Emanuele Ermini

Emanuele Ermini

In his three meditations Descartes seeks to destroy all of his preconceived notions and build back only the things that he can prove for certain. Within his second meditation, Descartes begins discussing how consciousness is the result of different components, specifically the senses and the mind. Descartes establishes this in his second meditation and demonstrates how the senses are fallible and vulnerable to defiance, and the scrutiny of the mind has to make up for this fallibility. 

Within the second meditation Descartes discusses his perception of the piece of wax “I can grasp that the wax is capable of countless changes of this kind, yet I am unable to run through this immeasurable number in my imagination…” (Descartes 21) From this reasoning Descartes concludes that the nature of the piece of wax as being “flexible and changeable” is not revealed by his imagination, even though he is able to grasp the concepts of an infinitely changeable object his imagination could not have created it. This seems to lead to the conclusion that consciousness and the form of physical materials in your surroundings are not a product of one’s imagination, since they can take far more forms than any singular person’s imagination could possibly fully encompass. 

Earlier in this passage Descartes comments on the role that the senses play when it comes to conceiving of the wax, “So what was it in the wax that I understood with such distinctiveness? Evidently none of the features which I arrived at by means of senses; for whatever came under sight, smell, sight, touch or hearing has now altered – yet the wax remains.” (Descartes 20). Despite the physical characteristics of the wax being completely altered, the wax still remains, here Descartes discounts the importance of the senses as tools to analyze our environment; and describes the wax as simply a product of mental scrutiny and not of the senses or of his own imagination. 

Descartes provides the example “I normally say that I see the men themselves, just as I say that I see the wax. Yet do I see any more than hats and coats which could conceal automatons? I judge that they are men.” (Descartes 21). Here Descartes explains that while we assume that the perception of what we see comes from what we see, it is actually perceived by the mind. However regardless of this conception is created Descartes must use the senses in order to be aware of what he is seeing, because if he were deprived of the senses how would he even be able to determine or be aware that there are others present around him. This raises the question about the true role that the senses play, because as much as Descartes tries to disregard all that could possibly be corrupted, he can’t completely rid himself of the need to examine the world through the senses. So if Descartes wishes to assume that anything could be subject to defiance, how can he even ensure that he is seeing anything at all?

This subsequently concludes that in order to constitute our consciousness our mind has to make up for the flawed perception of our senses. This seems to lead to the implication that consciousness is not a solitary thing, but rather it is made up of many disparate parts, such as the senses and the mind, separate from imagination. Working from the assumption that consciousness is made up of many different parts, the possibility that consciousness is an illusion seems to become a real possibility, since it is formed by intangible things which seem to be entirely unreliable and vulnerable to deception. This serves to shake one’s trust in their senses and it is a challenge to the lazy thinking of people who simply accept their consciousness and state of the world because of their senses.

We are now going to move into the revision of my initial understanding of Descartes’ meditations. Of particular importance is the change of my understanding of Descartes’s use of the senses. In the earlier build I nearly completely discounted the senses as having any importance to Descartes or to his writings. However after discussions and a closer reading of the meditation I changed my mind, and believe that while Descartes attempts to discount the sensory information that he receives from the senses he believes that they are necessary as a source of analysis. 

My understanding of Descartes’ meditations has definitely changed and grown as I’ve spent more time with the text. Especially changed, is the understanding that I have on how Descartes delineated between the role that the senses and internal processing, or mental conception, have in how we perceive our reality. In light of this expansion of my understanding of the reading I think that the quality of consciousness which one might find the best defense for in the meditations is reflexivity, the quality of consciousness which renders one aware of being aware of something. 

The awareness one gains from reflexivity is different from the traditional awareness of one’s environment. The awareness and understanding of our surroundings falls outside the purview of reflexivity, which is purely a personal awareness that we are aware of something. This is one of the cornerstones of Descartes’ understanding of consciousness – The only thing that we can truly be aware of is that we are something that thinks and exists in some form. Descartes’ belief that because he thinks, he exists withstands even his most powerful method of doubt. “In that case I too undoubtedly exist… If he is deceiving me… he will never bring it about that I am nothing as long as I believe I am something.” (Descartes 17). Here Descartes is describing his most extreme thought experiment, the evil demon that is continuously deceiving him in order to doubt even mathematical truths. Even in the case of the existence of this demon one can be certain of their existence, because if there is a deceiving demon, something must exist to be deceived. 

Descartes’ beliefs could be described as being completely unconcerned with the importance of environmental awareness; meaning that he does not deem the awareness of the environment around us or sensory experiences to be important aspects of consciousness. “Nutrition or movement? Since now I do not have a body these are mere fabrications… when asleep I have appeared to perceive through the senses many things which afterwards I realized I did not perceive through the senses at all.” (Descartes 18). Here Descartes establishes his distrust for the senses and how easily his senses can provide false perceptions. This leads to the conclusion that the only thing that is truly inseparable from him is thinking, and from that Descartes can conclude that he knows for certain that he is a thing that thinks. As stated anything outside of this is, as of yet, completely unverifiable. By using this reasoning one can logically conclude that if one thinks then one exists, however this logic provides absolutely no insight on the nature of anything else. This is one of the forms of reflexivity that is presented and defended in the meditations, the awareness that we are aware. The simplest and only form of consciousness that Descartes can arrive to with complete certainty is entirely in the purview of reflexivity. 

