If I knew then I’d already know. If I didn’t already know, how would I know I knew it when I did?
Plato didn’t believe we could learn anything, only remember things we already knew from the land of pure forms where all pure souls originated.
I am no pure soul. I’m not even sure what a soul is. Don’t try to tell me ’cause I’ve read all the theories. They don’t make sense or at least don’t make sense enough to make holding the idea helpful to solving any problems people might have in the process of living. If anything, the idea of a soul causes more problems than it solves. Like Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance.” It violates the scientific principle of parsimony by adding an unnecessary being who thinks thoughts, feels feelings and experiences experiences and who is identified as being somehow different that the creature whose body is already there thinking, feeling and experiencing.
I know what my mind tells me I know at then time when I am aware of it. Where did the knowledge come from? Did I learn it at some point and recall it? Am I making it up as I go along using a bevy of rationalizations to reconstruct meaning to fit a skeleton of the story and an awareness of the situation/audience? Or is there some alien process feeding my brain in a vat somewhere a la Descartes or “the matrix”?
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