Conatus: REVISED EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

needs to be taken just on trust! To do this is to be a ‘fallibilist’. In the words of Charles Sanders Peirce, an enquiry is, ‘not standing upon the bedrock of fact. It is walking upon a bog, and [we] can only say, this ground seems to hold for the present. Here I will stand till it begins to give way.’ Meanwhile, in everyday life, what is taken to be truth, goodness and beauty is guided by the big themes this book has been following — narrative and essence.

So we could summarise by asking, what things can we be sure of, what things can we reasonably assume and what things remain in doubt, but are nonetheless worthy of our consideration?

We can be sure:

That, at least for each of us individually, we exist as a conscious presence.

We can reasonably assume:

Other conscious beings exist.

Consciousness is nothing more than our interactions with other consciousnesses (and possibly with an external reality).

Other people have a similar conscious experience to ourselves.

Some animals at least, and possibly a good many other creatures, have some kind of conscious experience.

Everything else — and the rest of this conclusion

278