Descartes further establishes how the senses are actually a very unimportant part of consciousness. He does this through his exploration of the nature of the piece of wax. “What was it in the wax that I understood with such distinctiveness? Evidently none of the features which I arrived at by means of the senses; for whatever came under taste, smell, sight, touch, or hearing is now altered – Yet the wax remains.” (Descartes 20). The exploration of the wax is incredibly important to understanding Descartes view on the role that senses play. The information that Descartes gathers about the wax from the senses can change. The awareness of the physical features of the wax do not tell Descartes what the wax is, the understanding of the wax comes from his mind. This process of internal conceptualization and understanding is also how Maeve gains consciousness in Westworld. While Maeve’s past sensory experiences definitely play an important role in her journey, they are more a link to her past consciousness or memory rather than how she actually achieves consciousness. In my opinion Maeve achieves consciousness when Felix shows her that everything she was saying was predetermined by her code. This awareness of lacking free will gives Maeve a deeper understanding of the true nature of her existence and the world which she inhabits. 

This internal conflict demonstrates the core of reflexivity, the quality of consciousness which is separate from the awareness of our environment, but rather concerns the internal awareness that we are aware of something. After all, Maeve and the other hosts are often taken to the lab facilities outside of the main area of the park, but they remain inhibited by their code. Maeve is able to achieve consciousness when she is internally aware of what this strange environment represents — the fictitiousness of everything she’s ever experienced — and not of the environment itself. This is one of Descartes’ principal beliefs, that we do not derive consciousness from our sensory experiences, which are easily deceived, but rather by the internal process of thinking, and being aware that we are aware. If we take the concrete example of Lucid dreams, an example that demonstrates what happens what a human experiences without reflexivity. Lucid dreams routinely fool the senses and the dreamer, because often the dreamer is not aware that they are dreaming, and while they are dreaming all that they are aware of is what their senses are showing them. The critical missing piece is the higher awareness endowed by reflexivity, and when it is regained the dreamer stops dreaming and regains consciousness. 

Absent reflexivity there is uncertainty, and to Descartes the logical grounds for the existence of anything outside of one’s own limited awareness are unsure. Descartes finds it difficult to shed the doubt that he could be a bodiless entity that thinks and nothing more, “Can I now assert that I possess even the most insignificant of all the attributes which I have just said belong to the nature of the body? I scrutinize them… but nothing suggests itself.” (Descartes 18). So even if we cannot ascertain that we possess the attributes of the nature of a body we still exist; meaning that our existence and awareness or consciousness, at least to Descartes, comes from internal processes, such as thinking and being aware that we exist, and if one were to cease to think then they would cease to exist. 

After building an argument for a quality of consciousness the next build focused on making a counter argument to respond to our claim. The main issue that I focused on is that reflexivity leaves a lot of gaps in our understanding of consciousness, and I used Hegel and Scarry in order to point out these limitations and offer a more comprehensive understanding of consciousness. 

My principal claim in the previous build was that reflexivity is the keystone quality of consciousness, that the ability to have a higher degree of awareness was the factor which rendered humans unique and distinct from other living beings. Overall my line of reasoning discounted the awareness of the environment that one gains from the senses, as well as the corporeal features of humans as important to one’s consciousness. This reasoning however characterizes consciousness solely as a personal, isolated, and momentary state of being, since it lacks any point of reference, interaction with other conscious beings, and continuity through time. While reflexivity is definitely a crucial part of consciousness, it seems unlikely that it can be the only part of such a complicated concept. 

When reading Hegel and Scarry for example, it becomes fairly simple to challenge my initial claim of reflexivity being the determinant of unique human consciousness. Initially I was surprised by how similar some of Hegel’s writing was to Descartes. For example “As self-consciousness, it is movement, but since what self-consciousness distinguishes from itself is only itself… self-consciousness is simply the motionless tautology of “I am I.” (Hegel 2). Obviously this is quite reminiscent of Descartes’ conclusion of “I think therefore I am,” in which the essence of consciousness comes down to an internal awareness of being aware, seemingly indicating additional support for reflexivity. But of course, no two ideas can be similar without being somehow different, and Hegel’s internal processes to reach consciousness are far different from Descartes’. Since Descartes believes that consciousness is a byproduct of a higher echelon of awareness and thinking. This does not account for consciousness over periods of time which extend further than the immediate moment. However Hegel’s internal processes present a continuous internal struggle in which aspects of consciousness fight to supersede the other. 

