Cogito ergo sum
Descartes:
To begin with, I was quite pleasantly surprised when I started reading Descartes' meditations. Why? Because I get stuck in my head sometimes. What if I'm actually asleep right now? What if I'm actually in a coma somewhere imagining everything that's going on? What if I am hallucinating and only some of the things I am perceiving are real? What if the whole world isn't actually there? My therapist told me "you can never know for sure," which I suppose is true. But that's really beside the point. What I'm trying to say is: I like where Descartes is coming from. In psychology I learned very briefly about Descartes and his famous phrase "cogito ergo sum" or "I think, therefore I am." Now that I am finally reading the text behind that phrase, it adds so much meaning! (Who would'a thought?) On page three, Descartes wrote, "Some people would deny the existence of such a powerful God rather than believe everything else is uncertain." Isn't that so true? We are often bombarded by these highly intelligent philosophers and scientists with all kinds of PhD's that seem to believe they have outwitted our belief in God. 1 Corinthians 1:18 says, "For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." We know there always have been and always will be people that see the gospel simply as foolishness or a lack of intellect, but I think Descartes' reasoning here is very insightful. When God softens your heart, you give up everything you once knew, His lordship completely changes your life and that can be, in a very human sense, scary. Don't you think? So many times, we have built our lives around what we know, and when God contradicts that, we get hostile. He goes on to say, "I am so content to slide back into my old opinions; I fear being shaken out of them because I am afraid that my peaceful sleep may be followed by hard labour when I wake, and that I shall have to struggle not in the light but in the imprisoning darkness of the problems I have raised"(4). When I read thus, I thought about when you take a good 15-20 minutes working on a really long, challenging math problem, when, to your dismay, you check the answer key and your answer is nowhere near correct. What now? You either a) give up (which is easy) or b) start over. The thing that really stinks about starting over, though, is you have to figure out either what you did wrong, or a whole new approach to the problem. That's basically what Descartes is describing, he's starting over, tabula rasa and all. It's really interesting to follow his thought process, because in some ways it is rather foreign, while in others it is incredibly familiar and plausible- at least, I think so.
Kant:
I'm going to be honest here. I had never heard the word "nonage" before. Furthermore, I think there is a lot of wisdom in Kant's writing. Something he wrote that really resonated with me was within the first paragraph. "This nonage," he writes, "is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance." If I'm being honest, discussing things like philosophy and doctrine can be scary. You feel as though everyone else in the discussion will know more about the topic than you (and perhaps they will), or that they will think your thoughts are not particularly good enough or correct enough (once again, perhaps they will). But that's really not the point, Kant seems to be saying. Because even if your arguments start out weak, the more often you express your freedom of thought the more enlightened you become. To me it seemed like he was giving a rather long pep talk about a) why we need to be free to express ourselves and b) how that induces enlightenment. While I'm still intimidated to even begin to discuss philosophy, I am encouraged to not only harbor my own thoughts, but to put them out there as well, because (according to Kant) it can only lead to growth.
PS: I commented on Zelda and Natalie's posts
To begin with, I was quite pleasantly surprised when I started reading Descartes' meditations. Why? Because I get stuck in my head sometimes. What if I'm actually asleep right now? What if I'm actually in a coma somewhere imagining everything that's going on? What if I am hallucinating and only some of the things I am perceiving are real? What if the whole world isn't actually there? My therapist told me "you can never know for sure," which I suppose is true. But that's really beside the point. What I'm trying to say is: I like where Descartes is coming from. In psychology I learned very briefly about Descartes and his famous phrase "cogito ergo sum" or "I think, therefore I am." Now that I am finally reading the text behind that phrase, it adds so much meaning! (Who would'a thought?) On page three, Descartes wrote, "Some people would deny the existence of such a powerful God rather than believe everything else is uncertain." Isn't that so true? We are often bombarded by these highly intelligent philosophers and scientists with all kinds of PhD's that seem to believe they have outwitted our belief in God. 1 Corinthians 1:18 says, "For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." We know there always have been and always will be people that see the gospel simply as foolishness or a lack of intellect, but I think Descartes' reasoning here is very insightful. When God softens your heart, you give up everything you once knew, His lordship completely changes your life and that can be, in a very human sense, scary. Don't you think? So many times, we have built our lives around what we know, and when God contradicts that, we get hostile. He goes on to say, "I am so content to slide back into my old opinions; I fear being shaken out of them because I am afraid that my peaceful sleep may be followed by hard labour when I wake, and that I shall have to struggle not in the light but in the imprisoning darkness of the problems I have raised"(4). When I read thus, I thought about when you take a good 15-20 minutes working on a really long, challenging math problem, when, to your dismay, you check the answer key and your answer is nowhere near correct. What now? You either a) give up (which is easy) or b) start over. The thing that really stinks about starting over, though, is you have to figure out either what you did wrong, or a whole new approach to the problem. That's basically what Descartes is describing, he's starting over, tabula rasa and all. It's really interesting to follow his thought process, because in some ways it is rather foreign, while in others it is incredibly familiar and plausible- at least, I think so.
Kant:
I'm going to be honest here. I had never heard the word "nonage" before. Furthermore, I think there is a lot of wisdom in Kant's writing. Something he wrote that really resonated with me was within the first paragraph. "This nonage," he writes, "is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance." If I'm being honest, discussing things like philosophy and doctrine can be scary. You feel as though everyone else in the discussion will know more about the topic than you (and perhaps they will), or that they will think your thoughts are not particularly good enough or correct enough (once again, perhaps they will). But that's really not the point, Kant seems to be saying. Because even if your arguments start out weak, the more often you express your freedom of thought the more enlightened you become. To me it seemed like he was giving a rather long pep talk about a) why we need to be free to express ourselves and b) how that induces enlightenment. While I'm still intimidated to even begin to discuss philosophy, I am encouraged to not only harbor my own thoughts, but to put them out there as well, because (according to Kant) it can only lead to growth.
PS: I commented on Zelda and Natalie's posts
On your Descartes comment: 1.) I never have trouble with math, so I don't know what you mean. Anyways, the "I think, therefore I am" statement is what he tries to prove. 2.) To me he never reaches an answer as he concludes on "what is perceived is true, but only by the extent of your intelligence." Yes, we are thinking things as he puts. We can recognize our state of being. But he never explains the concept of lucid dreaming, to which I have always been fascinated by as your conscience is "thinking" but in unexplained tangents. (one moment you're the POTUS and the next you're an ice cream salesman fighting off bears) We are conscious in lucid dreams to an extent, but if our state of being we're as a dream, we would perceive it as a lucid dream. Spastic and non-linear. So maybe we all just dream the same dream but from our own perspective which we call life...but who really knows? I only know I can think, I don't know if you think, so therefore we may not be in the same state of being.
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