Sayings of Rene Descartes I think therefore I am. The meaning of the judgment of the 17th century philosopher R. Descartes I think, therefore I exist - Abstract

Rene Descartes - mathematician, philosopher, creator of analytic geometry and algebraic symbols. The real purpose of his life was the search for truth. This he did, doubting various statements and looking for weakness in wise words. He tried to find a truth that would become the center of all knowledge. Some kind of root and trunk, from which leaves would sprout in the form of other truths and knowledge. And in search of truth, reflecting on many sayings, he realized that if a person thinks, then he exists. We will write our essay about this.

I think, therefore I am

Once the philosopher Descartes uttered a catchphrase that sounded like this: I think, therefore I exist. And this makes some sense. In fact, anyone can exist. After all, there are animals, birds, which nature has not endowed with such an ability as thinking. But they exist. They live according to their instincts and they are good at it. However, it is impossible to deny the correctness of the statement. After all, if we think, reflect, then this confirms that we continue to exist.

I would say more, if we think, then we do not just exist, we live fully. Thanks to the thought that a person brings to life, the world develops and we have the opportunity to live not in a primitive society, and not even in the Middle Ages. We live in the modern twenty-first century. Thanks to thought and his thinking, a person learns to control many processes, becoming the master of the world, which is not subject to, perhaps, nature with its natural phenomena. And here it is important to use Rene Descartes' quote “I think, therefore I am”, to use for good. It is necessary that our thoughts do not turn into immoral. It is important that our thoughts not only help to explore the planet and the Cosmos, but also do not harm nature. Only then will our existence be for the good, and our thoughts will be the impetus to continue to exist. Otherwise, they can lead to chaos and the destruction of all life, including humanity itself.

Author and meaning of the saying

As I wrote above, the saying “I think, therefore I am” belongs to Rene Descartes, who for a long time tried to find the truth, working on doubts in order to establish the meaning of human existence. And then one day, he uttered his thought, which contemporaries perceived as a revelation. What is the meaning of the statement? According to the Frenchman Descartes, the soul and body of a person is what is needed for existence. Without soul and mental activity there can be no man. Mental activity, where thinking is its main attribute, is impossible without the ability to think. The soul is constantly thinking and as soon as it stops thinking, its activity will stop. So the philosopher claims that as long as we think, we exist as long as we do.

The saying "I think, therefore I am" is from the 17th century French philosopher, mathematician and scientist René Descartes, and occurs in his Discourse on Method (1637). He considered reliability as the primary characteristic of true knowledge. Descartes conducted a series of thought experiments based on methodical doubt to find the undeniable self-evident truth expressed in this phrase. The interpretation of the expression has been the subject of much philosophical debate. It reflects the skeptical intellectual climate that characterized the early development of modern philosophy.

Reflections on First Philosophy

As you know, Descartes put forward a very simple candidate for the "first element of knowledge." It was proposed by methodical doubt - the reflection that all thoughts can be erroneous. At the beginning of The Second Meditation, Descartes says that his observer convinced himself that everything in the world - heaven, earth, mind and body - does not exist. Does it follow from this that it also does not exist? No. If he has convinced himself of something, then of course he exists. But what if there is a deceiver of supreme power and cunning who deliberately and constantly deceives the observer? And in this case, it certainly exists. And let him be deceived as much as he likes, the observer can never be convinced that he is nothing, as long as he thinks that he is something. So, having considered everything thoroughly, he must finally conclude that the assumption of his existence is true, regardless of whether it is expressed or perceived by the mind.

The canonical form of thought expressed by Descartes is "I think, therefore I am" (in Latin: cogito ergo sum; in the original French: je pense, donc je suis). This formulation is not explicitly mentioned in the Meditation.

Descartes: "I think, therefore I am." The meaning of the phrase

The author considers this statement (standardly referred to as cogito) "the first and most true of all that arise from those who philosophize in an orderly way. Is there much confidence in the need to add to "I think" "I am" or "therefore" (i.e., their logical relation)? Presumably this is necessary if the cogito plays the fundamental role assigned to it by Descartes. But the answer depends on whether the cogito is understood as inference or intuition.

Testing the cogito by methodical doubt involves revealing its unshakable validity. As already noted, the existence of the body is questionable. And the presence of thinking - no. The very attempt to drop thinking is indeed self-destructive.

The Cogito raises many philosophical questions and has spawned a vast literature. The following is a summary of some of the main points.

