Halcyon

\HAL-see-uhn\, noun:
1. A kingfisher.
2. A mythical bird, identified with the kingfisher, that was fabled to nest at sea about the time of the winter solstice and to calm the waves during incubation.

adjective:
1. Calm; quiet; peaceful; undisturbed; happy; as, "deep, halcyon repose."
2. Marked by peace and prosperity; as, "halcyon years."

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Part III of III

This experiment is not constructed to show how little Descartes could get from spray painting his apple barrel “infallible apples” and tossing all the fallible ones out, it is constructed to cause sympathy for a creature capable only of thinking to itself for an eternity. To be so alone, suspending judgment not for humility of knowledge, but for want of and inability to access it, is a tragedy worthy of plays. This experiment proves how lucky we are even to have fallible tools.

The cogito would scoff, however, if it were given tools bound to mislead, as many skeptics would suggest they do. We cannot accept a toolbox full of instruments ill-suited to our task. In this case, despite, I hold no doubt whatsoever that the cogito would leap (metaphor) wholeheartedly at the chance to play with tools that might show it anything at all outside itself, even with the hefty provision that it will be subject to constant and likely failure to ascertain the truth. This lot—the cogito’s acceptance of sensory input despite severe consequences for truth, is very much worse than our actual state of affairs.

We have a fallible interface. What is filtered through the senses must be processed by the mind, which even from birth is prefigured to accept information in a responsive way—and without reflection, those responses will harm our access to knowledge. Throughout our lives we construct vast networks of semiologies to accompany natural responses, further detaching ourselves from possible, sober, objective truths. The combination of the senses and the mind, without training and the invocation of reason will inevitably produce conclusions far off the mark of knowledge.

Yet the cogito will accept the proposal of the senses. It is a clever creature, and it knows a bargain when it can see one—it hastily deduces from these provisions that even with the enormous amount of blundering that could occur from perception to knowledge, knowledge is possible. It knows this because it has spent its pathetic life both imagining and doubting—and its own separation from the truth rests with input. In fact, its tragedy is not in the lack of infallible truths, but in the lack of input. Like a blooming flower, it soars from the boredom of its abject (albeit infallible-truth populated) existence, in courage, with fearful but definite excitement, into a realm of fallible perception.

This is where we find ourselves. As much as we would like to deduce the eternal truths of the universe by criterions and introspection alone, it is incredibly impossible. Our brains are powerful enough both to imagine worlds that do not exist, and destroy reflections of ones that do. The newly-perceptive cogito does not enter the world a credulous thing (albeit overwhelmingly enraptured), but neither does it enter the world subject to solipsistic doubt—not only to preserve this new and wonderful world as an existing entity, but because all of its new senses suggest that it has no sensible reason to doubt some kind of objective reality, and much more. Given input, its tragedy becomes fuel for curiosity, and the real pursuit of knowledge begins.

We ought not reflect or depend on floating cogitos to save our ability to know. We ought reflect on them to cherish our ability to sense in the first place—and while we may (and should) be dubious of the correctness of what these senses tell us, self-reflection (as the cogito well knows) is the key to seeking knowledge. Our friend the cogito becomes a master of its newly formed senses, analyzing each one carefully and the many ways in which they can go wrong. Where there is reason to doubt, it does, and where not, it enjoys the comfort of reason paired with input—which can, with fallible humility, discover knowledge enough to fill planets with barrels exempt from Descartes stamp of approval. Input is as much as gift as reason.

Fustian

\FUHS-chuhn\, noun:
1. A kind of coarse twilled cotton or cotton and linen stuff, including corduroy, velveteen, etc.
2. An inflated style of writing or speech; pompous or pretentious language.

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Part II of III

Decades later, as seconds seem infinite in the void, the creature begins to notice time passing, in the form of thoughts that occurred before the present moment, and thoughts (of whatever content) that will likely occur after the present moment. It is here that the creature makes a home run, the clever thing that it is—it deduces from the existence of change within its own mind the concept of time, though here only used as an organizing function to separate the current thoughts from the past thoughts.

