Creation and the Second Person -- an argument from personal disparity
[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, chapter 26, can be found here. ] [This entry begins chapter 27, "My Relationship To Creation And To God".] Let me pause to re-establish a previous point from a slightly different direction, before I continue. If my arguments are to be worth anything, either I must be considered to be capable of thinking; or at least someone must exist who can judge the worth of what seem to me to be my arguments. However, what I call thinking doesn't affect me as if something is knocking into me. True, I can mention some mental behaviors of mine which do behave like this: automatic psychological associations, for instance. But the interesting thing is that I can (and do) form a conceptual, and even a merely perceptual, distinction between the two states. My recognition that some of my mental behaviors happen automatically without truly willed intention on my part implies tacitly that I can distinguish betwe...