This (*snap*) For Your Thoughts, René!

    “Je pense, donc je suis”

  "I think, therefore I am" 

René Descartes famously narrowed the conversation about human consciousness with this witticism. Because he didn't want to add to the ages-old history of philosophy, he wanted to shut it down. 

For one thing, human existence is a lot more than thinking. Yeah, the cerebrum is upwards of eighty percent of the human brain, but that might only be because it has more static storage and is more inefficient than inner brain parts. Old René DIDN'T say, "I have feelings, therefore I am" or "I have yearnings, therefore I am." There's a prior assumption by René and his materialist encyclopedist friends that thoughts are everything. Pack your mind not with knowledge but with information, and you've got it made. Cerebrum supremacy! Control the schools, control the thoughts, control the people!

But: Affect. The affective activity that goes on in my head is human affective activity, programed by human genetics and human experience. Deep down (even in the head of Monsieur Descartes) much "thinking" is less cognitive and more affective; often it's how we feel/react to comparisons mined from veins of cerebral ore. Less logical than analogical. And the heights of human experience — intimacy, serenity, self-sacrifice — make all the data, all the encyclopedic information, "so much straw" in comparison. (I have that on good authority!)

Poor old Descartes! Somehow historically larger than his narrow life. He did do some beautiful mathematics. Not much of a philosopher. Hack pedagogue (?).

Well, I started out thinking about the enduring human dignity of people with Alzheimer's and ended up sniping at René Descartes. How do I feel about that?

À bas les encyclopédistes !

Down with the encyclopedists!