‘Homer is one of the men of genius who solve that fine problem of art — the finest of all, perhaps — truly to depict humanity by the enlargement of man: that is, to generate the real in the ideal.’ –Victor Hugo
If you can be sure of one thing, then surely it is that you exist. Even if the world were a dream or a hallucination, it would still need you to be dreaming or hallucinating it. (…)
There is a wide range of scientific evidence that is used to deny “I think, therefore I am”. In René Descartes’ famous deduction, a coherent, structured experience of the world is inextricably linked with a sense of a self at the heart of it. But as the clinical neuropsychologist Paul Broks explained to me, we now know the two can in fact be separated.
People with Cotard’s syndrome, for instance, can think that they don’t exist, an impossibility for Descartes. Broks describes it as a kind of “nihilistic delusion” in which they “have no sense of being alive in the moment, but they’ll give you their life history”. They think, but they do not have sense that therefore they are.
Then there is temporal lobe epilepsy, which can give sufferers an experience called transient epileptic amnesia. “The world around them stays just as real and vivid – in fact, even more vivid sometimes – but they have no sense of who they are,” Broks explains. This reminds me of Georg Lichtenberg’s correction of Descartes, who he claims was entitled to deduce from “I think” only the conclusion that “there is thought”. This is precisely how it can seem to people with temporal lobe epilepsy: there is thought, but they have no idea whose thought it is.
photo { Noritoshi Hirakawa }
