Editor's note: "Ashi" is a nickname, not a typo.
The Meditations by René Descartes
The most surprising idea one could find in Descartes’ work is his ability to call everything into doubt until nothing but his own thought is unscathed. In the Meditations, Descartes uses an example of sitting by the fire reading a newspaper. Even if someone is looking at the flames and holding the newspaper to read it, which appears to be an undeniable experience, Descartes would still call the event into doubt. Descartes’ doubt stems from an imaginary scenario. He argues that there is an evil, all-powerful liar in charge of a very elaborate illusion.
The narrator in the Meditations argues that he has lived his whole life thinking everything he saw was real, not knowing that it was actually a fabrication. Now that everything is a fabrication, he has to form a new worldview: in his language, “demolish everything completely and start from the foundations." So the flames and the newspaper are really just illusions that happen to look real, and the man who thinks he is actually touching a newspaper or watching fire is fooled. That person has to recognize the illusions for what they are and then think of another way to experience the world, knowing all the while that it is an illusion.
Then Descartes comes up with an interesting way to overcome the deceiver. He looks to the power of his mind. Intellectual inquiry tells him that since he is thinking, he exists as a real person and not an illusion. Illusions would not be able to think of such complicated arguments, so Descartes has no doubt that he really exists.
Philosophy researcher Scott Campbell argues that Descartes also holds that “sensory input must be integrated through reason to be validated and verified as certain” because “the senses do have value in ascertaining truth insofar as they are employed in clear and distinct perception." This is startling because sensory information is liable to mistaken interpretation sometimes, but it also makes sense because people have to reason their way through information to come to the correct meaning.
Another reason Descartes finds senses useful is that God would not have given us senses that lie all the time. Even if we initially come to the wrong conclusion about sensory information, it is only on our end (i.e., ignoring painful sensations, or imagining them as a hypochondriac) and never on God’s end.
With regard to Descartes’ Meditations, one may learn more by reaching out to several scholarly resources. To name one example, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy expands on a reader's understanding of Descartes with a surprising claim that even Descartes’ Cogito Ergo Sum argument might in fact be an illusion. The Meditations are rooted in the argument that precise knowledge of anything is impossible unless God exists.
Even if Descartes recognizes his existence through the power of his own thought, the thought could have been inserted into his mind by the deceiver to confuse him and continue his illusion. The only sure way to know the truth of anything, including one’s own thought, is to recognize that God would not allow someone to be systematically deceived about these basic truths. That was Descartes’ main point within his work.
Descartes also raises a strong mind-body problem when he believes his thought defines his existence, which startled me a great deal. In the Meditations, he establishes himself as “something {a soul? a mind?} distinct from his body." Consequently, we have to wonder if the soul is communicating with the body through neuron messages, making the soul “partly physical,” or if the mind is simply “neurons firing” in a robotic, computer-like manner.
Philosophy scholars Blaschko and Sullivan even write that the mind-body problem is merely a hypothesis and has no relation to modern philosophy beyond causing logical problems; in their words, “Descartes tragically sent all of Western philosophy down a rabbit hole for centuries based on an erroneous conceptual system." Still, Descartes writes an interesting theory about being able to overcome wrong conclusions through the assistance of God and God-given reason. These concepts inspire critical thinking and problem solving.
The Archetypes of Carl Jung
The “collective unconscious,” in Jung's estimate, is a term for the subconscious primal memories common to all human beings' minds. An archetype, then, is any image that rouses the collective unconscious and reminds one of “primordial phenomena.” Jung used “sun, moon, fire, night, and blood” as examples of archetypes, in an essay on Jung published by Sal McLeod.
According to the McLeod essay, Jung's persona archetype is a “mask” that people present in public. The persona hides the person beneath the mask to conform to societal norms. It bears a similarity to Freud's superego, as both the persona and superego are charged with conforming to social standards. The anima/animus is the feminine or masculine quality of a man or woman, respectively.
The shadow is similar to Freud's id because it is the animal quality of one's personality. The id may be primarily instinctual, but the shadow contains creative and destructive energies, and the id has no capacity beyond primal instincts. The self unifies experience, and Jung believed that everyone should aim to accomplish selfhood through self-actualization.
Thomas Nagel's Thoughts
There are four main ideas that Thomas Nagel believed are central to life. They are “perception, desire, activity, and thought” and are considered important because humans engage with those four ideas every day. Daily life activities, like fixing the sink, are impossible without the desire to repair the sink, the activity of doing the needed repairs, and the thought or perception to figure out why the sink is not functioning well.
“Future possibilities” are another of Nagel’s ideas. He believes they are important because they are always happening, no matter if they are hard times or the good life. They also work with the other four ideas: to achieve a goal, one needs to actually think about putting in the work and have a desire to achieve. Trying circumstances also strengthen the capacity for thinking through a problem. Together, “perception, desire, activity, and thought” and “future possibilities” are the reasons why life is considered to be intrinsically meaningful in Nagel's view and, more importantly, can be concepts that propel purposeful living.
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