The Humane Insistence on Rationality
The other day I stumbled upon a research paper about René Descartes’ theories on the mind-body union.
[The paper is titled “Mind-Body Union and the Limits of Cartesian Metaphysics” by Philosophy Professor Dr. Alison Simmons, link: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.3521354.0017.014]
As I read page after page, assessing argument after argument and jotting down question after question, I hit a sort of an existential speed bump.
What’s even the point in seeking absolute reason in everything if to be human is to be empirically flawed?
Of course I acknowledge my limitations in reasoning and understanding myself as I am not too sure I fully grasped every notion presented to me in regards to Descartes’ rationality, or even rationality in its whole, I suppose. Every fact or an idea that has been proven nor recorded had started as a theory, and has not since been disproved, hence its current status as truth. Due to this line of reasoning, I have perceived the world through a completely relative lens. Math is math and science is science, all “fact” “objective”, relative to our understanding of it. 1+1 must equal 2 until one day, it might not. And until then, it must stay the same, in every case, universally. 1+1 is incontestably, undeniably 2. It is true. It must be. But how, as emotional, fragile, and sensitive creatures, can we humans even have the authority to determine such a thing?
Perhaps my thought train is trailing off to an excessively abstract territory. Let me attempt to break it down: As Descartes has stated: humans are both thinking and feeling creatures. We have the capacity to be intellectual (however one may choose to define that, as after all, that too is relative) but fundamentally, we have impediments that prevent us from existing as “perfect beings”. Like angels or robots, who are exempt from illogical impulses. We are affected by pain, suffering, love, and the human condition. Which, sure, can be explained through intellectual things like psychology and anthropology. However, certain things do not have answers, as ultimately no individual can ever fully understand a single human being, just their behavior. Therefore, our reasoning (as a species collective) can be, and is flawed in infinite miniscule ways. This is most obviously presented in our inability to solve certain issues, such as the determination of the existence of an absolute authority or a fully functional government system. If, to be fair, any of these things are even possible to begin with (Just because a consensus cannot be reached does not mean an answer does not exist; maybe us humans are just incompetent when it regards these puzzles).
To redeem the human species slightly, our ability to be creative and be cognitive is nothing short of incredible. At least, in my opinion. The idea that we have evolved from consuming raw meat for survival to inventing new strands of theoretical calculus is something a mere caterpillar could only dream of. But sometimes we fail to account for blips in our reasoning, “glitches in the matrix”. How is it enough to “just leave certain things in the unknown”, aside from the fact that some things may never be determinable? Why do we feel such a need to validate everything in the first place? Was math and string theory ever all that necessary anyway? Why can’t we just reproduce and die like literally every other animal on this planet?
I am totally deviating from my original point here but humans are highly delicate. We cannot fathom the idea that we exist at random, that bad deeds may (or may not) go unpunished. We create (or discover, depending on who you ask) math to create (or discover) engines and rockets and satellites because we are somewhat desperate, desperate for a purpose and desperate for answers. We cannot cope with our loneliness, our irrationality, our lack of complacency. One could argue that ultimate “earthly” rationality is natural law, and wild animals seem perfectly fine not evolving to the point of suicide and invention. They eat, drink, poop, kill, and die, while we are out here spinning in circles and creating ideas of a life past death. Existential much? We must seem crazy to the aforementioned caterpillar. Why do we complicate our lives so much? One must imagine Sisyphus happy. Maybe it is for the better. Who knows if the caterpillar is really all that much happier than we are anyway.
Ultimately, I say all this is not really all that important if you don’t want it to be. Animals probably don’t believe in math the same way they don’t believe in Catholicism. Or they might, I wouldn’t know. And yet they exist. They exist the same way we exist: conscious and alive and mortal. So don’t be too bothered if you aren’t “objectively” (or relatively) right all the time. Sometimes that happens to scientists too. Scientific fact is only a fact until proven otherwise, and it can always be proven otherwise. Until then, I deem it important to remain philosophical.
- A philosopher
