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Descartes Quotes

Browse 44 quotes about Descartes.

Descartes Quotes

“Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle. That principle is of great antiquity; it is as old as Socrates; as old as the writer who said, 'Try all things, hold fast by that which is good'; it is the foundation of the Reformation, which simply illustrated the axiom that every man should be able to give a reason for the faith that is in him, it is the great principle of Descartes; it is the fundamental axiom of modern science. Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the agnostic position, which if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store for him. The results of the working out of the agnostic principle will vary according to individual knowledge and capacity, and according to the general condition of science. That which is unproved today may be proved, by the help of new discoveries, tomorrow. The only negative fixed points will be those negations which flow from the demonstrable limitation of our faculties. And the only obligation accepted is to have the mind always open to conviction. That it is wrong for a man to say he is certain of the objective truth of a proposition unless he can provide evidence which logically justifies that certainty. This is what agnosticism asserts and in my opinion, is all that is essential to agnosticism.”

TruthScienceBeliefKnowledgeHonestyAgnosticAgnosticismDefinitionSocratesDescartes
Book:Agnosticism and Christianity and Other Essays
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“If the people of Europe had known as much of astronomy and geology when the bible was introduced among them, as they do now, there never could have been one believer in the doctrine of inspiration. If the writers of the various parts of the bible had known as much about the sciences as is now known by every intelligent man, the book never could have been written. It was produced by ignorance, and has been believed and defended by its author. It has lost power in the proportion that man has gained knowledge. A few years ago, this book was appealed to in the settlement of all scientific questions; but now, even the clergy confess that in such matters, it has ceased to speak with the voice of authority. For the establishment of facts, the word of man is now considered far better than the word of God. In the world of science, Jehovah was superseded by Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler. All that God told Moses, admitting the entire account to be true, is dust and ashes compared to the discoveries of Descartes, Laplace, and Humboldt. In matters of fact, the bible has ceased to be regarded as a standard. Science has succeeded in breaking the chains of theology. A few years ago, Science endeavored to show that it was not inconsistent with the bible. The tables have been turned, and now, Religion is endeavoring to prove that the bible is not inconsistent with Science. The standard has been changed.”

BookGodFactsInspirationScienceReligionBeliefKnowledgeIgnoranceProveAuthorityBibleDiscoveryEuropeIntelligentBelieverAstronomyTheologyDoctrineChainsAuthorTrueWord Of GodMosesInconsistentGeologyJehovahChristiansClergyYahwehThe BibleStandardCopernicusDescartesKeplerGalileoJohannes KeplerLaplaceNicolaus CopernicusGalileo GalileiAlexander Von HumboldtHumboldtPierre Simon LaplaceAlexander HumboldtRené DescartesWilhelm HumboldtWilhelm Von HumboldtDes CartesLa PlaceMarquis De LaplacePierre Simon
Book:Some Mistakes of Moses
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“A soul is immortal because it is a dimensionless monad that has no parts hence it cannot decay or perish. There is no part of it that can break down. An unextended entity is, as Descartes said, a thinking entity. It thinks eternally. That’s exactly what a soul is: an immortal thinking system. A soul has eternal energy because its overall energy is ZERO. It can never run out of energy since there’s no resultant energy to run out of. In any case, energy can be neither created nor destroyed, so any energy in the monadic ensemble can never be lost. Moreover, the extremely strict laws of energy conservation require that all monads permanently have a perfect balance of energy, i.e. zero. Life is eternal, dimensionless, thinking energy that is balanced between positive and negative energy, real and imaginary and always stays at zero. A soul is mathematically guaranteed. It is an absolute product of mathematics, and can be defined only mathematically. There is no such thing as a soul without mathematics. Mathematics is keeping you alive and keeping you thinking, and it will do so FOREVER. You owe everything to mathematics.”

SoulPhilosophyScienceReligionEnergyEternalZeroOntological MathematicsDescartesEnergy Conservation
Author:Mike Hockney
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“Modern man, in so far as he is still Cartesian (he is of course going far beyond Descartes in many respects), is a subject for whom his own self-awareness as a thinking, observing, measuring and estimating "self" is absolutely primary. It is for him the one indubitable "reality," and all truth starts here. The more he is able to develop his consciousness as a subject over against objects, the more he can understand things in their relations to him and one another, the more he can manipulate these objects for his own interests, but also, at the same time, the more he tends to isolate himself in his own subjective prison, to become a detached observer cut off from everything else in a kind of impenetrable alienated and transparent bubble which contains all reality in the form of purely subjective experience. Modern consciousness then tends to create this solipsistic bubble of awareness - an ego-self imprisoned in its own consciousness, isolated and out of touch with other such selves in so far as they are all "things" rather than persons.”

