It was around New Year's Eve of 2006 when I first wrote down a small note about the strange feeling I had been experiencing during those days. It was something like, "Why do I feel as if I am at the center of everything?" Along with similar questions, I eventually arrived at the ultimate one: "What am I?". At first, I thought I might be going through some kind of mental disorder. But over time, I realized it was a normal question that any of us might ask ourselves in one way or another throughout our lives.
We are all human beings-at least according to the definition imposed on us from birth. We learn new things by building on what we already know, essentially forming logical links between them. New information doesn't enter our minds as a fresh, isolated set of neurons wired from scratch. Take the word "selfie," for example. A selfie can't be defined without referencing the concept of a "mobile phone camera" and the action of "taking a photo of yourself." Similarly, if you're learning the idea of a blue apple, you can't grasp it without recalling the shape of an ordinary apple and the color blue, and then combining them. The same logic applies to learning physically bound activities like driving. You can't learn to drive without using your basic physical skills, such as turning the steering wheel or pressing pedals like the gas and brake. This is all natural-it's encoded in our DNA, our genes. There's no escaping it. Our senses are the sole source of information. The knowledge we acquire - or the way it is represented in our brains - exists entirely in the form of sensory inputs. So, everything we hold in our minds - thoughts, emotions, even the boundaries of our dreams - is defined in the programming language of our senses. If that's the case, how can we ever learn truths that lie beyond the horizon of those senses?
Mechanically speaking, human beings are no different from animals. Biologically, we are classified within the animal kingdom. Of course, we are more intelligent than our fellow species. We've developed the ability to reason and accumulate knowledge, to the point where we can reflect deeply on the environment we live in. We can sit in a chair for hours trying to solve complex problems. A cat doesn't concern itself with building a rocket to explore Mars. We can also create art-something no other species can replicate. And more profoundly, we can reflect on the limits of our universe. We can even turn inward and ask: What does it mean to be a human being?
Many philosophers tried to explore the actual mechanism behind being a human or in a broader sense, having human way of conciousness. We, as human beings, apperantly have more complex level of mental mechanism, so the conciousness that we define should have some sort of uniqeness compared to the other species. In today's world, the science is developed to a level that we can manage to check what phyiscal processes are running within our skull even non-ivasively. We may answer many questions about how brain works. However, we can not answer one and we do not seem to answer it in the near future: why do we experience the world the way we do it? The question seems a bit tricky but not easy to answer. Let me try to explain it using an example. When you see an object in red color, you experience it through your sensory organ, eye. The image of color is reflected in your brain and you feel the color. In experience, it is totally different from the other colors, such as green. When you try to name it, you end up "red". This labeling, to say, putting objects, concepts into words is another capability of human beings because we are the only species that has developed "language". When someone asks you which color the object you see is, you can easily say "red". When you ask the same question to someone else who sees this red object, you will get the same answer: "red". Everyone, who does not suffer from being color blind or perception problem, will say the same thing. But, when it comes to what they "feel" or "experience" inside, is it still the same? Could they be experiencing something you experience as green and they call it red? Could they be living under a sky in your "green" color? Or observing trees in your "red"? How can you confirm that every people experience the same thing inside when they sense the same object? Generally speaking, we call this qualia, like David Chalmer mentioned in his hard problem of consciousness.