On Cartesian Doubt

 Day 2

Everything here was written in October-November, 2022. There are 52 posts total, one for each day I wrote.

I did some writing earlier in the week, trying to plan out what I wanted to say each day and while I didn't get the whole endeavor, in each of its steps, figured out I did at least have a list of ideas. For today, I wrote down that I should go somewhat into my inspirations and method. Philosophically, my inspirations tend to come from all over the place, and include small and specific ideas put forth by other philosophers. A method of single-sentence investigations if you will. I'll go into that later. Just to let you know that I'm not arguing like a Cartesian, a Humean, or a Quinian, etc... Instead, I'll say that I' have never heard or read anyone that I feel got everything right. What do I mean by right? I'm not sure, its just that I've never been quite satisfied, if you get my drift. Either something somebody says seems wrong to me, or there are multiple ways of interpreting something, or they have a good premises but a inadequate conclusion, etc. People can mess up in a lot of ways, and indeed I don't feel like I'm all that different. Its just that I find that I tend to trust myself more about philosophical topics than others. If this was something physical like working on cars or forging horseshoes then sure I'd listen to my elders. However, I'm not sure that philosophy is like that, that anyone has a better idea than me. I know that sounds arrogant, but what else can I do? I, ultimately, judge for me whither to believe in to an idea or not. We take everything seriously, but neither do we take something too seriously. It is quite possible that half the ideas that I have will be wrong, or that most of what doesn't work for me manages to work for somebody else just fine, and oppositely in a vise-versa fashion. Yet, what shall I do, who shall I believe? Its not an easy set-up, being arrogant and humble at the same time. If I can be. At least, I'd rather reach humility through arrogance, than to be arrogant in my humility.

With that yodeling out of the way, I'd like to talk about one of my earliest ideas. Early in my history of philosophy readings, I was heavily influenced by the thoughts of Rene Descartes. Although I say that, perhaps I should be more specific: I was heavily influenced by the first two chapters of the Meditations. I've read other stuff he wrote of course, but honestly I barely remember it. I'm sure that I've imbibed it, that if I read it then most of it would come back to me, but if you ask what I remember on a day-to-day basis, then its going to be the first two chapters of the Meditations. The idea of being sure of things is a very desirable one for me, and one that I think most people take for granted. I have generally felt that the search for a foundation upon which to base everything, a search for at least one thing that we can know that Descartes entered into, and the results he ended up with, has been, for the most part, ignored. That is, most philosophies that I find don't take his efforts so seriously, they've moved past him and his ideas. I don't mean to say that they don't take his effects on the history of philosophy seriously, or that they don't still use ideas that he came up with. What I mean is that the worry that Descartes wrote about, the idea that we don't know anything for certain, is not something that concerns most philosophy that I read about. Indeed, I feel that Descartes himself loses sight of his original goal in the meditations, by the end of his meditations.

Most philosophy falls into one of several camps regarding this idea, though I warn you that whats going to come next isn't based upon an exhaustive search of the literature with lots of citation or anything, but is rather my gut feeling after reading a lot. You either end up with some sort of realist who sticks with physical things being real and moves on from that. You have some sensationalists who say that we've got sensations and move on from that. You have people who write about epistemics and problems of knowledge, but tend to deal more with definitions that actual angst. You have existentialists who start with the idea that we are real. You have Platonist's who can say that the forms are real, mathematicians who start off with numbers or structure, ideas about aesthetics or justice that take existence for granted, and on and on. Who, seriously, worries that we don't know anything?

The most defining question of the meditations is generally taken by most, I think, to be the worry about dreams. That is, the idea that our physical sensations do not always tell us the truth and there is no real way to tell our dreaming state form our waking state. At least, this is how I tend to explain Descartes to anyone, because it is an idea that is very simple to grasp, and perhaps something that most of us have thought at one time or anther - “Am I dreaming right now”, or “Wow, that dream was so real”. Yet to me, the most pressing question has always been the worry that our logic is wrong, that if an evil demon is deceiving us then they could make it so that every time we add two numbers together we get a wrong answer, that perhaps two and two added together do make 5. That perhaps our basic syllogisms 'of', 'and' 'or' 'if' lead us to make mistakes. I feel pretty confident that most of us have made mistakes like this, thought and done things where later we said to our selves something like “That didn't make sense. What was I thinking?”. If this is an actual worry, then most of what we do is bound to be problematic if we want to know something. How could we be sure that we aren't making a mistake? So, I don't feel that logic is going to be of great use that in trying to figure out something to base all our beliefs upon, logic is no rock. So where does that leave us, with faith? Well, that won't do either. For now, we'll just keep this concern in the back of our heads.