First person statement

First-person phrasing is necessary for confidence in the cogito. "To think, therefore, to exist" in the third person cannot be unshakably reliable - at least for the observer. Only the presence of his thought has a chance to resist hyperbolic doubt. There are a number of passages in which Descartes refers to the third person version of the cogito. But none of them arises in the context of establishing the actual existence of a particular thinker (in contrast to the conditional, general result, "everything that thinks exists").

present tense

Formulation in the present tense is essential for the validity of the statement "I think, therefore I am." The meaning of the phrase "I existed last Tuesday, because I remember my thoughts on that day" is missing, since it is only known that now this case has remained only in the imagination. The statement that "I will continue to exist as I am thinking now" does not work either. As the meditator observes, "When I stop thinking completely, I will completely cease to exist." The privileged validity of the cogito is based on the "manifest contradiction" of the attempt to think outside thinking in the present.

Cogitatio

The validity of the cogito depends on the formulation from the point of view of the cogitatio of the observer - his thinking or consciousness in general. Any kind of it is sufficient, including doubt, affirmation, denial, desire, understanding, imagination, etc. However, the absence of thinking is not enough. For example, it is useless to argue that "I exist because I walk," because methodical doubt calls into question the existence of my legs. Maybe I'm only dreaming that I have legs. A simple modification of this statement to "I exist because it seems to me that I am walking" restores the anti-skeptical effect.

Connection with dualism

The fact that Descartes rejects formulations that presuppose the existence of a body provides him with no more than an epistemological distinction between the ideas of mind and body, but not an ontological one (as in body-mental dualism). Indeed, after the cogito he writes: “Could it not be true that these things which I consider to be nothing [for example, the structure of the limbs which are called the human body] because they are unknown to me and they really coincide with the self, oh which I know? I don't know, and for now I won't argue, as I can only judge things that I know."

The cogito does not imply the mind-body dualism of Descartes.

simple intuition

Much of the discussion about whether the phrase "Think, therefore exist" implies a logical conclusion, or is it just a taken-for-granted intuition, is dismissed by two remarks. One remark concerns the absence of an explicit conclusion ergo ("therefore") in the Second Meditation. It seems erroneous to emphasize this absence, as if assuming that Descartes denies any role of logical reasoning, since here the author explicitly defines the line of premises leading to the conclusion about the existence of the observer. In his other treatments, "therefore" is mentioned, and the Meditations expand on it.

The second point is that it is wrong to think that the cogito must either be accompanied by logical reasoning or be intuitive. There is no contradiction in taking a statement with an inferential structure for granted. It is widely believed among modern philosophers that modus ponens does not require proof, although it contains a logical conclusion. Thus, if a statement contains an inference, then this does not mean that its acceptance is based on it, which applies to the cogito. According to R. Descartes, “I think, therefore, I exist” is not derived using a syllogism - the statement is recognized as something taken for granted by the simple intuition of the mind.

Regardless of the status of the cogito, it is worth noting the observation of Barry Stroud: "A thinker can obviously never be wrong when he thinks 'I think'. Moreover, no one who thinks can be mistaken that he exists.”

Detached "I"

Finally, Descartes' reference to the "I" in "I think" does not imply a separate "I". In the next sentence, after the initial statement about the cogito, the meditator says: "But I do not yet have a sufficient understanding of what this "I" is, which is now necessary." The saying "To think, therefore to be" is intended to bring the certainty that I am, because I can think, whatever it may be. The following discussion is intended to help come to an understanding of the ontological nature of the thinking subject.

More generally, questions of epistemological and ontological dependency should be distinguished. In the final analysis, Descartes considers it proven that the dependence of the presence of thought (ontologically) on the existence of a separate "I", namely, the infinite substance, God. But he does not deny that the acceptance of these ontological questions epistemically precedes the cogito: its determinateness must not depend (epistemically) on the metaphysics which, according to Descartes, he ultimately establishes.

Russell vs Hume

If the statement "to think, therefore to be" does not presuppose the existence of a separate "I", then what is the epistemological basis for introducing "I" into "I think"? Some critics have complained that in referring to the "I" Descartes raises a question that suggests what he wants to establish in the expression "I exist". One critic, Bertrand Russell, denies the illegitimacy of the self. Echoing the 18th-century thinker Georg Lichtenberg, Russell writes that Descartes, on the contrary, had to put his statement in the form "Thoughts exist." He adds that the word "I" is grammatically convenient, but does not describe the given. Accordingly, the expressions "Pain exists" and "I experience pain" have different meanings, but Descartes names only the latter.

