I think “demonstrating” is giving me too much credit, I’m reading his own words for the first time, and it’s been eye opening and surprising in good and not so good ways (or should I have said good and quite unrealistic through no fault of his own.), and that’s what I’m bringing to this board - my observations and questions.
What it proves? Perhaps that Descartes was way more amazingly wrapped in the concept of God being the necessity for human mind to exist, than I’d have ever thought - and so far I haven’t found where philosophers have actually taken explicit issue with such a failure (sort of hoping someone might turn me on to someone’s relevant writing, if it exists, that might shed more light on that) -
Descartes’ writing seems to be passively accepted as simply the background hum. Rather than something that at some point needed to get aired out in light of actual factual evolutionary reality of creatures on this Earth. Rather than getting plowed into further philosophical thinking. {such as jokers like Donald Hoffman who’s “Case Against Reality” which is more complex math hiding as theology, than anything serious bound by scientific rules and expectations. Oh but he’ll scream up and down he’s doing serious science, because he tells 'he’s using rigorous math. Which itself can be a master deceiver when in the cunning hands of a storyteller with a buck to make. Fun with statistics and all that. }
Descartes conception sees the human body as totally separated from our mind. He doubles down on that repeatedly.
He can’t really be knocked for that, since Western Society was totally wrapped up in being subservient to the Christian paradigm and the hard hammer of political expectations that were also total devoted to the God deity and the notion of a supreme creator and maker of laws, who in fact lifts their royalty to god-like status to justify the governments own superiority and dominion over people.
[quote=“lausten, post:12, topic:9661”]
I was talking to a 5 year old this summer, and someone had said she was an “animal”.
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I was around 5 years old when my grandma explained that she clipped our finger nails outside by her gazebo because our nail clipping would dissolve turn into plant food and be absorbed by next years flowers.
For that little five year old it was an epiphany about the circle of life. Later when I was taught that I was in fact an evolutionary creature and simply another animal on Earth, it feel into place with excitement, rather than fear that something had been taken from me.
I imagine my environment was it that made that possible, instead of having “God” pounded into my head, I was busy eavesdropping on two fascinating eclectic parents talking about the world news and happening and told to figure out religion for myself if I wanted to.
They believed in drilling in ethics and a sense of morality and duty to others (one hand washes the other is something my mom probably said a million times - and in my old age I’m totally impressed and can’t think of a better simple way to express such an important concept to a growing five year old who’s still more confused at the world than anything.)
Back to the I am an animal thing. Although it was later when learning to butcher that it was really brought home for me on a visceral certainty level and that had to wait till I was around 20, but that’s just it, one step leads to another and it needs to start somewhere.
In Western Thinking, so much of it always leads back to the supreme being, whether explicit or within the intellectual undercurrent within that blindingly superiority attitude humans love cultivating,
or simply sloppy language and not being able to realize that Evolution is simply the name we place on something incredibly complex - cumulative change over time.
Of course, that’s what I’m bitching about.
Our questions; limit our answers; which limits our understanding - and I believe Western thinking has been on too much of a self-serving trip then tends to us oblivious to all the rest of creation out there. And it’s going to destroy us and most of the really complex life out there before we’re done.
But then Earth will step in like a devoted mother and deal with after math and make it better, if not for us, then for what ever comes next.