Descartes had a method of trying to figure things out. He decided to doubt all things, and to not take for certain anything that he could not doubt. From this he eventually ended up at his famous cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am. Yet, this has been criticized many times, and certainly seems to not be convincing to many people. In addition, 'therefore' has the stink of logic about it. Without going into the whole history, it's not been the most satisfying answer, and yet I've never heard a better answer to the worries of Cartesian doubt. I want to ask – can we think of another method? I think that we can. I had a bit of a vision probably, oh, a year after I first read the Meditations. I was just thinking, that if that if I doubt something, say the idea that the sky is blue, is that the same as doubting that the sky is not not blue? This is the logic of double negatives canceling each other out, and of course logic is an issue, but go with the vision for a second. I haven't found an answer to my worries here, I'm just trying something out. See, if we think of things in this fashion, then as I doubt my physical reality, can I also doubt that I am getting it wrong? That is, the method of Cartesian doubt, the idea that I shall doubt everything, is, if everything is applied correctly, also involves doubting my doubting. That is, I can just believe everything, and that activity is functionally the same as the method of Cartesian doubt! I can call it Cartesian belief or something.

So, I resolve to believe everything. I believe that unicorns exist, I believe that I exist, I believe that two and two make four, and that two and two make five, and that trees are made of gold, and everything in-between. Of course, doing all this at once is liable to sound insane, but so what? Its not about if I sound insane to others, but rather if I sound insane to myself. Yet, all this at once is, I agree, too much. We fall into paradoxes everywhere, and are stuck doing everything and nothing. There is no firm foundation, nothing to build upon, nothing to stand upon. We float in a frightening void. So, we should start somewhere, start with believing one thing and build up everything from there until we accept everything. So, what is the most basic belief that we can have, which admits of things? Now, we have chosen to accept everything, so starting with something like 'I exist' isn't worth it because it is also the case that “I don't exist”. We get bogged down – what about “Something exists”? That wont' do either, because we can also encompass the idea that “Nothing exists”. That isn't simple either, for I can think of at least three ways to mean nothing, and Kant had four. How simple can we make things? Well, I heard an idea once that I wanted to try out. I first encountered it in Wizards First Rule, but it comes from Hannah Arendt, and while I have some serious doubts about the rest of her program (remember what I said about philosophers with good starts but bad conclusions?) the idea of “Is Is” seems like it could fit what I am trying to do.

See, “Is Is” says a couple things to me. It says that what appears to us to be, is actually there. It might not be what we expect it to be, for example we could be dreaming and all our logic could be wrong, and we might not exists, but if anything is, then it is. Doesn't matter if we see it or ot, or if we exist or not, there is a metaphysical idea here that that which is, is. It might disappear at any moment when the universe goes kablooie or whatever, but how is that a concern now? It allows for the belief in anything. Rather than thinking that 'that's not real', or 'that's not true', instead we can start to think that 'that is, so what is it?' “Is Is”, as a basis, allows the acceptance of all things. It demands that you explain everything, that you can't finagle your way out of issues by just saying that something isn't real, or that something is a mistake – rather, you have to explain what it is that isn't real, you have to explain what the mistake is. Every thought, every concern, every person and fear and hope is, in the way. Even if we think that “Is Isn't”, doesn't that also make a sort of sense? We can read it as saying that that which is, is not. Here we come up with something very interesting. It this a claim that that which is existent is not existent? But is is says that it is, and if we talk about existence we talk of something. Its like an idea that we can have and can mention, but can't talk about directly. Its beyond the boundaries of clarity, and yet almost fits. Is isn't is like saying that there is somewhat that is, that doesn't not exist in some way. Its talking about modes of existence. This arises because the concept, and the sentence, of is is, is self-referential. I mean, its not a claim like “this chair doesn't exist”, because the chair sentence refers to something that is not the sentence itself. Its not a claim like “This sentence is false”, because the sentence is limited in scope. That is, there are things we can think of that are not that sentence. If we treat 'is is' like a sentence then yeah, that problem also arises, but if we treat it like a concept, like a basic belief that we are just symbolizing with the sentence, it become harder to take away., because the idea of 'is' encompasses all, even that which isn't.

It might not be the best thing in the world, but at least I'll try to work with it. I'll take as the foundation of my quest the work of Cartesian Belief, and the concept of is is. What I want to do next is to take these concepts and apply them to try to understand the world around us. We will start out by believing in what we experience.