Self-analysis reveals more than Russell allows - it reveals the subjective nature of experience. From this point of view, the empirical story of experiencing pain contains more than the statement of its existence: the experience includes the feeling of pain, plus the point of view - an empirical complement that is difficult to characterize except by adding that "I" experience pain, which my pain. The consciousness of this subjective aspect of experience does not depend on the consciousness of the metaphysical nature of the thinking subject. If we accept that Descartes uses "I" to denote this subjective character, then in this case he does not bring in what is already there: the "I" of consciousness turns out (contrary to Russell) as the primary given of experience. Although, as Hume convincingly argues, self-analysis does not reveal any sense impressions suitable for the role of a thinking subject, Descartes, unlike Hume, does not need to derive all our ideas from sense experience. Descartes' idea of ​​himself ultimately relies on internal conceptual resources.

Clarity of perception

But how do ideas derived from the subjective nature of experience justify the basic metaphysical conclusion about the existence of a real "I"? In one plausible line of response, Descartes does not yet intend to establish a metaphysical result. Rather, the initial intended outcome is merely epistemological. At the beginning of the Third Meditation, Descartes says that the epistemological basis of the cogito at this stage is that it is clearly and distinctly perceived. Although the truth about that is yet to be seen. The cogito initially establishes only that we cannot disagree with our existence. A stronger metaphysical result is achieved only by demonstrating the validity of a clear and distinct perception. Such interpretations, of course, imply that the statement "To think, therefore to be" cannot initially be considered full knowledge.

"I THINK, THEREFORE I EXIST"

A real philosopher, when he develops his philosophical system, is always driven by some kind of inner pathos, some kind of his own principle, which he tries to follow all his life. Sometimes this principle is clearly visible in the reflections of the philosopher, sometimes not. In the philosophy of René Descartes (1596-1650), one of the greatest philosophers and the history of philosophy, this principle is in full view: I don't want anyone or anything to deceive me, much lessdeceive yourself. Following this principle prompted Descartes to lead a life full of adventure and great inner tension, to be exposed to dangers in war, to engage in sharp philosophical discussions.

Rene Descartes was born into a very noble and wealthy noble family in one of the provinces of France - Touraine. Among his relatives and ancestors were commanders, bishops, members of parliaments. Rene himself was born a very weak, sickly boy, nevertheless, his inclination to the sciences manifested itself very early, and his father jokingly called him "a little philosopher." At the age of eight, he begins his studies at the elite noble college La Fleche, founded by King Henry IV, who bequeathed to bury his heart in this college. And so it happened - on June 4, 1610, Descartes, among the chosen students, met the heart of the king.

Descartes did well in college, where teachers were mainly teachers from the Jesuit Order. Ancient languages, a two-year course in philosophy, mostly scholastic, as well as Descartes' favorite subject - mathematics - still could not satisfy his passion for knowledge. Later, recalling his school years, the founder of rational philosophy wrote: “From childhood I was brought up to study the sciences, and since I was assured that with the help of them one can achieve a clear and firm knowledge of everything useful, I felt an unusually strong desire to study them. However, when I had gone through the whole course of study, at the end of which people usually join the ranks of scientists, I completely changed my view, for I was in such a chaos of doubts and delusions that it seemed that I could benefit from my desire to learn that more and more and more convinced of his ignorance. Therefore, Descartes decided to leave school and go wandering: "I did not want to seek any more other science than that which I could find in myself or in the great Book of life."

In 1613, Descartes arrives in Paris and plunges into a life full of entertainment and pleasure. But a year later, such a life bored him, and he suddenly disappeared from the field of view of his friends. Living in Paris, he did not appear anywhere, and no one knew where he lived. All this time, Descartes was engaged in a deep study of mathematics. In 1617, his life changed dramatically again - he went into military service, first in the Dutch army, and then took part in several battles between Catholics and Protestants in Germany on the side of the former. Then, in 1619, he experienced a severe internal crisis - philosophy then seemed to him a solid dark chaos in which nothing could be distinguished with clarity. On the contrary, Descartes considered mathematics to be the only clear science. And then he had an idea - is it possible to clarify philosophy and other sciences with the help of mathematical methods?

