descartes' folly

I would hate to be the one to tell him, but descartes was wrong when he inferred his own existence. To bring everyone up to speed, Rene Deacartes famously and systematically doubted all there was until he got to one little nugget of certainty" "I think, therefore I am." He reasoned that even if all was illusion and he was being deceivded, he could still be certain that he existed as the observer of such deception.

I think, in the end we might even give up this monolithic, individual observer. Sure, other people seem like individuals, and it is practical to treat them as such, but looking within shows that it's not so easy. I used to smoke cigarretes and I wanted to quit. When it was time to buy more cigarettes I wanted to smoke. How could one person hold contradictory desires? Well, there are multiple voices withing my self. I don't mean like multiple personalities, but competing voices within a more or less healthy and more or less integrated self.

We could say I(a) want to quit smoking but I(b) don't. In this case (b) won out for a long time and (a) won out in the end. It is worth noting that the philosophy of "Do what thou wilt" doesn't really settle anything. What's implied is do what thou wilt at this moment, a sort of impulsiveness, which is impractical. I may want to kill someone for a second but I won't because I live in a larger temporal context.

That brings up another context of multiple selves: that of past, present and future selves. My past self got this silly tattoo and my present self must deal with it. Well I remember putting that tattoo in and it was my present self (at the time) saying, "I will mark you so that you will always remember where you were at this point in life" because it is unbearable to think that those things I currently hold dear will be discarded and disowned, not by some enemy, but by my own self.