cogito ergo sum

Conditional and consequential clauses introduce an action that depends on another action.  They are introduced by words like if, since, and because. All of us have personal experience with the consequential type of clause, just by growing up. Such as,

If you get straight A’s on your next report card, I’ll double your allowance.

You can’t go because you didn’t clean your room.

And even after we’re all grown up:

If you don’t pay your water bill within fifteen days, we’ll shut it off.

Beyond the practical affairs of daily living, conditional clauses are an essential tool of thought. If . . . then is the framework for setting conditions and speculating on the results:

If we raise the minimum wage, then millions of Americans will raise their standard of living.

If we raise the minimum wage, then thousands of small businesses will have to close and millions of Americans will lose their jobs and be worse off than before.

Or, to be more philosophical:

If God exists, then humanity has a duty to discover who he (or she) is.

If God exists, then it’s impossible to know anything about him or her or it, so why bother?

In the second proposition, I find a huge gap between the if and the then. More if . . . then statements are needed to reason one’s way to that particular conclusion. But if we couldn’t speak this way, we probably wouldn’t be able to think this way, so conditional clauses are essential to thought.

And speaking of thought . . .

Back in the 1600s, René Descartes was trying to solve the riddle of existence. How do we know what’s real? How do we know anything is real?  Could we trust our senses to show us reality? But how do we know our senses aren’t lying to us, or that we’re seeing, hearing, and smelling the world correctly? And what is “the world,” anyway??

Descartes set himself the task of doubting everything, like trees (they seem solid, but–).  Blueberry pie (what is this digestion thing?). Other people (figments, possibly?). His own ideas (can’t see them, after all).

But when it came to thinking, he realized that thoughts had to originate from a thinker. Doubts required a doubter. That led him to the conclusion he is best known for:

I think,

therefore I am.

What do you think? Is “thinking” the way you prove your own existence? Are you free to think whatever you want? Are your thoughts purely original, arising out of your own head, or do you pick them up from friends, relatives, social media, entertainment, or some other source? Are you self-sustaining, or does your existence depend on sources outside yourself? And how many conditional clauses does it take to figure this stuff out?

(Because you can’t do it without a functioning language. If we could not communicate with each other through complex language, then we would have no way of framing these thoughts, and therefore no way of even thinking them.)