In the past, I have contemplated organizing and elaborating on the thoughts via a blog post or something similar, but I tend to lose focus easily. Sometimes the output of my brain is too overwhelming. But I'll give it a shot.
Yesterday in the shower I recalled something interesting from my childhood. The details are murky, but my experience highlights the roots of my skepticism and amateur interest in philosophy. I don't mean to bury the lead here, but I'd like to give the situation a little bit of context. My memory indicates that I pondered the topic a few times, but one instance stands out. I was about seven or eight years old, at a church activity at the place where I both went to school and church from as early as I can remember up to the fourth grade (Oak Forest Baptist Temple/Oak Forest Christian Academy). It was a somewhat larger meeting than usual, perhaps a joining of a few age groups just above and below mine, with our adult supervisors as well. I thought to myself something along the lines of, "all these other people [mainly the adults] are or could be robots." I'm trying to avoid injecting my present state of mind into these memories, but that's the core of it.
Now for interpretation. The present me wants to say that I'm positing something along the lines of "only the self is knowable." Or perhaps I'm testing the waters of the determinism vs. free will debate. The fact that this observation occurred at a church meeting is also humorously insightful, but that topic is for another day. As I mentioned above, I'm an amateur philosopher. I haven't formally studied the topic, and my informal studies have been piecemeal at best. At the moment I can't cite the appropriate writings by the famous philosophers.
I had hoped to flesh this post out a little more, but the distractions of a Saturday evening are calling to me. I figure I should post this entry to get the blall (portmanteau of web, log, and ball) rolling, and in the near future I can post a follow up. Something along the lines of what could my present self tell my past self. Maybe I'll even give my editing skills some much needed exercise. I welcome any comments in the interim.