ChristianityZenDescartesCartesianModern Consciousness
Book:Zen and the Birds of Appetite
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“It is this kind of consciousness, exacerbated to an extreme, which has made inevitable the so called "death of God." Cartesian thought began with an attempt to reach God as object by starting from the thinking self. But when God becomes object, he sooner or later "dies," because God as object is ultimately unthinkable. God as object is not only a mere abstract concept, but one which contains so many internal contradictions that it becomes entirely nonnegotiable except when it is hardened into an idol that is maintained in existence by a sheer act of will. For a long time man continued to be capable of this willfulness: but now the effort has become exhausting and many Christians have realised it to be futile. Relaxing the effort, they have let go the "God-object" which their fathers and grandfathers still hoped to manipulate for their own ends. Their weariness has accounted for the element of resentment which made this a conscious "murder" of the deity. Liberated from the strain of willfully maintaining an object-God in existence, the Cartesian consciousness remains none the less imprisoned in itself. Hence the need to break out of itself and to meet "the other" in "encounter," "openness," "fellowship," "communion".”

ChristianityZenCatholicismModern ManGod Is DeadDescartesCartesianMertonSecond Vatican Council
Book:Zen and the Birds of Appetite
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“There is certainly something to the thought that certain classic papers of Putnam and Quine offer perhaps the closest thing to be found in twentieth-century philosophy to an attempt to rehabilitate Descartes's claim that it would be hubris for us to assert of an omnipotent God that He would be inexorably bound by the laws of logic - those laws which happen to bind our finite minds. In a move which is characteristic of much of contemporary naturalistic thought (both in and out of the academy), science is substituted for God. Cartesianism in the philosophy of logic, freed of its theological trappings, becomes the view that it would be hubris for us to assert of the ongoing activity of scientific inquiry that it will be forever bound by the laws of classical logic - those principles which happen to be most fundamental to our present conceptual scheme. The contrast is now no longer, as in Descartes, between the infinite powers of man and the infinite powers of God, but rather between the limits of present scientific thought and the infinite possibilities latent in the future of science as such ... If Descartes is led by a sense of theological piety to insist that God can do anything - no matter how inconceivably it may be to us - the contemporary ultra-empiricist is led by an equally fervent sense of naturalistic piety to insist that the science of the future might require a revision of any of our present axioms of thought - no matter how unacceptable such a revision might seem by our present lights. The exploration of the contours of possibility belongs to the business of the physicists. In this regard, we philosophers must issue them a blank check - it would compromise our standing as underlaborers to put a ceiling on how much they can spend. To paraphrase Descartes on God: we must not conclude that there is a positive limit to the power of science on the basis of the limits of our own (present) powers of conception. All of its hostility to theology notwithstanding, this contemporary form of piety is, in a sense, no less religious (in its unconditional deference to a higher authority) than Descartes's - it has simply exchanged one Godhead for another. But, unlike Descartes, precisely because it is overly hostile to theology, it is able easily to blind itself to the fact that it is a form of piety.”

ScienceReligionLogicTheologyPietyLawsDescartes
Book:The Logical Alien: Conant and His Critics
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“The frequency domain of mind (a mind, it must be stressed, is an unextended, massless, immaterial singularity) can produce an extended, spacetime domain of matter via ontological Fourier mathematics, and the two domains interact via inverse and forward Fourier transforms. An inverse Fourier transform converts a frequency (mind) function into a spacetime (material) function, and a forward Fourier transform does the opposite. So, mind can causally affect the material world, and matter can inform mind about its condition, its state. This is thus the long-sought answer to the world-historic problem of Cartesian substance dualism.”

MindMatterPhilosophyScienceMaterialismIdealismDescartesCartesian DualismFourier Transform
Book:The Ontological Self: The Ontological Mathematics of Consciousness
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“In The Matrix, Morpheus says, “If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.” And what are electrical signals made of? What is “matter” made of? If you can’t answer that then you can’t possibly know what matter is. The fact of feeling pain and the hardness of things does not in any way prove that “matter” exists. Sheez, Descartes explicitly refuted this nonsense centuries ago. You feel pain and hardness in your dreams, but there’s no matter in your dreams, so we know for an absolute fact that mental experiences in no way prove the existence of non-mental matter. In fact, they prove that matter does not exist and everything is mind!”

