Descartes

3 days ago I sat in on a class by one of my favorite professors. As per usual, the class started off talking about Descartes and what a crappy philosopher he was. I think most philosophers are grateful that he said the stuff he did, if for no other reason than he shows us what not to do. So, Descartes usually ends up as a starting point, he shows the problem and we all try to figure out the solution he couldn't see.

Anyway, we were talking about how Descartes trusted rationality more than his senses. How he argued that everything he saw and felt couldn't compare with what he thought. His example was the sun. He looked at the sun and said it looks like it runs a course around the earth, he then said he looked at the sun and it seems relatively small. But then he points out that through calculating the true size of the sun, given it's distance from earth, and also by taking into account other observations, he can reason that the sun is both the center of the Earth's orbit and many times larger than the Earth. This is what his rationality tells him--and his rationality is right. He then concluded saying his rationality is more trustworthy than his senses.

Trusting rationality over the senses was a pretty revolutionary step. It led to some amazing breakthroughs. If Descartes had never broken away from obvious empirical beliefs in favor of rational ones he would never have theorized about stuff like inertia. I mean, empirical observation shows that objects stop when you stop moving them, or they run out of energy. The idea that they'll continue moving forever unless stopped by some outside force seems empirically ridiculous. Every time we see an object it's being acted on by some outside force, so to say that an object would move forever unless stopped by some outside force is to describe a circumstance that can't be empirically tested...this leap in thinking was pure rationality trumping perceptions--and Descartes was right (at least about inertia).

The problem with Descartes was he began to doubt his senses more than he should. He often wondered about things like "is all life a dream? and if it's not how would I know?" But this isn't the biggest fear he had. He later wondered "what if some evil demon controls all my experience? Could force me to think and feel whatever he wanted? What if none of this is real and all my perceptions are fed by this demon? How would I know?....and that's when Descartes wrote the plot for the Matrix :) (When you get down to it the only original idea in the Matrix's plot was to replace the evil demon with evil robots that harvest brain power. )

Anyway, back to Descartes. I personally don't think Descartes ever offered an adequate solution to his evil demon "I can't trust my perceptions" problem. After all, if all our perceptions can be falsified, how could we perceive otherwise?

But, I'm not really sure that's the real issue. I think the questions implied by the evil demon problem are far more important. They are:"if all your experience is fake, would you want to know the truth?" Also, "if you're happy in your false reality, and you can't tell the difference between illusion and reality, would you want to know the truth or would you prefer to be blissfully unaware?" These questions follow naturally from Descartes distrust of his perceptions and I think they're questions that are healthy to look at.

Most people say they'd want the truth. A lot of the students in the class I was in said something like "I'd never accept a false reality, even if there was no discernible difference I would not want it because it's not real." I honestly think that our own experience tells us that most of us wouldn't be so idealistic (bad pun) if given the choice. I mean, just look how hard most people work to escape reality. When I was young I'd read books for hours on end (e.g. Tarzan) to just get away from all that was bothering me in reality. My roommate plays video games for hours on end to escape from it all. Even when I go outside and I run, I mostly do it cause the steady rhythm of running allows me to shift my focus from everything else weighing me down. Hollywood is a billion dollar a year industry and all it really does is sell an escape. So do we really want to always confront reality? Probably not...and the greatest example of this is love.

To love is to choose an illusion over reality. When we love we idealize our partners and tell ourselves that they are something more than they actually are, basically, we forsake reality for the illusion of being with someone better. Love is like the soft focus lens on a camera-- it lets us get really close to someone and still not see flaws. We get this beautiful illusion, we get to feel a dedication that is beyond what should be possible. Love lets us escape the humdrum of our experience and escape into a beautiful ideal...and let's be honest, would we want it any other way? I think most would say no.

I recently talked with my mission president and I told him I was afraid to open up and love anyone for this very reason-- because I was afraid I was buying into an illusion. I know that when I care for someone I lose touch with reality and stop seeing their faults. It's a strange thing for me. When I love someone I get emotional and feel a lot of things I rarely feel, but at the cost of my feelings no longer making sense. When I said this my mission president just laughed at me and said that's the way it works, we naturally idealize those we love. I then asked him what happens when we wake up and realize that the person we love isn't as great as we thought. He said he's worked really hard to not wake up (and that he still hasn't after 40 years). So I then asked him how he could tell whether he was actually in love with the person or just the projected romanticized ideal of the person? He responded with something along the lines of "if you're truly happy, does it matter?"

So, now I'm back to where I started. I think most people really believe they always want the truth...but when it comes to choosing between the truth or happiness (especially in matters of love), I think people would rather have happiness. And maybe I'm just getting soft but I think that might be okay. Also, when you do feel something like love, I think you should just go for it. You can sit back and question whether or not you're perceiving things correctly, but just like Descartes' evil demon...you really have no way of knowing. In such matters there is no substitute for experience, all you can do is take the risk and hope your heart knows what it's doing while your head takes the day off. This is stepping into the unknown based on a feeling and (for me at least) it's really scary.

Oh, and one other thing to makes this blind leap even scarier... you have no idea whether your feelings, even if they are right and good, will be reciprocated. It's entirely possible that everything may be right for you, that you take your leap, and then you find that there is nothing waiting for you on the other side. But hey, no matter how you view the risk, I think most would agree that choosing to love, with all its inherent risks, is worth it.

So anyway, back to philosophy...next time you're talking Cartesian philosophy (okay, most people probably don't do that very often) and someone says they want the truth above all else, call them on it. When they disagree with you, just ask them if they've ever been in love.

Well, I better stop writing. It's really late/early. I just can't seem to sleep. I hope everyone has a great Labor Day. Let me just quickly leave you with a quotation from Nietzsche that seems to go along with (and partially answer the problem) that I've been discussing.

"Love is blind, friendship closes its eyes."

If this is true (and it certainly has at least some truth to it), then maybe Nietzsche has the answer on how safely abandon reason, to go all anti-Cartesian, and love someone: be friends first. You see, friends aren't blind to faults, their reason isn't blunted by romantic idealism...friends "close their eyes." This implies that they know your faults (that's how they know they should close their eyes), but they accept them (at least what you can't change--a good friend still tries to help you become better). So, when you're friends with the person you love first, you at least can know what you're getting into, cause when you started out you weren't blind yet. This is the most rational way to abandon rationality.

Of course, this way of finding love isn't without its flaws. It's often hard to redefine a relationship. It's often awkward when you're not sure whether you're a friend or more. And certainly the risk is greater because you now have a friendship at stake. But all these complications are deserving of another post rather than being tacked on to this already ridiculously long one. Let me just rephrase Nietzsche's quotation to make my point.

If love is blind and friendship closes its eyes, then if you want to make the transition from one to the other, you might as well expect a lot of really awkward blinking.