Now with some concept of time, as established by the passage of thoughts through its consciousness, the cogito has any number of ways to establish the next conclusion. For the sake of argument, we will narrow it down—it notices the distinctness of “then” and “now” as different entities. It seeks to streamline its mind when thinking of thoughts that occurred in both arenas, and therefore constructs a referent for when a thought has occurred in both categories. It calls this the number 2—entailing that this particular thought was found in both the 1. past and the 2. present. It has an epiphany, and realizes this referent can be used elsewhere…in many places…everywhere!

Soon enough the cogito is doing small calculations and deducing mathematical formulas. Its self-esteem is rising like a hot air balloon—I must be the smartest cogito in the universe, it thinks. But wait, it wonders…I am me. Could there be more of me? Even less certain, could there be more like me?

The cogito rests on this notion for millennia, and makes no headway. Back to eternal truths, it thinks, I will find no proof or even evidence to support my extra-me cogitos. It gets lonely. It wishes it had someone to talk to.

One night (here defined as when the cogito sleeps—body or not, it needs rest), it has a very odd dream, where it is being spoken to in a very wise thought that informs it of supernatural existence, that it is not alone. It awakens and quickly realizes it was a dream, having had them (but dissimilar ones) before. However, the ideas has infiltrated—who and what was this thought, and how could it have come from nowhere?

It tries to deduce the existence of a cogito far smarter than it, with knowledge it has absolutely no access to, and yet will speak to it and solve the greatest of mysteries. Comforting, this notion is. Yet try as it might, it can produce no evidence for believing the contents of its dream entail existence—surely, this dream cogito’s manner was odd and seemingly foreign, but on rumination the floating cogito realizes this portrait is what its imagination has been conjuring for weeks as a cure for loneliness, and many of the things it said reflected its own insecurities. This is a rather elaborate example, but the bottom line is that the cogito, the diligent creature it is, must reject the superior cogito on the grounds that imagination does not suffice.

Yet if it loses imagination as evidence, it thinks, it will have lost any further stepping stones to knowledge. If it has been taught one thing, hanging in the metaphorical darkness, it is that infallible knowledge is hard to come by, and imagination, paired with logic, is the culmination and extent of its capabilities. Simple cases like the existing self, time and math (the latter two conjoined) are provable by thought alone—but beyond that, imagination is only a safari through a pitch black wilderness at night, revealing nothing, hope it might. Depressed, our cogito friend floats on, wishing for a friend, and knowing it will never know one.

Amalgam

\uh-MAL-guhm\, noun:
1. An alloy of mercury with another metal or metals; used especially (with silver) as a dental filling.
2. A mixture or compound of different things.

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A paper from Hume and the Skeptics exploring sensory input. Part I of III

Imagine a world of nothing. What springs to mind is likely a void with endless blackness—but even this is too much. Absolutely nothing. No colors, smells, objects or sounds whatsoever. When Descartes emptied his barrel of apples, this is what remained. For the sake of curious exploration, let us build a world in it.

Firstly, it must be mentioned that something exists, and while we cannot be sure of it, it can. This thing that exists we will call the floating cogito. It has all the properties of our sapient minds, the ability to mentally explore, imagine, problem-solve and especially, self-reflect. What it cannot do is hear, see, smell, feel or taste; but at the very least, it can think. Here we are generous in granting its capacities for the sake of argument, as were this creature real, having no input whatsoever would cripple its mental abilities to unimaginable handicap. Instead, we imagine this floating cogito to be much like ourselves when alone and ruminating; thoughtful, curious and logical, it seeks knowledge.

Being disconnected from what normally leads humans astray might be more a blessing than a curse for the creature (here I am fairly certain only very hard-nosed skeptics might agree), as fallible experience is not on its list of options. Instead, it floats in the void seeking knowledge. First, its self-reflection demands knowledge of its existence, and proving this theorem does not take long. Being the clever creature that it is, without any experience at all, it convinces itself of its own existence—beyond all doubt. Every moment it spends thinking about its thought, it knows it exists.