MindMatterPhilosophyBrainMaterialismIdealismMatrixMorpheusDescartes
Book:The Church of the Serpent: The Philosophy of the Snake and Attaining Transcendent Knowledge
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“I thought of the fate of Descartes’ famous formulation: man as ‘master and proprietor of nature.’ Having brought off miracles in science and technology, this ‘master and proprietor’ is suddenly realizing that he owns nothing and is master neither of nature (it is vanishing, little by little, from the planet), nor of History (it has escaped him), nor of himself (he is led by the irrational forces of his soul). But if God is gone and man is no longer master, then who is master? The planet is moving through the void without any master. There it is, the unbearable lightness of being.”

GodHumanityNatureDestinyHistoryModernMeaning Of LifeExistentialismDescartesEnd Of HistorySelf Determinism
Book:The Art of the Novel
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“Isn't this the very glue that holds the human world together? Isn't this why we need other people, to give us the pleasure of knowing we are better than they are? Amazingly, even those who seem to be the worst-off take, in their humiliation, a perverse satisfaction in the fact that no one has it worse than they do. Thus they have still, in some sense, won. Where does this all come from? Asher wonders. Can man not be repaired? If he were a machine, as some now argue, it would suffice to adjust one little lever slightly, or to tighten some small screw, and people would start to take pleasure in treating one another as equals.”

EqualityInequalityManMysticismJudaismHierarchyMachineDescartesJacob Frank
Book:The Books of Jacob
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“The ground of the spacetime domain is the frequency domain. What exists beyond spacetime isn’t anything mysterious and unknowable, it’s just frequency, i.e. the domain of pure mind, of pure light, the photonic domain: immaterial, massless, maximally length contracted (it does not experience space) and time dilated (it does not experience time), unextended and dimensionless; everything that matter is not. The photonic domain of mind is simply Leibniz’s world of pure monads, Descartes’ world of thinking substance, and Hegel’s world of the Absolute Idea. It is the inside of reality.”

MatterScienceIdealismRationalismHegelMindsDescartesPhotonFourier MathematicsFourier Frequency
Book:Inside Reality: The Inner View of Existence
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“But before examining this point [the third Meditation: 'the Existence of God'] more carefully and investigating other truths which may be derived from it, I should like to pause here and spend some time in the contemplation of God; to reflect on his attributes, and to gaze with wonder and adoration on the beauty of this immense light, so far as the eye of my darkened intellect can bear it. For just as we believe through faith that the supreme happiness of the next life consists solely in the contemplation of the divine majesty, so experience tells us that this same contemplation, albeit much less perfect, enables us to know the greatest joy of which we are capable of in this life.”

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Author:René Descartes
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“Is it possible that the Pentateuch could not have been written by uninspired men? that the assistance of God was necessary to produce these books? Is it possible that Galilei ascertained the mechanical principles of 'Virtual Velocity,' the laws of falling bodies and of all motion; that Copernicus ascertained the true position of the earth and accounted for all celestial phenomena; that Kepler discovered his three laws—discoveries of such importance that the 8th of May, 1618, may be called the birth-day of modern science; that Newton gave to the world the Method of Fluxions, the Theory of Universal Gravitation, and the Decomposition of Light; that Euclid, Cavalieri, Descartes, and Leibniz, almost completed the science of mathematics; that all the discoveries in optics, hydrostatics, pneumatics and chemistry, the experiments, discoveries, and inventions of Galvani, Volta, Franklin and Morse, of Trevithick, Watt and Fulton and of all the pioneers of progress—that all this was accomplished by uninspired men, while the writer of the Pentateuch was directed and inspired by an infinite God? Is it possible that the codes of China, India, Egypt, Greece and Rome were made by man, and that the laws recorded in the Pentateuch were alone given by God? Is it possible that Æschylus and Shakespeare, Burns, and Beranger, Goethe and Schiller, and all the poets of the world, and all their wondrous tragedies and songs are but the work of men, while no intelligence except the infinite God could be the author of the Pentateuch? Is it possible that of all the books that crowd the libraries of the world, the books of science, fiction, history and song, that all save only one, have been produced by man? Is it possible that of all these, the bible only is the work of God?”

