I think it would be fair to say that Descartes and I are not the greatest of friends. To be honest, reading his meditations gave me a headache to the point where I felt as if pieces of my brain were falling away like wet cake. However, I did find something interesting and powerful enough to numb the pain for a bit so I could get some thinking done. So here goes.
Finally, my struggle ended at part two, paragraph six. Here, Descarte doubts the existence of his own body, and therefore all the functions that go along with it. He claims that, " if it be true that I have no body, it is true likewise that I am capable neither of walking nor of being nourished." Preceeding this paragraph, all of the things in which Descarte has claimed are doubtable have seemed quite insane to me, and I had not been able to properly grasp what he was trying to say, including this. Then I got to really thinking, and I came up with this: Descarte claims that we may have no body because our mind perceives that our body is just there, like a trick of the eye; something that we build around what our mind thinks and perceives should be there. It all comes down to our mind, we are " thinking thing[s]". So If our body is not really there, and we just perceive that it is, can we doubt that perception, like he asks, at the same time we made it? Descarte answers: " Perception too is impossible without the body; besides, I have frequently, during sleep, perceived objects which I afterward observed I did not in reality perceive." This is like in dreams when you are surrounded by people and you have this strong sense of knowing who they are; you can talk to them by name and distinguish them by faces, but when you wake up and think back on it...these unknown blobs from your dreams dont have a face, let alone a name, that you can recall. I think that this is what doubt does to us. If you can doubt your own mind's perceptions, then why not, as Descarte suggests, doubt your own existence? For the mind is, as he claims, the strongest reality of our existence.
Hopefully that made some kind of sense and was not too convoluted. It was my first attempt at blogging and to be fair to myself I only had one coffee today and it tasted like soggy dirt, so please dont be too harsh!
Grading is based on one original post and one response. These two posts add up to ten points per week. The criteria are as follows: Completion; please refrain from poor grammar, poor spelling, and internet shorthand. Reference; mention the text or post to which the reply is directed. Personality; show thoughtfulness, care, and a sense of originality. Cohesiveness; The student should explain his or her thought without adding "fluff" merely to meet the requirement.
Bethan--I feel your pain with the coffee! The same thing happened to me, too. I have yet to get the coffee grounds to water ratio quite right...
ReplyDeleteAnyhow, here is my response to your post:
We only have reason to doubt our mind's perceptions when they are not based on intellect alone. Things we perceive in dreams, in the world around us, even about our own bodies and selves are all external things and therefore it is possible to doubt them. The self is not determined by what we sense of ourselves but by simply the things one thinks. So all that he said we were able to doubt we very well have reason to doubt, though it truly does seem ridiculous and insane, but we know all along that we have been thinking. We think, so we exist.
Ugh, my head is spinning. Hope that maybe helped clarify. It finally made sense to me--or perhaps I'm just crazy now? I need coffee.
Well said, Danielle. You're working through things in exactly the right way--staying close to the text, raising questions, and connecting them to your own experience. (I do hope, however, that you'll find better coffee.)
ReplyDelete