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| Descartes starts off pretty strong. I can accept meditations one and two pretty easily. I do like how he says, at the end of two, that objects aren't known from the senses but by being understood. The wax example makes sense to me now; he knows the wax is wax, not because of its shape or color, but because he understands it intellectually as wax. It's an interesting distinction that really struck me hard.
However, he starts to lose me in the third meditation. His proof of God seems to come down to "I can think of the idea of God, and if I can think of the idea of God, then God must exist." He doesn't actually prove that he can think of the idea of God, nor that it would necessarily prove God's existence if he had. This failure weakens his subsequent arguments. Also, he simply dismisses the idea of infinite regression, which is exactly what presupposing a creator would imply, out of hand. After all, if you assume one creator, where do you draw the arbitrary line ending the line of creation?
In the fifth meditation, he makes what I consider to be groundless assumptions, namely that God exists and is perfect (and that a perfect being is necessarily benevolent). He only makes these assumptions because his theory requires them to be true. I also question why he is unable to conceive of more than one god since that has historically been very easy for people to do and, indeed, the idea of multiple gods makes more sense to me.
By the sixth meditation, he concludes his body and other material objects must exist because God wouldn't deceive him, and that mind and body are separate because God could create them separately (never mind the fact that it still wouldn't mean he did create them separately. However, since he never proved God's existence, that conclusion readily falls away once you remove the God assumption, leaving us back at square one. Ignoring that though, his idea of reality is that it is composed of three things: God (who is infinite), minds (the things that do the thinking), and material objects (the body and everything else.
Despite my rather critical review of it, I definitely recommend it as a starting point for anyone who wishes to look into Truth and Knowledge. | | |
| Indigo shadows --
joyously weeping perfume
tears from paper eyes. | | |
| I will not spare you. Your life means nothing to me; Your death, everything.
Retribution for your crimes Creeping closer and closer.
The snow stained crimson -- I am vengeance incarnate, And your time has come.
My sword is still dripping as The darkness covers your eyes.
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| One of the ideas of string theory is that the universe is actually just a branch of a larger entity, similar to coral. Each polyp of coral formed from budding is identical to every other polyp of the coral. Each one is a distinct piece, yet every piece is also every other piece because it's the same organism. Now, if the multiverse theory is accurate, what would cause the splitting? I thought about it in the terms of Newton's laws of motion and the laws of thermodynamics. Thermodynamics states that matter is neither created nor destroyed. The third law of motion is every reaction has an equal but opposite reaction. Now, what if those laws aren't limited purely to matter? Take, for example, a coin flip. In practice, you have a 50% chance of heads and a 50% chance of tails. When you flip the coin, it either lands on one or the other. Let's say it lands on heads. That 50% chance has just become the only chance now that it's resting on heads. But 50% =/= 100%. Where does the other 50% chance go? I'm thinking it goes into a parallel universe where the coin lands on tails. Now there's two equal and opposite universe branches stemming from the coin flip. The sum of both universes equals the 100% chance of it landing on either heads or tails. Taken to the logical conclusion, every single decision, every single matter of chance, leads to a branching point where every possible outcome of the decision play out. Somewhere next to the universe we live in, there's a universe where you made your last decision in a different manner. Multiply that concept infinitely since the dawn of time and the multiverse is one incredible structure. 
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| Ah, the cool breeze feels wonderful. It's just the right time of day. The sun is low on the horizon, casting long shadows across the grass, yet is still high enough to light up the sky. The melody of the crackling leaves is a very pleasant accompaniment for a walk. Ted sticks his nose high into the air and sniffs deeply. The aroma is delicious. Ben gently pulls on the leash, briefly bringing Ted's attention back from the invisible world of smells. Ted begins walking again, still sneaking whiffs of the ground here and there. A rabbit hopped around this tree earlier. Over here, a squirrel buried an acorn under a shallow layer of dirt. A delicious piece of fruit is laying right here in the open. A smile crossed Ben's face as he watches the exuberance that his best friend has for life. He reaches down and strokes the back of Ted's neck. "Come on, boy," he says, "We still have a ways to go." | | |
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