What does a Teddy Bear see?

Several days ago, Helena set her two stuffed "kitty cats" (she actually says "killy cat," but I think that's just a problem with diction, not a statement about their carnivorous nature) in her art corner and began to draw, paste, and put stickers on a piece of paper, an event not much different than most days she decided she wants to "paint."  However, this time, after each stroke she made with a pen or each sticker she placed on the paper, she turned to the two cats and said, "Viu, gatinho?" (did you see, little kitty?)  She continued to ask the same question until she was sure that they had agreed with her, or until I imitated a cat's voice to say, "Wow, cool."

Children need to be seen: that's no surprise to anyone who has spent time on the edge of a swimming pool as kids shout "look at me, Mom!" and then jump into the water.  I had never realized before, however, that it's not just other human beings that can see and recognize: apparently, toys and dolls can do it, too. (There is, of course, the question of whether small children distinguish between toys, animals, and people, but I'll leave that issue to the developmental psychologists).

Now, the toy that is able to see a baby play is nothing more than the baby herself.  Toys do have souls (as any reader of The Velveteen Rabbit surely knows), but they are invested with these souls only by the children who play with them, and by the connivance of adults who play along..  After "Jackie Paper came no more," Puff the Magic Dragon was forever condemned to the unreality of his cave.  So in fact, the toy recognizing the child is only the child recognizing the child.  So why are the eyes of the kitty cat doll in any way important?  Why not skip the step and just recognize oneself?

Strangely enough, this is one of the biggest all-time questions of theology.  Why would a perfect God want to create human beings to worship Him?  If he's perfect, why not just stay that way?  One answer that appears, first in the Islamic philosopher Ibn Al-Arabi, who lived in Spain in the 12th and 13th century.  Before creating the world, Al-Arabi said, God was indeed perfect, but He was not self-conscious, not aware of himself.  Without an other, space, time... there is no way to know that I am there, no stimulus, no input.  By creating the world, God found a kind of mirror, a way to know that He existed.  Hegel picked up the same idea in the 19th century, pointing to this gap between the observer and the observed as not only the fundamental motor for self-recognition, but also the way that history itself developed.

I had never realized that playing with toys was such heavy philosophy!

(The attached photos, by the way, come from a not-very successful attempt to play with the camera on the computer, and some software that puts in false backgrounds.  Another interesting example of the false or created other as a route to self-consciousness...)