Posted on 11/04/2002 7:52:21 AM PST by thinktwice
Descartes was a geometrician. He found only in mathematics and geometry the certainty that he required. Therefore, he used the methods of geometry to think about the world. Now, in geometry, one begins with a search for axioms, simple undeniable truths – for example, the axiom that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. On the foundations of such “self-evident” propositions, whole geometrical systems can be built.
Following his geometrical model, Descartes proceeds to doubt everything – de onmibus dubitandum. He will suspend belief in the knowledge he learned from childhood, all those things “which I allowed myself in youth to be persuaded without having inquired into their truth.” Doubt will be his method, a deliberate strategy for proceeding toward certainty. (Descartes is a doubter not by nature, but by necessity. What he really wants is secure understanding so he can stop doubting.)
Descartes finds that he has no trouble doubting the existence of real objects/events – our senses too easily deceive us. And we can doubt the existence of a supernatural realm of reality – figments and fantasies are too often conjured by our native imaginations. But now his geometrical model pays off: in trying to doubt everything, he discovers something that he can’t doubt. What he can’t doubt is that he is doubting. Obviously, I exist if I doubt that I exist. My doubt that I exist proves that I exist, for I have to exist to be able to doubt. Therefore I can’t doubt that I exist. Hence, there is at least one fact in the universe that is beyond doubt. “I am, I exist is necessarily true each time that I pronounce it, or that I mentally conceive it.
Descartes thus becomes the author of the most famous phrase in Western philosophy: Cognito ergo sum, or, in his original French, Je pense, donc je suis. – I think, therefore I exist. With roots in St. Augustine, this is certainly one of the catchiest ideas yet created by the human mind.
Cogito ergo dim sum.
"I thinks, therefore I is...I thinks."---H.A.
Cogito ergo dim sum.Have you ever had Chinese/German cuisine? An hour later, and you're hungry for power.
ROTFLMAO!!!
What's it going to be, using your abilities or not using them?
Proper use of one's abilities is a path to success in this life and maybe the next, whereas wasting one's abilities is a sure path to failure in this life and maybe the next.
Proper use ...That's what I'm getting at. What criterion determines whether we're using any of our gifts properly?
Proper use of abilities, in my mind, is rational use -- a life of reason, so to speak.
Humans, by definition, are rational beings; meaning that irrational behavior is non-human behavior. Regarding Democrat irrationality, most choose that path as a result of indoctrination ... from public schools, for instance.
Humans, by definition, are rational beings; meaning that irrational behavior is non-human behavior.Artistotle's definition of man as a rational animal is a definition of man's nature; however, the agent of behavior is a person, not his nature. A person's choice to act irrationally by, say, killing himself, would not make him a non-human person, or, by extension, make his suicide non-human behavior.
Ambiguity provides excellent disguise when rationalizing irrational behavior.
In Ayn Rand's philosophy -- Objectivism -- today's democrats are the looters and people like Ronald Reagan are heroic.
Does that mean to say that you see man as basically depraved?
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