To quote most blogs that have ever been written - Nothing of any worth happened today. As a result I'm going to do one of my discussion days.
Recently I have found myself looking forward to the premier of the new Matrix movie and inevitably this has led me back to my Cartesian roots. If you aren't aware of the story behind the original movie it is this:
A young hacker is drawn into what, on the surface, seems to be a group of like minded individuals who are being sought by a government agency. It actually turns out that these people are actually awake in a world produced by a super computer. The computers manipulate everything that normal people see and hear making them think that they are alive in the day-to-day sense that we are when they are actually motionless "batteries" producing power for the machines from their holding cells. To cut a long story short it turns out that the young hacker could be "The One" - a legendary figure who can control and shape "The Matrix" and make it work for Him.
The whole premiss of the movie can be traced back to Cartesian philosophy. Rene Descartes (1596 - 1650) is often described as the father of Modern Philosophy as his methods and writings are still very influencial 400 years later. Descartes' basic assertion was that it is ridiculous for us to just accept the things around us as reality without investigation. What if, he asked, the things we saw, heard, felt or knew were all just the provided to us by some malicious demon? What if some external force were creating illusions to delude and confuse us?
To answer this Descartes went through a process of elimination. He asked himself what we can say that we actually know. Firstly he rejected the idea of the material world - our senses can be deceived at the best of times so all visual, audible, olfactory and tactile evidence should be ignored. Next he questioned what we "know". Is there anything that we know that can be taken to be a universal truth? For Descartes the answer was simple. There is a universal truth which exists irrespective of words or 'things' and that is the truth of mathematics. 2 dots + 2 dots is the same as 2 chairs + 2 chairs therefore 2 things + 2 things will always produce the answer '4 things'. Mathematics could not be manipulated (although I'm sure some accountants would disagree) by any external force. Descartes was inexorably led to the idea that mathematics exists in the mind and therefore the mind (and it's owner) must exist as well. In short - Cogito ergo sum - most often translated as "I think therefore I am".
The next step is to replace reality by a process of acceptence. If we accept that the mind exists then surely it must have a source from which to exist. This, then, leads to the assertion that we must have a body. The body feels things so the things it feels should exist too. Far from being a cheap conjuring trick by an external trickster reality can be defined by human experience.
Descartes was a genius of his time but he was also a strange bloke. He never woke until after noon and at one time lived in a stove*. It is thought that a contributing factor to his demise was that he was forced by a notable student to arise at 11am.
In other news - I have become the official stalker of one of the forumites and my fellow blogette, who shall hence forth be known as Merkin, have been having an excellent chat. I'm not going to reveal anything that has been said here but I think we have got to know each other a lot better.
Today's Word: *Stove (a small house heated centrally by a stove-like boiler/cooker)
Today's Mood: Defiant
Recently I have found myself looking forward to the premier of the new Matrix movie and inevitably this has led me back to my Cartesian roots. If you aren't aware of the story behind the original movie it is this:
A young hacker is drawn into what, on the surface, seems to be a group of like minded individuals who are being sought by a government agency. It actually turns out that these people are actually awake in a world produced by a super computer. The computers manipulate everything that normal people see and hear making them think that they are alive in the day-to-day sense that we are when they are actually motionless "batteries" producing power for the machines from their holding cells. To cut a long story short it turns out that the young hacker could be "The One" - a legendary figure who can control and shape "The Matrix" and make it work for Him.
The whole premiss of the movie can be traced back to Cartesian philosophy. Rene Descartes (1596 - 1650) is often described as the father of Modern Philosophy as his methods and writings are still very influencial 400 years later. Descartes' basic assertion was that it is ridiculous for us to just accept the things around us as reality without investigation. What if, he asked, the things we saw, heard, felt or knew were all just the provided to us by some malicious demon? What if some external force were creating illusions to delude and confuse us?
To answer this Descartes went through a process of elimination. He asked himself what we can say that we actually know. Firstly he rejected the idea of the material world - our senses can be deceived at the best of times so all visual, audible, olfactory and tactile evidence should be ignored. Next he questioned what we "know". Is there anything that we know that can be taken to be a universal truth? For Descartes the answer was simple. There is a universal truth which exists irrespective of words or 'things' and that is the truth of mathematics. 2 dots + 2 dots is the same as 2 chairs + 2 chairs therefore 2 things + 2 things will always produce the answer '4 things'. Mathematics could not be manipulated (although I'm sure some accountants would disagree) by any external force. Descartes was inexorably led to the idea that mathematics exists in the mind and therefore the mind (and it's owner) must exist as well. In short - Cogito ergo sum - most often translated as "I think therefore I am".
The next step is to replace reality by a process of acceptence. If we accept that the mind exists then surely it must have a source from which to exist. This, then, leads to the assertion that we must have a body. The body feels things so the things it feels should exist too. Far from being a cheap conjuring trick by an external trickster reality can be defined by human experience.
Descartes was a genius of his time but he was also a strange bloke. He never woke until after noon and at one time lived in a stove*. It is thought that a contributing factor to his demise was that he was forced by a notable student to arise at 11am.
In other news - I have become the official stalker of one of the forumites and my fellow blogette, who shall hence forth be known as Merkin, have been having an excellent chat. I'm not going to reveal anything that has been said here but I think we have got to know each other a lot better.
Today's Word: *Stove (a small house heated centrally by a stove-like boiler/cooker)
Today's Mood: Defiant
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