Cogito
“Cogito, ergo sum” , -I think, therefore I am. These words were what got me into philosophy. I had heard of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle before but I had never read anything from any of them: I had known them as men who were smart or interesting, basically philosophy was a thing that never bothered me before I heard the ‘Cogito’.
Descartes was what got me into philosophy, now if you dislike him or disagree with his position and are already ready to stop reading consider this that I had not read a word of philosophy before this, before Cogito there was no mind-body problem there was no duality, it was not even something that was a problem for me. After all, how many people have gone about, are going about and will go about without sparing even a thought to this topic, yet will be surprised when you spring such a problem in front of them. A battle for what exactly you are: a mind, a soul or the body?
Now Descartes does attribute certain characteristics of the soul as understood by the Christian tradition to the mind this could be with the fact that at his time not acknowledging so would have consequences from the church. He had already seen what had happened to Galileo and so even though it may seem he had thought of the mind as distinct from the soul and body it was advisable to give it certain properties of the soul.
In comes David Hume and he attacks Descartes cogito ergo sum, since as per Hume when he looks inside himself he finds thoughts, ideas, memory and other things but nothing which is the self. Hume may have been inspired by Buddhism though that is not clear but ends up reaching almost the same conclusions that there is no self or at least the self Descartes points to is not actually there.
After Hume several philosophers get on the bandwagon of the ‘self’ as being a mere illusion in today’s world most notably being Dan Dennett and Sam Harris. Even though Hume’s attack is a notable one, the one laid on by today’s philosopher is a poor attempt to close the case. The problem is they are stuck on the same arguments that Descartes has already shown in his Meditations to be invalid and this is rather a show of today’s philosophers or at least people who profess to be so, intellectual capacity, that they are willing to attack works they have clearly not read well enough.
It is sad that the most notable and perhaps a crippling criticism comes from Freud and his followers notably Lacan and Jung. Freud who theorised the idea of the ‘Id’, ‘Ego’ and ‘Superego’ highlighted that the self or the part we think of as the self the ego is often deceived by other elements of the unconscious, in fact as per his later followers Jung would go on to even state that the ego is just a puppet to the unconscious self and the real self actually was something in-between the conscious and unconscious.
Now if you are wonder where does Freud and his followers come into the picture they are laying down foundations for the idea that what Descartes identifies as the self is actually an acquired part (Lacan), not to mention something that the person confuses to be oneself because it is what mediates between the Id and Superego.
If you are Aristotle you would identify yourself with the soul, if you are Descartes with the mind, if you are Hume with nothing and if you are a psychoanalyst with something that is rather a completely different notion of the self.
My point or one that I have been trying to make is that not only is there a mind-body problem there seems to be an identification problem also as what exactly is it one is supposed to identify oneself with. It seems we have a long tradition of confusing and muddling the waters further with a problem (I know I am contributing to it). Now if you are in the no self bandwagon you would be gloating saying that since philosophers throughout time have confused with the problem of identification it seems they have won by default but I would beg to differ, there is an ontological first person experience that I am experiencing and no matter how much of it is called illusion I will not simply abandon the idea. It has simple thought that illusions are checked against a background one being something that is real, so if the self is non existent or an illusion what is the background which is real against which this argument is made?
René Descartes was onto something in fact his meditations is something that I have pondered a lot on, a man looking for certainty would have had the foresight to see the charges brought against his ‘cogito’ and it seems many times in his meditations that he is pondering over those same thoughts but doesn’t voice them. Whatever the case he was the first philosopher whom I encountered and as it is said you never forget your first love; in my view you also never forget your first philosopher’s idea.