In 1620, Descartes finally left military affairs and returned to Paris, where he again retired for reflection, from which he was distracted only by the siege of the Protestant fortress of La Rochelle, during which he was introduced to Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu. A few weeks later, Descartes first formulated the basic principles of his new philosophy. On that day in Paris, he was present at a philosophical discussion where a certain Shandu, a brilliant orator, but a very superficial scholar, presented his supposedly "new philosophy." Shandu spoke excellently, and most of those present approved of his speech. Only Descartes remained silent. When asked to express his opinion, he stood up and point by point proved the inconsistency of Shangdu's theory, which rested on imaginary, unproven grounds. Descartes countered unsubstantiated philosophical theories with his "touchstone": all truth can only be discovered by methodical thinking and must stand the test of it.

Descartes understood that he himself was still far from a sufficiently clear understanding of those new principles of philosophy that he outlined in his dispute with Shandu. Therefore, unexpectedly for the Parisian public, already prepared to honor him as a new fashionable "philosophical hero", he leaves for Holland and settles there in complete solitude, reinforced by the fact that Descartes lives among strangers, almost not knowing their language. “I walk every day in the very hustle and bustle of a large crowd of people as freely and calmly as you do in your alleys; I consider people moving around me like trees in your forests and animals in your meadows,” Descartes described his life in Holland in his letters, the life of an outside observer reading the “Great Book of Life”. During these years, Descartes created his main philosophical works: "Reflections on the first philosophy, in which the existence of God and the immortality of the soul are proved" (1641), "Principles of Philosophy" (1644), "On the passions of the soul" (1646).

The main problem that occupied Descartes was the problem of reliable knowledge. How do I know that what I know, I know is true? How to prove to yourself the truth of your knowledge? After all, it is much easier, said Descartes, to have a certain number of vague ideas on any issue than to get to the truth as such in the easiest issue. Therefore, Descartes considered the question of method to be the main question of knowledge. He called his method deduction, which is to find the source of truth and then move from it step by step, without going astray, without turning in the wrong direction.

But where to start, how to find this "source of truth"? All our ideas and feelings, said Descartes, are unreliable, therefore knowledge must begin withdoubts. Doubt, the philosopher believed, should not be directed against the world, but only against the significance of our own ideas about it. I, said Descartes, do not suspect God, who created the world, of deceit, but I assume that a certain “demon of lies” simply knocks me out of the correct perception of reality.

So, Descartes formulated the first principle of knowledge: "I I doubt everything." But then the question necessarily arose - is there anything that can not be doubted? If, said Descartes, I discard everything that is doubtful, everything that can be doubted, then one thing will still remain undoubted - my doubt, my thinking, which is my true being. I think, therefore I am(Ego cogito, ergo sum) is the fundamental principle formulated by Descartes. Another principle, the principle of certainty of knowledge, states: What I perceive clearly and distinctly is true. To cognize "clearly and distinctly" means to present the object under study in its pure form, to separate from it everything alien.

The basis of human existence, Descartes believed, is the "thinking I", but this I is not born empty. Otherwise, it could not give rise to any thought - after all, "nothing will come of nothing." Therefore, Descartes introduced the concept of innate ideas - these ideas are given to man, his soul already at birth, are innate by God. Actually, the idea of ​​God is, Descartes considered, the main innate idea - it is on the basis of it that we can then have an idea and cognize the ideas of Good, Beauty, Truth. The second innate idea is the idea of ​​bodies - on its basis we can perceive and cognize the bodies around us in the world.

Proceeding from this, Descartes formulated the anthropological proof of the existence of God, which is based on a comparison of the imperfect nature of man and the perfect nature of God. Man exists and is endowed with the idea of ​​the most perfect being (God), but the man himself is obviously imperfect, which means that he cannot be the source of the idea of ​​the most perfect being in me - as less cannot give rise to more. Consequently, this idea is born to me from the outside, that is, by God Himself, who really exists. This is the reasoning of Descartes. Moreover, he believed that it was the being and the idea of ​​God that made human doubt and hence thought possible. Otherwise, a person would be hopelessly imprisoned in his own illusions. The ability of doubt proves that the light of true knowledge is inherent in man, the source of which is God.

