Premise 2: In order that one may think, one must exist as a thinking thing
If I am a consciousness, the only capacity by which I may distinguish being such is to think, and to be hyper sensitively aware that I am within the act of thinking. As Descartes utters, “I think, therefore I am” but this sentiment goes only so far. In an existence of absolute nothingness the distinction arises that if I’m capable of thought there is an implicit existence taking place. The edifice holds only if thought provokes a notion of existence, if with compliance and consent, we embrace the notion. But ought we to hold so willingly to this conception? Is it sound to assert such legitimacies? I can’t say with certainty.
If I think, it does little to create the mountain of gold Hume disenchants, or the god Pascal is so prudent to adore. If I think it does even so little as to merit that I’m thinking. The delusion of the action may well be as deceptive as the delusion that I exist because of it. Were I to exclude every sight I’ve seen, every love I’ve shared, every perception I’ve ever partaken of, every sense, would I still even be capable of thought? It seems the foundation of western philosophy rests squarely on this cartesian principle, it has reached a point of a priori foundation...it infects our ideologies with delight. “I think, therefore I am”, a faulty principle if ever I had lain eyes upon one.
If you strip your entire existence, if you permit no extrinsic deceits how can you rationally assert that one can think? Is it not on these extrinsic sources that one delineates and fabricates? Even if it is in regards to the entity that the thought derives from that is, even if I think about myself it is from an external perception of the self. What if I think about the thoughts I am thinking? That is, what if I think of the capacity to think as a value? Here, and it is crucial that we recognize this, I have presupposed a value incongruent with the equation. It is here that we for some unfathomable reason derive existence? And I worry it is from our instilled value of nothingness. We commonly and unfortunately come to equate nothing with a barren emptiness, and indirectly a meaninglessness that is not at all inherent to the term. Now please do not misinterpret me, I do not intend to advocate anything contrary to nothingness as we see it, only that there is a function to the term. The term though signifying the absolute absence of anything and everything else is designed to signify those very things. Nothing can not simply signify Nothing. It may very well be a dialectical notion I’m discussing here but it shouldn’t warrant a study of Hegel if I convey it effectively.
It is corollary with the age-old dialogues of Plato, in which his mouthpiece Socrates argued the inherent dichotomies found in language. In his instances, the distinctions can be found in as simple a words as ‘tall’ and ‘short’. Without the concept of ‘tall’ nothing is ‘short’, because something can only be tall in relativity to something shorter than it, there is a spatial correlation between two objects that manifests the difference in height. But nothingness is significant, it seems to contradict this very dialogue one may quickly infer that its contrary is somethingness, more plainly, anything in particular. I doubt this is the case only because nothingness signifies an absence of everything conceivable including space both material and abstractly. It may seem difficult to grasp but it doesn’t follow that the contrary to material is the absence of the concept of material, nothingness, again, is absolute. What nothingness negates is not any singular variable but everything immediately!
We find in it, the incapability to be in it or out of it or in any spatial way coherent with it. Every manner of speech easily betrays and refutes this idea, but requisite to the term is an ultimate and absolute nonexistence. Thus the meditations are questionable in any impact they may otherwise serve, they can not grasp at consciousness through nothingness for the consciousness can not adapt or survive in the realm and nonrealm of such a concept. It is anti-spatial and conceptual, it is a territory that is inconceivable even as I now speak of it. I’m with you in my inability to fully comprehend it, it is a reality that is conceptually designed to be misunderstood. The intrigue in the enquiry is the only thing which presses my necessity to think further.
If it instead does follow that because one thinks, one exists as a thinking thing, what then is it when it doesn’t think? If the thinking things only justification for existence is to think, then in the instance it is not thinking does it any longer exist? I’m certain many would argue that a thinking thing could not cease thinking and then by virtue of this loophole the thinking thing would perpetually exist. But if Descartes is capable of thought without the reality that surrounds him, what is it this thoughtful thinking thing thinks about? If it is himself, then we descend into the Minoan Labyrinth, the answers forever evade us. It then is an ontological monopoly, one in which we are indebted to ourselves for existing. Descartes falters upon God to evade such ruin, If I’m uncertain of my own persistence in existence I won’t bother with a deities’... No, if in nothingness all one can think of is themselves, then it can’t be said to be nothingness. I must appeal to my aforementioned notion of nothingness, a reality which is definitively not a reality and thusly one in which the notion of thought is inconceivable as there is no reality in which to think. It can’t be a conceptual reality much less any legitimate reality you or I may perceive.
One can’t conceive of something in nothing, even the idea of the ‘one’ whom is enacting the conceiving. It is like a dank unreality which digests anything within and without it. What Descartes is inadvertently addressing in his search for a rational existence is a manifestation of order which is inherently irrational. It is searching for an order of hierarchical structure in an existence which defies such formulaic ideals. It is a discontent with mediocrity which Descartes searches to reduce but he seeks to destroy it with tools of mediocrity, not in any way his own doing. They are mediocre because they are extracted from the same reality he seeks to change. He is a man seeking a resolution of chaotic uncertainty, it is the nothingness that we are all far more acquainted with. The one of practical benefit because we can act upon it. It is the absence of patterns, something such categorical creatures as ourselves positively loathe. And it is a chaos that we may well be diluted and corrupted in.
Can you say the thoughts you possess are your own? That when you think them, it is you who thinks them? That when you perform an action, it was on the basis of your own intention that you performed it? Lend me your argument and I will lend you your answer, the thinking thing that is derived from nothingness is nothingness. It can’t be anything else. Descartes’ argument dies as quickly as it blossoms because it seeks to create a metaphysical basis for existence in one's capacity to think. I think, therefore I am something, but because I can think, I can think that it is not I whom thinks, because I can think, I can think of nothing except that which I think about. In seeking somethingness I seek nothingness inadvertently.