LightInspirationScienceFictionProgressBooksBibleIndiaTragedyMathematicsIntelligenceChinaMathExperimentsWriterChemistryRomePoetsEgyptGreeceNewtonPioneersShakespeareFranklinSongsLibrariesWilliam ShakespeareDiscoveriesThe BibleEuclidGoetheInventionsOpticsCopernicusDescartesKeplerIsaac NewtonLaws Of MotionGalileoLeibnizBurnsJames WattSchillerTheory Of GravityAeschylusJohannes KeplerNicolaus CopernicusPentateuchBenjamin FranklinGalileo GalileiRobert BurnsWattMorseGottfried LeibnizGottfried Wilhelm LeibnizJohann Wolfgang Von GoetheRené DescartesCavalieriPneumaticsAlessandro VoltaBerangerBonaventura CavalieriBonaventura Francesco CavalieriFultonGalvaniGottfried Von LeibnizGottfried Wilhelm Von LeibnizHydrostaticsJohann Von GoetheLuigi Aloisio GalvaniLuigi GalvaniPierre Jean De BérangerRichard TrevithickRobert FultonSamuel Finley Breese MorseSamuel MorseTheory Of Universal GravitationTrevethickVoltaÆSchylus
Book:Some Mistakes of Moses
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“In conscious life, we achieve some sense of ourselves as reasonably unified, coherent selves, and without this action would be impossible. But all this is merely at the ‘imaginary’ level of the ego, which is no more than the tip of the iceberg of the human subject known to psychoanalysis. The ego is function or effect of a subject which is always dispersed, never identical with itself, strung out along the chains of the discourses which constitute it. There is a radical split between these two levels of being — a gap most dramatically exemplified by the act of referring to myself in a sentence. When I say ‘Tomorrow I will mow the lawn,’ the ‘I’ which I pronounce is an immediately intelligible, fairly stable point of reference which belies the murky depths of the ‘I’ which does the pronouncing. The former ‘I’ is known to linguistic theory as the ‘subject of the enunciation’, the topic designated by my sentence; the latter ‘I’, the one who speaks the sentence, is the ‘subject of the enunciating’, the subject of the actual act of speaking. In the process of speaking and writing, these two ‘I’s’ seem to achieve a rough sort of unity; but this unity is of an imaginary kind. The ‘subject of the enunciating’, the actual speaking, writing human person, can never represent himself or herself fully in what is said: there is no sign which will, so to speak, sum up my entire being. I can only designate myself in language by a convenient pronoun. The pronoun ‘I’ stands in for the ever-elusive subject, which will always slip through the nets of any particular piece of language; and this is equivalent to saying that I cannot ‘mean’ and ‘be’ simultaneously. To make this point, Lacan boldly rewrites Descartes’s ‘I think, therefore I am’ as: ‘I am not where I think, and I think where I am not.”

LanguageConsciousnessIdentityEgoMeaningUnconsciousPsychoanalysisSubjectivityLacanDescartesCogito
Book:Literary Theory: An Introduction
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“La lectura de todos los buenos libros es como una conversación con los mejores ingenios de los pasados siglos que los han compuesto, y hasta una conversación estudiada en la que no nos descubren sino lo más selecto de sus pensamientos. [...] Es casi lo mismo conversar con gentes de otros siglos que viajar. Pero el que emplea demasiado tiempo en viajar acaba por tornarse extranjero en su propio país; y al que estudia con demasiada curiosidad lo que se hacía en los siglos pretéritos ocúrrele de ordinario que permanece ignorante de lo que se practica en el presente”

LibrosLecturaDescartesViajarPasadosConversarSiglos
Book:Discourse on Method
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“Questions and debates related to the distinction between primary and secondary qualities, starting with Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Boyle, and culminating with Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, although we can go back to Democritus and his conventions, arise not only from these qualities per se but also from the lack of clear and precise definitions of these terms, including the terms “sensibles” (“sensible qualities”) and “proper and common sensibles.” For the philosophers of old, since Aristotle, proper sensibles were the same as secondary qualities for the philosophers since Locke. Common sensibles would be primary qualities based on Locke’s classification. The main distinction shall be sought between the essence of the Being as a singularity, in its ultimate mode, and its manifestation, appearance, in and through plurality. We can further postulate that there is a distinction between the essence of singularity and its appearance or manifestation in (through) plurality. The next question is whether Plurality saves the essence of singularity. Although singularity is saved even in plurality, this essence hides beyond appearance, and the senses cannot experience it. The senses experience only the appearance of plurality, not its essence as a singularity.”