Descartes even formulated a kind of rule of life. First, God did not create people (meaning a certain impersonal mass of people), God created me. Secondly, in this world there is always a place for me. Thirdly, if I, for whatever reason, do not take this place, then there will be no order and beauty in the world, and I will not exist, and the world itself will not exist either. Here is such a maximalist conclusion about the responsibility of a person to himself and to the world. It is useless to run away from the world and its realities, because, said the philosopher, when we run away, we still take our fear with us.

Descartes in his philosophy paid much attention to how human nature affects his thinking and will. Man, the philosopher believed, consists of two substances - the body (extended) and souls (thinking). Their combination prevents the soul from calmly contemplating - emotions and passions arise, which are an integral part of human nature. Surprise, desire, sadness, joy, love, hate- such are the simple passions that disturb the soul of man. Their combinations make complex passions. Descartes considered surprise to be the only positive passion, because it gives a person the first impulse to knowledge.

Descartes believed that a person initially has free will - without it, he simply could not get out of the network of delusions, but the will can fail - choose the wrong solution from those proposed by the mind. The cause of evil, according to Descartes, is a mistake of the will. A person driven by passions is not free. In order to become free, he needs to rise above his passions, to clarify his thinking. And this is possible only in the state of a collected subject (that is, one who has remembered his innate ideas, which are the first necessity for a person). Based on this, Descartes formulated the principle of human freedom - freedom on the wave of necessity, in which a person puts the innate ideas realized by him above the pressure of external circumstances. Another principle formulated by Descartes, the principle of generosity, can also help in overcoming passions: I cannot judge what I do not know with certainty.

These are the basic principles of Descartes' philosophy - Cartesianism. Death overtook him there and then, when he hardly expected it. He was invited to Stockholm by Queen Christina of Sweden to lecture her on philosophy. The queen was a pronounced "lark" - lectures were scheduled for six in the morning. Such a load Descartes, who apparently was an "owl", could not stand it. A few months later he fell ill with pneumonia and died, saying before his death that he asked that only what he wrote with his own hand be considered his philosophy.

Let us return to the first rule of Descartes' method. Its negative side was doubt. Being self-evident, intuitive, it turns out to be, as it were, a criterion of falsity, clearing the soil of knowledge from various prejudices, similar to Bacon's "ghosts", concerning both sensations and scholastic "omniscience".

Descartes' "doubt" is methodologically preliminary in nature; it is not at all related to the all-corroding skepticism and requires its own overcoming. No wonder Descartes, when characterizing "doubt," refers not to the ancient skeptics, but to Socrates. The task is to find the "solid ground" of knowledge, and for this it is necessary to destroy "all your former opinions." This attitude of Descartes was the opposite of skepticism, but this does not mean that in general "his main enemy was skepticism rather than scholasticism."

In the 1940s, Descartes began his systematic exposition of his philosophy precisely with "doubt". The fresh mind of new people must begin with it, rejecting the ashes of the systems of school philosophy. From "doubt" a new, true philosophy will not arise by itself, but it is necessary to start from it. From "doubt" one cannot directly come to reality, but the path to it begins from it.

The initial starting point is this: everything is doubtful, but the very fact of doubt is certain. It is necessary to question all your thoughts, not to mention sensory perceptions, because it can be assumed that some kind of "evil genius" deceives each of us. But then, according to the second rule of method, the very elementary fact of doubt will be all the more certain.

But that which doubts, thinks. So there is something thinking, that is, the subject, "I". So, "I think, therefore I exist, therefore there is a thinking thing or substance, soul, spirit (cogito ergo sura, ergo sum res sive substantia cogitans, anirna, mens)". Descartes considers this thesis the most reliable intuition, more reliable than mathematical intuition, and equal in degree of self-evidence with the existential statement about God.

Do we really have intuition? There has been much debate about the logical structure of the cogito ergo sum, and it has not yet ceased, especially since Descartes' formula had both rationalistic and irrationalist antecedents. Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics expressed something similar, and Augustine stated that "if I doubt, then I exist (si fallor, sum)". In the XX century. Some bourgeois philosophers, such as Husserl, reproach Descartes for the "wretched empiricism" of his fundamental thesis, while others declare this thesis, and along with all Cartesian thinking, irrational.

