What Descartes Didn't Know

Imagine you have schizophrenia and you are in crisis. There’s a helicopter flying above you, and you believe that, but what you wonder is whether it’s The United States Military coming for you.

You are paranoid.

Paranoia makes you incredibly fearful—for your health, your family, and your life.

You call your best friend with your cell phone, which your counselor said to keep on you as “a lifeline.”

You are panicking.

Your friend tells you he is sure it’s not the military out to get you.

“I can’t believe you, either. I wish there was a God so I could know what’s true!”

What are you looking for here? A firm, solid, indubitable foundation to ground your beliefs. To ground, even, all of reality for you.

That was the project of French philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650). His famous Cogito Ergo Sum (I think, therefore I am) in his Meditations on First Philosophy proposed to ground all knowledge on the indubitable belief in, first of all, the inability to doubt that you exist, and then that God exists and God would not allow you to be deceived by an evil demon--or a nefarious philosopher!

Descartes’ rationalism—dividing the foundation for all knowledge into the undeniability that The Self exists--laid the foundation for modern science.

That is important.

These days, we know more about the world than ever before.

But could we know more? And could knowing more be linked with doubting more? Is there any more to doubt after Descartes?

Obviously to many readers, there is more to doubt today. A large percentage—and growing—of people are atheists in the year 2026 on Planet Earth.

That’s one problem for Descartes.

But there’s another problem, too, that most people don’t recognize immediately: One can doubt oneself exists. To see this, let’s go back to you and your schizophrenia.

Imagine you are in crisis again and it’s really bad. You—you?--begin to wonder whether thoughts are being inserted into your mind, whether someone is making you into a Frankenstein-ish Artificial Intelligence with artificial thoughts, and your core self breaks down and shatters.

You are catatonic: you cannot talk, eat, drink, or use the bathroom on your own.

With the help of psychiatrists—Doctors of the Soul—you reintegrate.

Afterwards, you pause and reflect on what happened to you.

God, if that evil dude exists, would allow you to exist unhealthily! You could be deceived by an evil demon!—or a nefarious philosopher!

This is what Rene Descartes didn’t know.

We know some of this, now, because of him, however. Advancements in medicine, owing to scientific research, have enabled us to understand a lot of this.

Many philosophers these days have dived right in to empiricism, jumping right over the skeptical hypothesis altogether, and have hated Descartes and all he stood for.

Let’s not hate Descartes, then, for he laid the foundation—no pun intended—for this very musing. We know more—much more than he did—because of him.