Catingub, Cherrielyn C.

BSN III C
Dec. 12, 2013

EXISTENCE VS. ESSENCE OR THINKING

It is because I must exist first, therefore I can think of my existence. Things about
me or myself are impossible to happen before my existence and cause my existence. This
reflection paper will explore why I exist because I think is false. If I exist because I
think is true, every time when I think I exist and when I do not think, I do not exist. As I
mentioned, Think seems to be the cause of my existence in this case. How can my
thinking exist before my existence and cause my existence. Therefore, I must exist first,
then I can think about I exist or not. In fact, every minute whatever I am conscious or
not, I am existing in this world, If my body physically is existing. For example, a person
whose body functionally works but loss his conscious or is in coma. He is still alive but
he cannot think, we cannot say he is inexistent, because he is not dead. In other word, I
can exist without I think, but I think cannot be without I exist.
"I think therefore I am" is not correct. Think about plants and insects (I am assuming
insects can't think, although I am saying this without a source, and I might as well be
wrong). At least, surely plants do not think. They act on instinct and reflexes. But they
most definately "exist". In fact, what does it mean to "be"? Is everything? Is a rock?
Indeed, a rock does not think, and cannot in any way act except if another objects or

organism is manipulating it, but it does certainly exist in the physical world. It is made
out of the same atoms as we, humans, are.
No concept of individual exists after he/she defines it himself. You cannot think without
actuality. So existence allows the formation of thinking. Could you identify yourself
before you were born? The logical answer is no, and for good reason. Until we exist,
there is nothing to identify, and no identifier. If thinking is what you need to know that
you exist, how would you know that you DON'T exist if you cannot think? And how do
you know that you ARE thinking? There is no baseline to know that what you are
experiencing is actual thought.
Where did the term thinking come from? Man invented it. Man invented
everything about himself, because he's the only being that can recognize it. It's his own
interpretation that makes up what we call truth. You could believe that you were a
mermaid if you wanted to. You could believe that we don't have free will .You can
believe anything in the world because essence or thinking is whatever we dictate it to be.
No knowledge exists outside of our own perceptions. There is no knowledge that
isn't fallible by the human condition because we are subject to believing whatever we
want. There's no other conclusion but to say that existence precedes thinking because
thinking will only ever exist once existence has been established.
I believe man is a work of progress, in process of always searching for answers
that define himself as a being. The essence of life and the ability to exist within the
world primarily will come from a sense of being alive, a sense of constructive thinking
and movement that produces conceivable factors that man can live with and for.