Many authors from P. Bayle to R. Carnap reproach Descartes' formula for logical imperfection, and some of them try to correct it by interpreting it as a syllogism, but for this they demand to include additional premises-axioms: "doubt is an act of thinking", "to the subject is capable of pouring thought. A slightly different option is also proposed: “Every time I think, I exist. I now think. So I exist now." However, the interpretation of this formula as an enthymeme (abbreviated syllogism) not only implies the presence of special premises, of which at least the second requires special justification, but also does not agree with the general trend of Descartes. L.P. Gokieli denies the syllogistic nature of Descartes' formula, but sees in it a certain special dialectical "radical" way of inference. It is not necessary to deny the presence of a dialectical transition in Descartes into the opposite (doubt gives rise to certainty), but L.P. Gokieli, despite all his efforts, failed to find any unusual logical structure that would be “overcoming” formal-logical connections.

In fact, Descartes is quite consistent in considering the cogito ergo sum as an intuition. In any case, his opinion is in full agreement with the general principles of his rationalism, and if it is wrong, it is precisely to the extent that his principles as a whole are wrong. Before us is a direct connection of concepts, justified by the identity of the logical and real existence "inside" the cogito, although destroyed, as we will see later, by the fact of admitting the existence of an extended, but not thinking substance. By virtue of this identity, only the existent is capable of thinking, and only the thinking itself truly exists. In his essay "On the Search for Truth ..." Descartes formulates the first rule of method as follows: "... accepting as true only that, the certainty of which is equal to the certainty of my existence, my thought and the fact that I am a thinking thing", so that methodological doubt in in the final analysis "applies exclusively to things that exist outside of me, and my certainty belongs to my doubt and to myself." So, according to Descartes, the very act of doubting thought already contains the certainty of existence.

The existence of what? Descartes' transition from the act of thinking to the assertion of the existence of a subject, and even more so of a thinking and purely spiritual substance, of course, is not legitimate and not justified even within the framework of his rationalism and goes back to dilapidated scholasticism with its position that the presence of thinking "requires" that would be the presence of a thinking "personal spirit". I. I. Yagodinsky’s explanation that Descartes’ “I” is only the unity and identity of all acts of the cogito does not save the situation, because Descartes’ “I” turns out to be, moreover, a substance ... Leibniz was closer to the truth, believing that the Cartesian cogilo is only the factual truth of immediate mental experience, so that the question of the existence of the "I" is already decided by the interpretation of this experience.

Descartes' cogito was directed against the scholastic debasement of the human mind and imbued with great faith in its cognitive power. The philosopher uses the cogito to build his ontology as a kind of lever of Archimedes. But this tool of Descartes is purely idealistic, since he considers the subject only a thinking entity: "... if the body did not even exist at all, the soul would not cease to be all that it is."

Therefore, it was on the idealism of the Cartesian formula that the advanced philosophers of the 17th century began their attacks. P. Gassendi pointed out that the existence of the subject follows not from thinking, but from his material actions (for example, "I walk"). J. L. Wolzogen in his “Remarks on the Metaphysical Meditations” by René Descartes (1657) reproached the French thinker for the fact that his statement about the “pure spirituality” of the “I” was not substantiated. T. Hobbes pointed out that thinking may well be an accidental process that does not require the presence of any special substance, just as “walking” is not a substance.

All of these objections were to the point. After all, Descartes ruled out in advance the possibility that the body can think, and postulated in advance that thinking is a personality-spirit. And when, in the sixth section of the Metaphysical Meditations, he then begins to prove that the body is incapable of thinking itself, he thereby proves only that he built the formula cogito ergo sum not on the solid ground of unshakable truths, but on sand. No unpresupposed and absolutely immediate cogito exists in reality. The idea of ​​the innate knowledge was erroneous in any of its variants, but it was not absurd: after all, we always rely on the knowledge we received from past generations, and part of this knowledge we receive at birth in the form of inclinations of abilities and a certain set of unconditioned reflexes, which themselves itself is not knowledge, but beyond any doubt can and should be interpreted as information.

Is it possible to consider sensory experience as innate? This question, the negative answer to which is self-evident for a materialist, was very tempting for Descartes: a positive answer to it would lead the rationalistic picture of the world and its knowledge to complete unity. But - as in assessing the cognitive role of sensations - Descartes could not achieve certainty. On the one hand, he agrees that "imagination (imaginatio)", i.e., perceptions, ideas, and imagination itself, do not exist in the spirit of a person, but in his corporeality, which means that they are caused by external bodies and are not rooted in the mind. On the other hand, he is inclined to consider as innate those sensations that are most clear and distinct, and therefore share the signs of intuitive truths. However, in this case, a new contradiction arises: there is reason to consider as such sensations those that are close to theoretical knowledge, i.e., sensations of geometric qualities, but no less arguments, on the contrary, in favor of sensations of color, taste, etc., because the latter are the brightest.