Dejan StojanovicAbsoluteNewtonBerkeleyHumeDescartesGalileoJohn LockeBoyle
Book:ABSOLUTE
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“Descartes, reasoning unconsciously according to the prejudices of the old metaphysics, and seeking an unshakable foundation for philosophy, an aliquid inconcussum, as it was said, imagined that he had found it in the self, and posited this principle: I think, therefore I am; Cogito, ergo sum. Descartes did not realize that his base, supposedly immobile, was mobility itself. Cogito, I think—these words express movement; and the conclusion, according to the original sense of the verb to be, sum, ειναι, ou חיח, (haïah), is still movement. He should have said: Moveor, ergo fio, I move, therefore I become!”

DescartesProcess PhilosophyCogito
Book:The Philosophy of Progress
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“With the growth of civilisation in Europe, and with the revival of letters and of science in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the ethical and intellectual criticism of theology once more recommenced, and arrived at a temporary resting-place in the confessions of the various reformed Protestant sects in the sixteenth century; almost all of which, as soon as they were strong enough, began to persecute those who carried criticism beyond their own limit. But the movement was not arrested by these ecclesiastical barriers, as their constructors fondly imagined it would be; it was continued, tacitly or openly, by Galileo, by Hobbes, by Descartes, and especially by Spinoza, in the seventeenth century; by the English Freethinkers, by Rousseau, by the French Encyclopaedists, and by the German Rationalists, among whom Lessing stands out a head and shoulders taller than the rest, throughout the eighteenth century; by the historians, the philologers, the Biblical critics, the geologists, and the biologists in the nineteenth century, until it is obvious to all who can see that the moral sense and the really scientific method of seeking for truth are once more predominating over false science. Once more ethics and theology are parting company.”

ScienceCivilizationEuropeCriticismPersecutionScience And ReligionScience Vs ReligionHobbesSpinozaDescartesRousseauGalileoProtestantGalileo GalileiBaruch SpinozaDiderotGeologistsRene DescartesRené DescartesThomas HobbesBaron D HolbachD HolbachDenis DiderotJean MeslierLessingPaul Henri D HolbachGotthold Ephraim LessingGotthold LessingJean Jacque RousseauMeslier
Book:The Evolution Of Theology: An Anthropological Study
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“Die Qualitäten des Geistes, der hierarchisch aufgewertet und mit Maskulinität assoziiert wurde, wurden als die menschlichen definiert. Dahingegen bleibt die feminine Na-tur das Andere. Beispielsweise wird die Beschäftigung mit der eigenen Spiritualität als feminin devaluiert und aus den politischen Entscheidungsräumen ausgeschlossen”

DescartesGeistKörperGesellschaftskritikFemininPatriarchieDevaluiertEntscheidungsraumMaskulin
Book:Radikal verbunden: Über traumatisierende Herrschaft und den spirituellen Aktivismus als Brücke zwischen sozio-politischem Aufdecken und mitfühlender Bezogenheit
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“The great rationalist Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” The religious mystic the Buddha said, “I think, therefore I am not.” Why is the Buddha much more popular than Descartes? Because the average person barely thinks at all.”

