Human Understanding (Locke) page 64 (12)

"We have here, then, the bodies of two men with only one soul between them, which we will suppose to sleep and wake by turns; and the soul still thinking in the waking man, whereof the sleeping man is never conscious, has never the least perception.... Just by the same reason they make the soul and the man two persons, who make the soul think apart what the man is not conscious of." 

What Im getting between my last blog post and this one is that the soul and the man are two beings and that the soul travels between two men in turns of the conscious man. How can the soul be its own being if the conscious man is reflecting on his surroundings and these reflections taking a part of his mind and body? Where does the soul get its character in a sense or how can it have its own identity?

Human Understanding (Locke) page 63 (11)

"Or if it be possible that the soul can, whilst the body is sleeping, have its thinking, enjoyments, and concerns, its pleasure or pain, apart, which the man is not conscious of, nor partakes in, it is certain that Socrates asleep, and Socrates awake, is not the same person." 

What he goes on to say is that the mind and the soul are two different beings and they both have their own set of thoughts. Although the body when awake is thinking as the person should through whatever experiences he was brought up on; the soul never stops thinking and only goes on to think and feel while the body is asleep. Its like being two people at the same time or going back to metaphysics and asking whether or not you can exist and not exist at the same time. There is a lot more to it including something about two diff rent individuals, and what I'm assuming considering the reading is a bit challenging, sharing one soul. While one sleeps the other is awake with the sleeping mans soul. Its weird, but I may be interpreting it the wrong way. Any suggestions welcome. 

Discourse Part 3 page 16-17 paragraph 29

"... as for the rest of my opinions, I could freely undertake to rid myself of them. And inasmuch as I hoped to be able to reach my goal better by conversing with men than by staying shut up any longer in the stove-heated room where I had had all these thoughts...I meanwhile rooted out from my mind all the errors that had previously been able to slip into it.

Descartes keeps his autonomy while also interacting with a diverse amount of people in order to build his thoughts. While secluded he clears his mind of anything and everything and in order to build new thoughts or mind sets he goes out into the world and begins recollecting information and forming new ideas about old things. This is kinda crazy.

"And just as in tearing down an old house, one usually saves the wreckage for use in building a new one, similarly, in destroying all those opinions of mine that I judged to be poorly founded, I made various observations and acquired many experiences that have since served me in establishing more certain opinions." 

This is the one thing that could stop a lot of the crime and hate that goes on today. If people stop and clear their minds only to leave themselves vulnerable to absorbing a new and more accurate opinion they could begin to really use their minds instead of their impulses or their first impressions. Its almost like a second date. The first time you build these ideas and conclusions in your mind good, bad, or both, but the second time around is what really reassures you of what you came to understand the first time around. 

Discourse Part 3 page 16 paragraph 28

"For, given that our will tends not to pursue or flee anything unless our understanding represents it to the will as either good or bad, it suffices to judge well in order to do well, and to judge as best one can, in order also to do ones very best, that is to say, to acquire all the virtues and in general all the other goods that one could acquire, and, when one is certain that this is the case, one could not fail to be contented."

What Im getting is that in order to be happy we must judge what we encounter as best as we can in order to determine the best solution as possible, but in order to judge our best we must be aware of everything around us or in other words be very experienced and well rounded in order to make a sound judgement. 

Unless we make the right moves we wont be able to "acquire" material goods nor achieve personal accomplishments. Im assuming that those two criteria are what keep people "contented" considering that Descartes is a driven man with an ethical and disciplined background, there really aren't many other alternatives to being contented than what you can look back on or what you can hold in your hand. 

Discourse Part 3 page 18

"... and where, in the midst of the crowd of a great and very busy people who are more concerned with their own affairs than they are curious about those of others, I have been able, without lacking any of the amenities to be found in the most bustling cities, to live as solitary and as withdrawn a life as I could in the remotest deserts."

Life is about being concerned with your own affairs. If we didn't have any priorities and responsibilities than what kind of a life should we lead. To live in solitary is to exclude yourself from civilization and to also cut yourself off from the ever changing world. How can Descarte just shut himself out of the world and conclude the existence of God and the disciplines that we should undertake without first seeing how other people are living and thinking. Surely Descarte wasn't the most disciplined and intelligent human being and Im sure there were others who thought allot of the same ideas that he did.

Meditations Part 5 page 88

"But if, from the mere fact that I can bring forth from my thought the idea of something, it follows that all that I clearly and distinctly perceive to belong to that thing really does belong to it, then cannot this too be a basis for an argument proving the existence of God?"

So if we inherently understand everything and only having to remind ourselves about something we perceive to be foreign to us and that all of us are in fact born with an idea or image that does not exist in the real world, but at our discretion can in fact exist then Descartes has proved the existence of God. Right?

Meditations Part 5 page 88

"What I believe must be considered above all here is the fact that I find within me countless ideas of certain things, that, even if perhaps they do not exist anywhere outside me, still cannot be said to be nothing. And although, in a sense, I think them at will, nevertheless they are not something I have fabricated; rather they have their own true and immutable natures."

Its true if you think about it how else could we have created some of the worlds most beautiful or technical buildings, parks, paintings, etc without first perceiving there images inside of us. What Im thinking is that everyone of us is carrying some image of what is to be of what isent currently, if you can follow that. 

Meditations Part 5 page 87-88

'Their truth is so open and so much in accord with my nature that, when I first discover them, it seems I am not so much learning something new as recalling something I knew beforehand. In other words, it seems as though I am noticing things for the first time that were in fact in me for a long while, although I had not previously directed a mental gaze upon them." 

Is he saying that everything we encounter for the first time is inherently understood and known inside of us and when we assume we are learning something new we are actually reminding ourselves of what we had forgot? Thats kinda crazy and I think I like it. What Im getting out of the excerpt above is just that. When we assume we are learning we are actually reminding or in other words extracting a pre-observed understanding of what we are dealing with or what we assume we are seeing and feeling for the first time. 

I guess this means that we are all rusty experts. What do you think?

Story of Descartes-AK

Does it bother anyone else that Descartes never really mentions events of when he was growing up? I know he talks about the various different schools he went to but he never talks about his home life. Who raised him? What kind of views did they have? Obviously these views must have had some sort of affect on his life. He says things such as "I was assured..." (p. 13) But by who? Under what circumstances?

Thoughts vs. Actions-AK

"I ought to pay attention to what they did rather than to what they said, not only because in the corruption of our morals there are few people who are willing to say everything they believe, but also because many do not know what they believe..." Rene Descartes Discourse on Method p. 13

I found it interesting how Rene Descartes talks about people's thoughts versus their actions. When faced with a hypothetical question of lets say morals, one does not always know the correct answer but when in that particular situation one has to chose. For example, dare I say the issue of abortion. There are many different views on this matter such as a black-and-white yes-or-no answer or an in-between-depends-on-the-situation answer. Until that person is actually faced with that moral dilemma they may not know what they would do. So in short it is better to observe the way a person handles a situations versus taking their word as verbatim.