Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy Read Online Free PDF

experiences. Or you can try to imagine the self, to
frame a picture of it, as it were. But as Descartes remarks, imagination seems good at framing pictures of things that have shape and
size, and are found in space ('extended things'). The self that remains as the rock in the seas of doubt may not be an extended
thing. For we can he certain of it when we are still uncertain about
extended things, since we are taking seriously the possibility of the
Evil Demon.
    One reconstruction of this point of the argument presents
Descartes thinking like this:
    I cannot doubt that I exist. I can doubt whether things extended in space ('bodies') exist. Therefore, I am not a body.
    In a nutshell, souls are certain, bodies are doubtful, so the soul is
distinct from the body. If this is Descartes's argument, then it is superficially plausible, but can be seen to be invalid. For consider the
parallel:
    I cannot doubt that I am here in the room. I can doubt
whether a person who will get bad news tomorrow is in the room. Therefore, I am not a person who will get bad news
tomorrow.

    A nice proof with a welcome result! The fallacy is often called the
`masked man fallacy': I know who my father is; I do not know who
the masked man is; so, my father is not the masked man.
    I myself doubt if Descartes committed this fallacy, at least in this
Meditation. At this point he is more concerned with the way in
which we know anything about souls and bodies. He is not concerned to prove that they are distinct, but more concerned to show
that knowledge of the self is not dependent upon knowledge of
bodies. Because the one can be certain, even when the other is not.
Nevertheless, what are we left really knowing about the self?
    In the following century the German philosopher Georg
Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-99) remarked: `We should say, "it
thinks" just as we say, "it thunders"Even to say "cogito" is too
much, if we translate it with "I think".' (Lichtenberg liked pithy
aphorisms, and was an important influence on a yet later figure,
Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-19001.)
    The idea is that the apparent reference to an'1' as a `thing' or subject of thought is itself an illusion. There is no 'it'that thunders: we
could say instead just that thunder is going on. Similarly Lichtenberg is suggesting, at least in the context of the doubt, that
Descartes is not entitled to an `1' that is thinking. All he can properly claim is that `there is a thought going on'.
    This seems a very bizarre claim. For surely there cannot be a
thought without someone thinking it? You cannot have thoughts
floating round a room waiting, as it were, for someone to catch them, any more than you can have dents floating around waiting to
latch onto a surface to be dented. We return to this in Chapter 4.
But then why isn't Lichtenberg right? If Descartes cannot confront
a self that is doing the thinking, cannot experience it, cannot imagine it, then why is he entitled to any kind of certainty that it exists?
Indeed, what can it mean to say that it exists?

    Descartes adroitly puts this problem to one side, by raising a
parallel difficulty about `things which people commonly think
they understand most distinctly of all'-ordinary bodies, or things
met with in space. This is what was aimed at by the ball of wax example. Here is a possible reconstruction of the argument:
    At a particular time, my senses inform me of a shape,
colour, hardness, taste that belong to the wax. But at another time my senses inform me of a different shape etc. belonging to the wax. My senses show me nothing but these
diverse qualities (which we can call `sensory qualities, since
our senses take them in). I nevertheless make a judgement
of identity: it is the same piece of wax on the earlier and the
later occasion. So, it is the nature of the ball of wax that it
can possess different sensory qualities at different times.
So, to understand what the wax is I must use my understanding, not my