PhilosophyMeditationBuddhismMindfulnessRationalismDescartesAnti IntellectualismMindlessnessI ThinkTherefore I Am
Book:The Sheldrake Shift: A Critical Evaluation of Morphic Resonance
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“P 2 pp. 81–86 Troisième rêve de Descartes Un livre sur la table Un moment après il eut un troisième songe, qui n’eut rien de terrible comme les deux premiers. Dans ce dernier il trouva un livre sur sa table, sans savoir qui l’y avait mis. Il l’ouvrit, et voyant que c’était un Dictionnaire, il en fut ravi dans l’espérance qu’il pourrait lui être fort utile. Dans le même instant, il se rencontra un autre livre sous sa main, qui ne lui était pas moins nouveau, ne sachant d’où il lui était venu. Il trouva que c’était un recueil des poésies de différents auteurs, intitulé Corpus Poetarum, etc. Il eut la curiosité d’y vouloir lire quelque chose : et à l’ouverture du livre il tomba sur le vers «Quod vitae sectabor iter ? » [«Quel chemin suivrai-je dans la vie» ?] Au même moment il aperçut un homme qu’il ne connaissait pas, mais qui lui présenta une pièce de vers, commençant par «Est et Non» (1), et qui la lui vantoit comme une pièce excellente. M. Descartes lui dit qu’il savait ce que c’était, et que cette pièce était parmi les «Idylles» d’Ausone qui se trouvait dans le gros Recueil des Poètes qui était sur sa table(2). Il voulut la montrer lui-même à cet homme et il se mit à feuilleter le livre dont il se vantait de connaître parfaitement l’ordre et l’économie. Pendant qu’il cherchait l’endroit, l’homme lui demanda où il avait pris ce livre, et M. Descartes lui répondit qu’il ne pouvait lui dire comment il l’avait eu, mais qu’un moment auparavant il en avait manié encore un autre qui venait de disparaître, sans savoir qui le lui avait apporté, ni qui le lui avait repris. Il n’avait pas achevé, qu’il revit paraître le livre à l’autre bout de la table. Mais il trouva que ce Dictionnaire n’était plus entier comme il l’avait vu la première fois(3). Cependant il en vint aux poésies d’Ausone dans le recueil des poètes qu’il feuilletait et ne pouvant trouver la pièce qui commence par «Est et non», il dit à cet homme qu’il en connaissait une du même poète encore plus belle que celle-là, et qu’elle commençait par «Quod vitae sectabor iter ? » La personne le pria de la lui montrer, et M. Descartes se mettait en devoir de la chercher, lorsqu’il tomba sur divers petits portraits gravés en taille douce : ce qui lui fit dire que ce livre était fort beau, mais qu’il n’était pas de la même impression que celui qu’il connaissait. Il en était là, lorsque les livres et l’homme disparurent, et s’effacèrent de son imagination, sans néanmoins le réveiller. [...] [...] [...] Ce dernier songe qui n’avait eu rien que de fort doux et de fort agréable, marquait l’avenir selon lui et il n’était que pour ce qui devait lui arriver dans le reste de sa vie. Mais il prit les deux précédents pour des avertissements menaçants touchant sa vie passée, qui pouvait n’avoir pas été aussi innocente devant Dieu que devant les hommes. Et il crut que c’était la raison de la terreur et de l’effroi dont ces deux songes étaient accompagnés. Le melon dont on voulait lui faire présent dans le premier songe, signifiait, disait-il, les charmes de la solitude, mais présentés par des sollicitations purement humaines. Le vent qui le poussoit vers l’église du collège, lorsqu’il avait mal au côté droit, n’était autre chose que le mauvais génie qui tâchait de le jeter par force dans un lieu où son dessein était d’aller volontairement. C’est pourquoi Dieu ne permit pas qu’il avançât plus loin, et qu’il se laissât emporter même en un lieu saint par un esprit qu’il n’avoit pas envoyé quoiqu’il fût très persuadé que ç’eût été l’esprit de Dieu qui lui avait fait faire les prémières démarches vers cette église. L’épouvante dont il fut frappé dans le second songe, marquait, à son sens, sa syndérêse, c’est-à-dire, les remords de sa conscience touchant les péchés qu’il pouvait avoir commis pendant le cours de sa vie jusqu’alors. La foudre dont il entendit l’éclat, était le signal de l’esprit de vérité qui descendait sur lui pour le posséder.”

DreamsDescartes
Book:La Vie de M. Descartes
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“We have to ensure we understand what existence is and what an I is in the context of an accepted consensus about these terms and definitions. Our reasoning and arguments may be correct if we know more deeply what existence or an I is. The most important thing is to go beyond words or literal expressions to catch the real intentions of philosophers and thinkers rather than to catch potential linguistic errors. We may temporarily win arguments and make personal gains if we only pursue linguistic errors. Still, we would produce confusion and lead the sincere search for scientific or philosophical discoveries astray.”

PhilosophyRealityLanguageIllusionDejan StojanovicAbsoluteDescartes
Book:ABSOLUTE
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“What is existence? Existence is any state of the Being. Matter as it is, unaware of itself, exists regardless of “not” knowing that it exists. Still, as a part of a larger whole, any particle of matter contains information that serves that particle's specific purpose and the whole's purpose. Only nothing is not existence. But, without Nothing, existence would not be possible, so the Nothing is an essential part of existence. Still, we may say that only existing with some awareness is worth living.”

