Wednesday, January 28, 2009
From 1/28: "I think therefore I am"
Having now worked through Descartes' first three meditations, we know at least one thing for certain: so long as we are thinking, we can be absolutely certain of our existence. So where do we go from here? Descartes goes on to argue that he is essentially a thinking thing before setting upon the task of disproving the existence of the so-called evil genius. So does he pull this all off? Are there any mistakes in his reasoning? Can he ever really get outside of his own mind? And what might it mean if he can't? Whatever you're thinking, at least you can be sure you exist!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
There are three more meditations to his book so he must be able to get out of his mind, but I think he will have to use shortcuts to go beyond him being a thinking thing. Just as he did with God existing I think his proofs will be lacking and not as solid as when he broke down existence. I don’t feel that he proved God existed. If he does later on and gets rid of the Evil Deceiver I am still very curious to see how Descartes gets out of his dream. How can you prove this is the real? As of right now I don’t see a way around it. Just as with the Allegory of the Cave you don’t know the truth until you have seen the light. Our reality could be us just trying to make sense of the shadows on the wall. This is not necessarily what I believe but it is interesting to think about. I just don’t see Descartes beating the dream without any holes.
Descartes has proven to me to be one of the most frustrating reads/philosophers I have studied. It seems that he is running in a circle with no answers, only questions. For instance the Evil Genius that he creates as solely being there to confuse him ad his understanding of the world, does it really seem logical that an evil genius exists to confuse humans? Well, I suppose Descartes could come up with another question to answer that one. It seems that much of his thought is just questioning himself and everything around him but to a ludicrous extent far beyond what anyone should. And when he does get an answer, why not invent an evil genius to turn it upside down.
Post a Comment