Sunday, February 10, 2008
Coo Coo Kachoo
Thought is indubitable. But thought must be separated from the thought of self. For we think of ourselves as one way by love, hate, and the like, but this is not even certain. For it is somewhat superficial based in our experiences, which have already been proven to be a source of doubt for their basis in the senses. So, it is not the thought, that energy behind our eyes, that hum in our ears, that inspiration in our sleep that can ever be doubted for it is all. Even god is nothing if not for its place in our thoughts and mind. Those things that are real that do not even need to be in existence do not matter because without our thought they would have no home and be an empty formula floating in nothingness. It does not matter if we fall victim to the false beliefs produced by either scenario of the dream argument. Hatfield stating that these are the intervening hypothesis or the defective design hypothesis (81). If god has somehow tweaked our mind in such a way that it is fooled by either veiling or turning us from truth or by an inherent and unavoidable malfunction we are still thinking beings. Yes, our thoughts may produce false beliefs, rely on the unreliable, or see nothing as it truly exists we are still thinking. It is this fact that god, except by death, cannot take away from us our thought. Deceive, dupe, dazzle, and defect, but the fact that I have thoughts to be betrayed by shows that they can not be doubted.
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1 comment:
I completely agree with the things you've said here. I think that as long as someone isn't claiming "there is a hum in our ears" (you are so good at writing things!), a claim that could be falsified by the god as soon as the thought enters the mind, then they are ok given Descartes' argument. Just having direct perception about how thought goes is adequate knowledge. I wonder though about whether or not someone could claim something like "I feel like there is energy behind the eyes" because while theoretically the deceiving god could just make any proposition false, it really wouldn't make any sense in cases where claims are about how thought feels to the speaker.
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