Stolen Philosophy

I think people get famous for the strangest things.

I would like to state from the start that I do not think that I am a genius and I do not think I am some brilliant thinker. I am intelligent no doubt, but hardly any Einstein, and I do not intend this post to be a boast of my intellect, only an inquisitive look in the "genius" of certain concepts that have been glorified.

The first I was thinking of is the "Liar Paradox." In case you are not familiar with what this is (at least by that name), I will give an example.

This is a false statement.

Obviously, this is troubling. If the statement is false, then it would make it true, making it false, etc. So pretty much this is simply nonsense.

I figured that out when I was about 12. And yet it has been grappled with for over two millennia. Can't we just admit that it is nonsense and be done with it? If someone walks up to you and says "I can't speak a word of English," they are obviously quite mistaken and have just spoken a paradox. People get famous over grappling with this. Just look it up on the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://www.iep.utm.edu/p/par-liar.htm) and see how many people got in there for talking about this kind of thing. It just seems quite elementary to me, but I suppose that may only reveal my own elementary mind.

Another thing I don't get is Rene Descartes. His famous "I think, therefore I am" from his Meditations on First Philosophy is pretty much universally known. Basically this statement confirms the existence of the mind of the one thinking. I know I exist because I can think. Everything I see may be an illusion, because eyes can be deceived. Everything I smell, taste, touch or hear may also be illusions, because they are only senses that can be faulty (The Matrix, anyone?). The only thing that is certain is that the mind exists. But I don't know that anyone else's mind exists, only that my own does. From this Descartes figures that God exists. This is one of the most famous philosophical discussions there has ever been, and I figured it out in the fourth grade.

I remember the conversation with my friend Adam in class. We were discussing how we knew that we existed, but not that the other did. We could be dreaming and not know it. We may not even be human, but only in our dream. Why couldn't I have been born a few hundred years earlier and written it down? I would have been famous...

Blast.

I wonder how many other Philosophical concepts are things that a ten year old had already figured out a century earlier and just never said anything. I can just imagine some old and broken man in the 1650s living his entire life wishing that he had done something worthwhile and then stumbling upon his friend Rene's manuscript Meditations on First Philosophy and having a stroke because he actually thought of it 40 years earlier.

Just a thought.