Rene Descartes Meditations On First Philosophy

Since the dawn of mankind, the concepts of personal identity and the nature of consciousness have mystified us. We have gazed up to cosmos in search of answers for millennia, constantly eluded by the dazzling complexity of our senses, memories, emotions, passions, and intellect. As a result of our ever-present wonder, philosophers have theorized over the course of many centuries about the nature of the human experience – during the 17th century, the Age of Reason brought about Rene Descartes’ concepts of innate knowledge, mind/body dualism, and theories of consciousness as a byproduct of the mind. These ideas transformed the face of philosophy and solidified Descartes as the venerable “Father of Philosophy” until John Locke’s progressive concepts
In his work, Meditations on First Philosophy, he explores the concept of doubt, and within this exploration, discoveries what he believes to be the nature of human consciousness, the soul, and personal identity. Descartes theorized that consciousness itself proves that we are real – he asserts that, should you reflect on and doubt your existence, you must actually exist in the first place in order to do so. This, to Descartes, encapsulates the concept of Cogito ergo sum, or “I think, therefore I am.” However, consciousness is a byproduct created in response to something beyond the mind – it does not exist without external stimuli giving it purpose, according to the French philosopher. Similarly, Descartes goes on to state that the role of consciousness is purely perfunctory, in that it provides certain inarguable truths to the mind, which he defined as “innate ideas.” Among these ideas were the concepts of the existence of self, or “Cogito ergo sum,” the existence of God, and statements such as, “nothing comes out
Locke indicates that all of the ideas of the mind are a result of the actions and perceptions of the body in the material world. Due to the heavy emphasis on empiricism in his work, the British philosopher differs from Descartes in that he rejects the concept of innate ideas, claiming that the mind contains no inborn or private truths. The mind, according to Locke, receives the world as a tabula rasa, or blank slate, and garners knowledge and belief systems based on sensory data. In An Essay, he explains the blank slate of the mind as “white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas: — How comes it to be furnished?... To this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE. In that all our knowledge is founded; and from that it ultimately derives itself”