In response to Leroy (Regius "y), the philosopher wrote that all colors are innate in our consciousness, and ultimately all ideas in general. But how can those sensations that Descartes himself called fictitious be innate? The philosophy of dialectical materialism has now proved that sensations exteroreceptors are neither fictitious nor innate.But there was still some truth in Cartesian searches for their innateness: after all, all those modalities of sensations that can be “experienced” in nervous tissues are programmed in the brain, however, of course, only an idealist would claim that they are programmed also the structure and order of their appearance in consciousness.In addition, it should be emphasized that the programming of various modalities of sensations is the result of natural selection in the process of changing many millions of generations of living beings on Earth on the basis of fixing billions of times repeated features of life experience in the structure of nerve tissues. of course, has nothing in common with idealistic theory.As for the "vague and confused "sensory ideas, for example, dreams, then the first rule of the method forbids Descartes to consider them true, therefore, they cannot be innate. Thus, the rationalistic unification of knowledge was not achieved.

Be that as it may, Descartes clings to the cogito ergo sum as a stronghold of rationalism. But the cogito entails the danger of a solipsistic self-closing of consciousness. Descartes wanted to come not to solipsism, but to a solid knowledge of nature, and therefore needed to prove the reliability of human knowledge about the outside world.

The creation of a new method of thinking and scientific research requires a solid and unshakable foundation, otherwise the building built with it can be destroyed in the same way as the previous structures of the human mind. Such a basis, according to Descartes, can only be the human mind itself in its inner source, at the point from which it grows and which therefore has the highest certainty, this point is self-consciousness. "I think, therefore I am" - this is the formula that expresses the essence of self-consciousness, and this formula, as Descartes is convinced, is the most obvious and most reliable of the judgments ever made by a human being.

In my opinion, from this statement of Descartes, several conclusions can be distinguished based on the concept of existence. Firstly, if we consider the existence of man proper, then without the thought process, man cannot be called a social being. In the history of mankind, there were many examples when children were brought up by animals in isolation from society and, getting to people, they could no longer adapt to society, i.e. could not fully exist among people. Secondly, if existence is understood as development, then without a thought process, the development of society is inhibited. All the great scientific discoveries that changed the life of society and entire epochs took place in the minds of people, but, of course, the prerequisites for discoveries were the experience and experimental material accumulated by mankind.

Descartes himself, in my opinion, in his vivid statement showed the priority of the rationalistic method of cognition over other methods that existed in modern times. In addition, he separated the sphere of human self-consciousness from divine conduct, which ultimately affected the development of science and progress in the technical field.

13. Is Locke right when he stated that we lack any innate ideas and that our consciousness prior to experience is a "blank slate"?

Locke can be seen as the founder of empiricism, the doctrine that all our knowledge (perhaps excluding logic and mathematics) is derived from experience. Accordingly, contrary to Plato, Descartes and the scholastics, he argues that there are no innate ideas or principles. In the second book, he attempts to show in detail how various kinds of ideas arise from experience. Rejecting innate ideas, he says: “In the soul and mind of man there are no innate knowledge, ideas or ideas. The soul and mind of a person are initially pure, like a waxed tablet (tabula rasa - a blank board), and already sensations, perceptions "write" their "letters" on this tablet. Perception, he says, is "the first step to knowledge, the path for all its material." To a modern person, this statement may seem almost true and truthful, since it has entered the flesh and blood of an educated person, at least in English-speaking countries. But at that time it was believed that the mind knew about all sorts of things a priori, and Locke's theory of the complete dependence of knowledge on perception was new and revolutionary.

However, in my opinion, this statement can be considered true only in part, most likely this truth is relative. If we consider a person as a social being, then social consciousness and experience are inherent in him. Being born, a person develops in a particular society and adopts the accumulated experience from it. An example is the proverbs of peoples, which reflect a certain experience of a given ethnic group. Learning proverbs in childhood, the child, having not yet experienced the experience described in the proverb, comprehends the experience of the people and derives his judgments and ideas.

Although, of course, each person comprehends the world thanks to the experience that he gains during his life. As the saying goes, "everyone learns from their mistakes."