ThinkingRealityIllusionDejan StojanovicExistingDescartesCogito Ergo Sum
Book:ABSOLUTE
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“We believe that Descartes was more interested in proving existence per se than his existence based on his identity or thought of his identity. He was interested in existence and thought per se, and an I is an accidental consequence of something that exists. I could be anything and could be an illusion. That is not the point. The point is that this I, regardless of how delusional or even if it were an illusion, is still something that can think He thinks, proving that “He” is, regardless of whether he is an illusion. Even an illusion is an existence. To be an illusion is to be, too.”

ThinkingRealityIllusionDejan StojanovicDescartesCogito Ergo Sum
Book:ABSOLUTE
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“We cannot be sure we know what reality is. We must find out what reality is. The majority of what we see is an illusion. The foundation of reality is our illusions about it, regardless of how paradoxical this sounds. Reality is an illusion, which does not make it any less real or valuable. In this reality, there is no Cartesian dualism since the underlying reality of everything is a Universal Mind. Matter is just a construct of the Universal Mind and is a valuable illusion; it is more useful and realistic if we know this.”

RealityDejan StojanovicAbsoluteDescartesIllusionist
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“For existence, it is not necessary that something must be “real” in our sense of the word but that it exists. Anything that exists, be it an “illusion,” is existence. Anything that can think about this existence, and this “reality” or “illusion,” can identify with it, which confirms its existence regardless of how distorted it is—the existence itself, the thinking, and then I thinking the thinking. That “I,” whatever it may be, which is doing the thinking, even if it is “not” Descartes, exists. That is the whole point. It does not matter who is doing the thinking. What matters is that the being capable of recognizing this thinking, irrespective of who is doing the thinking, confirms its “own” (whatever it may be) existence; otherwise, it would not be able to be wrong, deceived, or anything else. All that thinks or believes it thinks exists. I think I am an I and exist even if I am not an I. Existence is independent of personality. Not everything that exists thinks. Nonthinking does not necessarily equate to nonexisting. But all that exists is powered by the Universal Mind. We can solve this problem by identifying thought with existence based on our idea that everything is a “thought” (information) and part of the Universal Mind. Even if my thought, strictly speaking, is not mine—if “I” am the thought or information, “I” at least exists as a thought or information (regardless of who or what an I is). But what about thinking and unthinking thoughts? If my assertion that there is no fundamental dualism between mind and body (matter) is correct and if matter is only a manifestation (as it appears to the senses) of the Universal Mind, then the question is how this mind produces (or can have) unthinking thoughts. If the world is a product of a Mind, then its sole nature and purpose must contain the idea of possibility through development and evolution. The material world is only possible through variety in total diversity, universality, and infinity (as a potential). This variety implies order, and this order means hierarchy.”

ThinkingRealityIllusionDejan StojanovicAbsoluteDescartesCogito Ergo Sum
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“The main conclusion is that the self in the cogito ergo sum argument is less important than it may look like at first sight. We cannot be sure about the whole concept of reality, not to mention the self. If the entire reality we experience, including energy and mass, is the “program” of the Universal Mind, what can we say about the individual self? The whole purpose of “reality in plurality” is existence, and the “self” (or an idea of self and ego) is the result of existence and not of the self itself. When doubting the self, Descartes' emphasis, although he used the word I, was not literally on the self but on that which thinks, whomever or whatever, at any moment; otherwise, there would be no thinking in the first place. It may only be thinking that thinks. The doubt was not if his self or ego, or his idea about them, was real or imaginary but on thinking as such, irrespective of personality. The individual self can in no way predate existence, regardless of what that existence is. Existence presupposes the self and thinking—be it illusory or not.”

RealityIllusionDejan StojanovicAbsoluteDescartes
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“The Lorentz transformations, when properly understood, are revealing a mathematical relation between mind and matter. Descartes argued that mind is unextended and matter extended, yet can interact with each other. The Lorentz transformations show how this actually works. Light is unextended, and matter is extended, yet matter is wholly defined relative to light, and cannot exist without light. Because light is absolute, it is eternal and necessary. Because matter is relative, it is temporal and contingent. It’s all in the math. The Lorentz transformations mathematically prove that idealism is true and materialism false. Idealism is absolute, and materialism relative (dependent, derived, created, caused)”

MindMatterLightMaterialismIdealismDescartesLorentz Transformations
Book:The Language of Reality: The Answer to Existence
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