Pandora's Mellons: The problem with the Cartesian philosophy.
By: Andy Montgomery
E-Mail: Exec-PC (414)-789-4210
The thing that worries me the most is that after some explanation, this
stuff all makes sense. Most of it cleared up in the West Bend George Webb's
at 4:30 A.M. last Saturday after work. A pot of coffee, one Super-George with
fries, a piece of that really disgusting cheesecake and a pack of Salem's
later, I was ready to put it into the old PC. So, here' goes...
Descartes separates the human mind from the human body. Most at the time
think that this is a good thing. Science can now do its thing without having
the Church climb all over it for undermining God. The Church can keep saving
souls because the dichotomy conveniently proves that God exist. Everybody's
happy.
At this point, the separation works well for all of the reasons that have
been beaten to death in most philosophical texts. All of the math seems to
add up; all of the twos have been carried and it looks like the answer we
come up with isn't a fraction. Neeto. The whole of the Western world is
seriously digging Descartes' melons. So... where is the problem?
Ahh... but these are no ordinary melons. These are Pandora's Melons! (I
wonder if the analogy would work better if the dream-specter would have handed
Descartes two zucchini? A pleasant vegetable, to be sure, but once you plant
them, they take over the whole garden.) What happened next took a few hundred
years to realize, but when it did, everybody had that feeling you get when you
get up on Sunday afternoon after having too many Stoli Screwdrivers the night
prior and go to the medicine cabinet and discover that there's no Pepto.
[Note: See Sartreian nausea.]
When you separate the mind from the body, the two can't communicate.
They can never be connected. Try as you might, you can never get the physical
to connect with the mental. This is a bad thing. It's an even badder thing
when you realize that Descartes' own reasoning proves it out to the bitter
end. In short: because we view--we perceive--everything physical with our
senses (including our own physical bodies), we cannot be certain that they
exist, because, as Descartes so rightly pointed out, our senses can deceive
us. POOF! No more physical stuff. All we have left is mental stuff.
Excuse me, I just annihilated you. My apologies. Better switch to
first-person, (it's the only one left.) I'm the only one left--the only
mental substance that I can be sure of. "You" (for lack of a better term) are
nothing more than a pleasant illusion: pretty pictures on a movie screen in a
theater shown just for me, by me. Nihilism.
Yuck! Okay, so the only thing that I can be 100% certain of is myself...
...my self. Self...
What in the Hell is this "self" thing anyhow?
I mean, what makes me me? I'm not the same me that I was when I was two.
I'm not the same me that I was last week Monday. I'm not even the same me I
was five minutes ago. There is no way that I can positively identify my self.
There is no longer a constant...
POOF! No more me. (shit!) All that's left now is an empty movie theater
showing a bunch of unrelated images. (I'll pretend to exist so that this
paper gets finished.) No God, either; He's just an image. No perfection; it's
just an image. Bummer.
Aack! Gag! This stuff is impossible to swallow. This whole line of
thought is rather nasty and just won't do. I don't know about you, but I'd
like to exist. Well, let's see... he carried all of the twos. A-HA!
Maybe he answered the wrong question? We most certainly have walked far
enough from the tree to know that we're still lost in the woods. What if
everything's all physical stuff?!
POOF! I exist again, (cool!) POOF! You exist again! POOF! POOF! POOF!
It all exists again! This is great! The entire universe is nothing but
physical stuff. We can still get the philosophical elephant in our heads
because it's not really an elephant, but a series of electro-chemical
impulses in that spongy grey computer that we call the human brain.
THIS IS SO COOL! The universe is all physical stuff and science can
explain it all! We can have all of the answers! Physics, man! That's where
it's at... physics! Everything's physical. Everything changes. Yeah, that's
it! All things go through changes over time because some force acts upon it.
It's all cause-and-effect... everything results from some prior action, and,
um... like dominos... yeah! Dominos. Everything is a result of an action
that occurred prior, and the result then becomes an action in itself that
causes another reaction... like a falling chain of dominos... that have no
choice but to fall the way that they are laid out... no choice...
Shit! Nihilism again. Not even. Worse. There's no choice in anything
any more. Even our thoughts are physical and tangible and are governed by the
laws of physics.
No ethics. No morality. No right or wrong. Oh, and remember God?
He's no longer with us. There's no perfection in a physical universe. There
can't be. So we gotta deep-six the deity thing. Man, this makes me feel
like...
Aack! Gag!
There, that's better... NOT! There seems to be no way out of this
forrest. We wandered in two distinctly different directions and we're still
lost! We went mental, (boy did we!) and we got a universe that's nothing more
than a single-screen empty Marcus showing unrelated images and a God that
can't do anything because he's in a state of stasis due to his perfection.
Aack!
We go physical, and the universe and all that's in it is nothing but a
bunch of atoms that have no choice but to bump into one another, and God is
nothing but an idea--a series of bouncing atoms. Mysticism and Metaphysics
can't solve this one. Aack! Gag!
So? Buttons on yer underwear. It's evident that the only smart thing to
do is to crack open a Bud Dry. Why Ask Why? Yiikes! Philosophy in beer
commercials. Descartes went wrong in even asking the damn question in the
first place. As the old saying goes: How do you get down off an elephant?
Answer: You don't, you get down off of a goose. Just say no. At this point,
Jean Paul Sartre's "Life of Denial" sounds real good to me...
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