't really say. I wonder out loud, "Do you think X, Y, or Z (men we know in their 60's and 70's) have the middle of the night stuff." My wife and I don't know. Maybe at some point I'll ask them.Brain at 3 am:I see you're trying to sleep, so I would like to offer youa selection of every memory, unresolved issue,or things you should have done today, or in the past 40 years!
Having given the foregoing current flavoring, I will discuss certain thinking that has happened in my brain.
In doing this, I have not revisited Descartes for exactly where he took "I think; therefore I am." This essay indicates where I have taken "I think; therefore I am."
I go to sleep, wake up, and sense that I am the same thinking thing as before I went to sleep. After I wake, I don't sense that my self-aware brain was functioning the same as when I am awake. Maybe that is a disconnect between my waking brain and my sleeping brain. I am inclined to think something in my brain turns off while I am asleep.
I am conscious of voluminous data that gets inputted into my brain through my senses. I acknowledge there are innate things (genetics) that don't come in through my senses. My brain is not able to discern and organize that which comes from genetics, compared to the way my brain discerns and organizes the great amount of data that comes in through my senses.
I add to "I think; therefore I am" that my brain has the attribute of memory.
The attribute of my memory preserves data that comes into my brain through my senses, and that data can be summoned up by the memory faculty of my my brain.,
The accumulation of sensory data in my brain that comes into my brain in a sequence, that gets preserved in memory, and that gets recalled, give rise to my brain having a sense of time and of the passage of time.
The sensory data that comes into my brain includes lived personal experiences and much information about many things that are not personal to me, such as history, current events and human activities.
Philosophy has wrestled with the question of what is the nature of that which is external to the thinking brain, what correspondence exists between something that is external to the brain and the sensory data that registers in the brain, and even whether there is anything external.
It seems to me it is incontrovertible that I think and that I have thoughts. This leads me to say I know that I think and Iknow that I have thoughts. I don't feel I need to water that down and say only that I believe I think and or only believe that I have thoughts.
As to what is external to my brain, my choice is to use the word "believe" rather than the word "know."
I believe there is an external world, in which there is, among other things, history that has happened.
I further believe there are other thinking things like me that exist independently of me. I do not believe I am the only thinking thing, and I don't believe all the sensory data (including for example history) that is in my brain was generated internally by my brain.
Moving on in this discussion, I have the observation that my brain at the time of my birth was not developed the way it is now and was not at the time equipped with language, thinking abilities, and consciousness of memory.
Language, logic, personality and modes of thought that have developed in me shape and limit how I am able to answer to the question of "what am I". I am a thinking thing,I have no memory of having a developed brain when I was born, I have a developed brain now, and I have recollection and data indicating there was development over time.
Further, data input into my head and lived experience have created belief that people are born, live, and die, and many people (with brains in them) have come before me. The data input I get from history and science books includes that previously the Earth was believed to be the center of the universe and the Earth was previously believed to be a few thousand years old. Since then scientific knowledge has grown enormously in what it says about the universe. Science now says that the universe is 14 billion years old (and had some sort of creation) and the Earth is an infinitesimal speck in the universe.
I don't know what ideas scientists have about what there was before the creation they now believe took place, or about the nature of the creating force that brought about the creation. They may have no ideas about what came before because the domain of investigation of scientists is limited to the universe after it was created, and what was before is outside their domain of knowledge.
As to the creation, I am lacking in comprehension of what scientists comprehend that leads them to believe there was a moment of creation of the universe. Accepting what scientists say about there having been a moment of creation, I profess ignorance of what was before the creation and ignorance about what the creating force was. In answering the "what am I" question, I frankly am not affected in reaching my answer (such as I can) by whether there was a moment of creation or whether the universe had no moment of creation and has infinite existence in time.
Back to what is in my head: nothing in my head gives me any sense that there was anything of me for the 14 billion years that preceded my birth, i.e., I was non-existent, a nullity, during such time. Contemplating that non-existence before I was born leads me to contemplate that I will have the same non-existence after I am dead.
In answering the question of "what am I," my Cartesian "I think therefore I am" does not lead to believing in any "cosmic"purpose of my existence. (As I have gone along, I have developed limited purposes, such as a purpose to provide for a family, but such are not a "cosmic" purpose.)
Christian religion provides a "cosmic" purpose under the Biblical God and gives gives a fulsome answer to the question of what a human being is. That "cosmic" purpose is psychologically and spiritually comforting.
Lack of "cosmic" purpose is psychologically and spiritually painful.
To be blunt, I think science and one's sensory data are dead set against the Christian Biblical God. Many have argued the case about the existence of the Christian Biblical God on both sides. The purpose of this essay is not to be any further statement of the case against the Christian Biblical God. Rather, what I have said in this essay (and this concludes my essay) merely embodies what I am moved to say in my eighth decade of life and have appear for me in our Dartmouth 69 fiftieth reunion Book.
