Renee Descartes in the Second Meditations was looking for something to let him know that he was a thinking, perceiving being with substance and significance. Through bouts of realizing that a collection of body parts is merely a corpse and a dream only exists from things previously perceived, Descartes finally concludes that a thinking, or doubting, man is an alive one. "This alone is inseparable from me. I am--I exist: this is certain; but how often? As often as I think; for perhaps it would even happen, if I should wholly cease to think, that I should at the same time altogether cease to be." So he needed something to doubt, or at least think about, as a reassurance of his existence.
In 2010's blockbuster, Inception, the heroes in the clique of corporate idea thieves carry around small personal objects, called totems, while snooping around in people's dreams. Totems, as described in the film, are "small objects, potentially heavy that you can have on you all the time that no one else knows... so that when you look at your totem, you know beyond a doubt that you're not in someone else's dream." They do something unusual within a dream that they wouldn't do in reality to bring awareness to it's user that something is strange. For example, Arthur's totem is a loaded die that he only knows the weight of. If the weight is off, he knows he is in a dream. When it is pulled out, he becomes conscious that the present moment may not actually exist, or it may. The die moreso grounds him by seeing something familiar do something unusual thereby causing Arthur to use his own faculties of thought and not just robotically react. It causes him to pause and reflect. And as we know, to think is to be. To cease contemplating and observing is to not live.
In high school I drove home every single day by the same route. There were days that I arrived home not even remembering how I had gotten there or at best everything seemed like, well, a dream. The repetitive nature of my days had caused me only to react, not to be aware of my doings. I was no longer using my faculties of thought, so that time went by as little to no significance; I didn't exist, I suppose. But, for instance, if there was a wreck, then for that amount of time I am thinking about how much time I'm wasting, how fast I had been going myself, and that I need to check my tires when I get home. I am increasingly aware of myself. The wreck, an unusual circumstance in a familiar setting, had caused be to contemplate myself, and thus was my totem in that moment.
So simply, Descartes needed a vacation. To do something strange where the only thing he had to himself for certain was his thinking and doubting abilities would have done him wonders.
Descartes has always struck me as a nervous, unsure, scholarly individual, who went about understanding the world in the most backwards way possible, like a madman. What I mean is, he is someone who has spent so long in the world of his own mental constructs that he had lost touch with his awareness of the rest of the world, as madmen are wont to do. He decided that the entire universe and its existence is so unsure, that if he were to think logically about them at all, he could find that they might not exist. The only thing he was sure of was that his own mind and consciousness existed and that knowing that it existed, therefore everything else must exist as well. So the entire universe effectively fit his own perception, and his own understanding of the world, rather than trying to shape his logic to the form of the universe. Even if he was a brain in a jar, he would have to exist as that brain, conforming to his surroundings. All of his thought experiments were of the same material of someone having an anxiety attack, "what if this happens, what if that happens, etc." Same in the matrix, whether you live in Zion, or in the Matrix, you still have to move on with your life, and live it the best you can. Descartes' totem, was effectively, his own mind and intellect, characteristic of someone so closely bound to his own thoughts and worries. So I too think he needs a totem, something to bond him to the experiential and make him aware of his own existence by being aware of something else's. Or at least detach himself from his own mind in some form, before he has a nervous breakdown.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny that you mention Descartes needing a vacation! I came away from it thinking that he must have done the bulk of his writing while on vacation, and a boring one at that if he was ruminating on the nature of his existence as a sentient being in the world.
ReplyDeleteYour mention of your commute in high school is also interesting to me. I commute to class every day, and I hit autopilot about five minutes into the drive, and it takes more than a wreck to make the drive stand out to me these days. The notion of the brain going on autopilot has always been interesting, since it posits that the brain likes to process patterns, and when the brain recognizes that pattern, it shifts your focus away from that task and to something else. I wonder what Descartes would have thought of this idea, would he obsess over his brain's habit of glossing over familiar tasks as a suggestion of some outside force enacting it's will on him? Would his doubt then be confirmation enough of his existence, if the pattern of thought was repeated without a break in the cycle enough to become like a pattern in his mind?
Would we notice a break in reality, the glitch in the Matrix, if we observed it everyday from the moment of infancy? If our brain has programmed itself to dismiss patterns and habits, what else have we missed?
It's easy to run down the rabbit hole of this kind of thought, and when I consider it, I suppose I can sympathize with Descartes doubts.
You have an interesting point, it would have been really convenient for Descartes to own a totem so that he could know for sure if he was truly in reality. However, unfortunately, Descartes was worried that he already wasn't in reality, so he never would've been able to know for sure if his totem would've even been functional. At worst, it even would've convinced him to stay in a state of unreality, because the aspects of the totem would've been created in a separate reality and therefore wouldn't function properly in the 'real' one. So before you'd be able to convince Descartes to create a totem you'd have to first convince him that he was in the right reality to create one in.
ReplyDeleteYou bring up a few really interesting points. I definitely think a totem would've helped Descartes, had he been able to believe the fact that it would tell him if he was dreaming or not. But I think the part that interests me most if the bit about you driving home and forgetting how you got there. In psychology, we learn that memories of how to do things are procedural memories, which is part of our long term memory. Often it's hard for us to explain how to do something, like how to ride a bike, or how to walk again. I find it interesting to look at the parallels between the two subjects. It crazy to know that some of our actions can be done almost as if we ran on auto-pilot. Which is kind of a disturbing thought in it's own.. because how do you know we're not?
ReplyDelete