Philosophy 101D

During class on Tuesday, we learned more about Descartes and what he thinks about consciousness and existence. While discussion Descartes views, another philosopher was brought to out attention, Sartre. We had already learned that Descartes believes that we are “thinking things”; we exist because we are thinking. However, Sartre believes that we exist for more reasons. He thinks that we exist not only because we are thinking but because we have bodies and personality. After skimming through my notes, I realized that I do agree with both men however, I found Descartes to be more accurate in a philosophical sense.

Yes we all have bodies and personality, but Descartes was trying to discover the “real” truth and by doing so he had to forget everything he had already known. This means he had to throw away the fact that he has a body. I’m sure he was taught that it was called a body but for all he knows he could have been taught wrong, and the real truth could have been that his body will deteriorate and his head will remain untouched. It seemed a little extreme to get rid of all his prior ‘knowledge’, but now I can almost agree that it was not a bad thing to do.

Another thing I found to be very intriguing was what Descartes said about how you can be wrong when your consciousness interacts with the world such as the green dot illusion. We see the green dot when we stare into the center but once we look away we can not see it anymore. On the other hand, you can not be wrong that you have consciousness and how things seem to you. We were correct when we said we see a green dot because we did, however that dot never really existed it was only in our minds (our consciousness).

I still have a difficult time understanding and believing what these philosophers have to say is true, but after I sit down and think about it for a while I start to see where they are coming from. Before, we discussed Descartes I was very hesitant to think that we can know things without using our senses for re-assurance or that we can know things because that is how they are and always will be. Now, proposed theories and ideas are becoming more possible to me.