Is
he for
real?
|
Do you know you are? I know it. Where you
originated? I know not. Do you feel yourself single or multiple? I know
not. Do you feel yourself moved? I know not. Do you know that you
think? This I do.
|
St. Augustine, Soliloquia
|

The search for truth is supposed to be the
philosopher’s
domain, but in actual fact philosophy is merely a way of making
conversation
about what truth might be. As Lord Russell used to put it: "The real
question is: Is there anything we can think of which, by the mere fact
that we
can think of it, is shown to exist outside of our thought? If yes is the right answer, there is
a bridge
from pure thought to things, if not, not.” (Bertrand
Russell,
1872-1970). So to say that I
exist because I think could be
such affirmation of my existence by mere thinking. It may also very
well be the
only instance where this is possible and it can only be established by
the
thinker himself. His wife, tossing the thinker’s smelly socks into the
washer, will
go by different criteria.
This may still leave us with
an insurmountable problem. Before Rene Decartes (1596-1650) came
to announce his "In dubito, in cogito,
ergo
sum," he considered the
possibility that his thoughts could be the dream in the mind of a
demon. If so,
how are we to tell the difference whether we or the demon is thinking?
“Existence”
is a tricky subject. Grammar, logic and syntax know of no difference
between a
lion and a unicorn; they only know of the order of words and how words
relate
to each other. Whether unicorns are real is to be decided in a
different court.
This did lead
Descartes to make a valid ontological
observation: "I perceived that there
was
nothing at all in these demonstrations which could assure me of the
existence
of their object: for example, supposing a triangle to be given, I
distinctly
perceived that its three angles were necessarily equal to two right
angles, but
I did not on that account perceive anything which could assure me that
any
triangle existed."
In other words, there is
necessity in the geometric features of a Euclidian triangle, but its
actual
existence is a matter of contingency.
Arcane as this seems, in the 16th
century, this sort of thing could get you into serious trouble. It was
the age
of thumbscrews and auto-da-fes. In Germany Lutherans the Catholics got
ready to keep killing each other for the next thirty years, it was
still customary to burn witches and heretics, and not just if you had
the bad luck of falling into the clutches of the inquisition.
Protestants made sure the custom had a future. The last woman to burn
on charges of witchcraft was Anna Geoldi on June 17, 1782, in Glaris,
Switzerland, a protestant country. And it was a protestant, the
“reformer” Calvin, who ordered the arrest and prosecution of a refugee
from the inquisition, the physician and theologian Michael Servetus (September 29,
1511-October 27,1553), who was the first European to describe
the pulmonary circulation. Calvin acted with the serenity of a man who
is certain that he can’t do any wrong: Luther, Melanchthon and the
Swiss reformers they all had ganged up behind Calvin to support the
decision; a rare moment of unity. And all this, because in the
theological section of his works Servetus had the temerity to revive
the non-trinitarian theology of the presbyter Arius. Suddenly even Rome
would remember that on this their protestant adversaries held common
ground with Catholicism. Descartes had every reason to navigate with
caution if he ventured into such tricky questions as the existence of
God.
So in the very next paragraph he proceeded
like this: "Examining the idea of a
Perfect Being, I
found
that the existence of such Being was comprised in the idea in the
same way as the equality
of three angles to two right angles is
comprised in the idea of a triangle. Consequently it is at least as
certain as
any demonstration of geometry can be, that God, who is this Perfect
Being, exists."
It seems he fooled nobody. The
finest minds of the period had been his correspondents, they looked
right
through the ruse and among themselves considered him an atheist.
© - 10/8/2007 -
by michael
sympson,
750 words, all rights
reserved