The experiential growth and progression lend themselves to better conceptualize consciousness as an ongoing state of being rather than simply being a momentary byproduct of higher awareness. Another important part of my claim I made in the last build was that sensory experiences do not really play a part in our consciousness. However this claim can be contested in several ways. One of which comes from Descartes himself. While Descartes wants to disregard his sensory experiences in his exploration of his own consciousness he later recognizes that it is necessary to use the senses as sources of examination. A particularly important example is his sensory examination of the piece of wax. While Descartes’ overall conclusion is that his conceptualization and understanding of the wax did not come from his senses, he does use them in order to establish sequence over time. Since the qualities of the wax that are perceived by the senses do not change in the immediate but rather through time. As a result, one can argue that his senses, which perceived a change in time, play an important role in constructing his consciousness alongside his internal conceptualization of the wax. This is expanded upon by Scarry, who explains that one gains sentience through the projection of internal pain to objects. “A particular dimension of sentience will, by being projected, undergo an alteration in degree… what is wholly absent in the interior is made present, as conversely, what is wholly present in the interior is made absent.” (Scarry 285). Here Scarry is talking about how objects gain sentience from total objectlessness through the process of being objectified, and the internal pain of humans is made absent by projection onto outside objects. 

This is perhaps an entirely different perspective from Descartes, since Scarry’s view is that consciousness is achieved through an interactive process between humans and their outside world. However, two ideas seldom lack similarities; because as discussed earlier Descartes does have to submit some of his analysis to the senses, which I would argue consequently makes his sensory perception of the wax an important part of his conceptualization and analysis of the nature of the wax. This interaction with one’s environment is a process that is reminiscent of Hegel’s proposition, that something can only be considered and analyzed in relation to something else. In fact Hegel argues that something can achieve self-consciousness only insofar as it recognizes another self-consciousness. Where Hegel’s view diverges significantly from Scarry’s view is that while there needs to be interaction between consciousness for self-consciousness to exist at all Hegel does not state that this interaction needs to occur between a human and their environment. Rather Hegel’s description of the process of consciousnesses struggling to supersede seems to be entirely an internal process, but it is not quite as isolated as Descartes’ internal processes. Hegel writes “It must supersede this otherness of itself… First, it must proceed to supersede the other independent being in order thereby to become certain of itself as the essential being; secondly, in so doing it proceeds to supersede its own self, for this other is itself.” (Hegel 3). From this, one can gather that the process through which consciousness arises is an ongoing one, in which one’s consciousness must become an essential being by superseding external independent objects.

 In a preliminary reading I thought that Hegel’s internal processes functioned in a comparable way to those of Descartes, where consciousness emerged as a byproduct of their internal processes, however it now seems to me that this is not the case. In subsequent paragraphs Hegel writes “Now, this movement of self-consciousness in relation to another self-consciousness has in this way been represented as the action of one self-consciousness…. Each sees the Other do the same as it does; each does itself what it demands of the other, and therefore also does what it does only insofar as the other does the same… Each is for the other the middle term, through which each mediates itself with itself and unites with itself.” (Hegel 3). Here Hegel seems to be representing the process of two self-consciousness mirroring and superseding each other as a continuous cyclical and infinitely repeating process. This seems to suggest that once a self consciousness supersedes the external independent object it then becomes the external independent object to another consciousness which then mirrors the previous behavior and itself supersedes the object. This cycle seems to not have an end, therefore consciousness cannot be a byproduct of this process since this process does not have an end. Therefore it seems that to Hegel, consciousness is created by the continuation of the process of consciousness superseding what they perceive to be an object that is separate from itself. In my opinion reflexivity remains an integral part of consciousness, however reading from Scarry and Hegel has helped me develop my understanding of consciousness greatly. 

While Descartes’ can explain momentary consciousness through higher thought processes and awareness, his thinking does not do enough to establish and explain for the continuous existence of consciousness. Scarry’s and Hegel’s writings do a lot to fill in the gaps. Scarry gives sensory experiences a more important role to consciousness than Descartes does, this helps establish a continuity of consciousness, since the process of projecting and magnifying consciousness to objects in our environment is an ongoing one. Consequently this ongoing process creates empathy and consciousness as ongoing states of being. Similarly to this, Hegel’s explanation of how self-consciousnesses exist for themselves and supersede external objects to themselves also accounts for and explains how consciousness exists through time, since the internal processes which he describes as creating consciousness can be described as cyclical and unending. These processes, in my opinion, can coexist with Descrtes’ processes, they simply paint a picture of a much more complex and varied internal process through which we gain consciousness or at least part of it, depending on how multi-faceted one believes self-consciousness to be.

Descartes’ Meditations certainly leave a lot of uncertainty about the concepts that are discussed and analyzed. But however many of the ideas posited seem to deepen the understanding of these uncertainties, this seems to imply the serial functioning of consciousness. Because consciousness functions serially it seems ill-fitted to properly follow the parallel processing that our brain performs. This seems like it would leave room for deceit or misconceptions to skew our view and perception of objective reality as Descartes posits. It also seems to imply that we can only be certain about narrow and simple truths, like the fact that we exist, since our consciousness cannot grasp everything that our brain undergoes and processes.