Conceivably our senses are not the most secure basis for knowledge, but they provide us with many wonderful sensations that I personally would not be prepared to give up, simply for the knowledge that I really exist. Possibly not every idea needs to be examined, and subsequently accepted or rejected. Conceivably there is such a thing as “gut reaction”. What is true for one person is not necessarily true for another. If refusing to question and call into doubt everything that one knows and holds to be important equals remaining ignorant, then I would prefer to be ignorant. I would elect to continue to experience feelings brought upon me by things, which I have observed through the use of my senses and instinct, than to appreciate only those few things, which can be proved to be absolutely true. A life of obsession questioning of every single thing imaginable would be incredibly tedious and would wipe out the wonder of enjoyment of invisible joys and gifts of nature. Descartes was a very smart man and without his ideas others would not have come about. However, his way must have been an extremely one-dimensional being for his lack of ability to enjoy the world around him in many different ways. On the surface, he appears to be very confident that his argument bears validity, but my personal impression is that he was actually very insecure after all about his plans. To me this proves that his theories, even though terribly important to philosophy are to far fetched in where his theories are not to be valid or as concrete in any definite.
Knowledge of the proposition 'I exist' depends on knowledge of the proposition 'I think'; and knowledge of the latter on the fact that we cannot separate thought from thinking matter. Descartes assumes the soul is not physical without any proof. When I used the terms like 'mind', 'soul', 'understanding' and 'reason', I meant things endowed with the capacity of thinking. I did not say that thinking is not corporeal. I left if undecided up to the sixth Meditation, where it is proved.
I agree with Descartes that "I think" and "I am thinking," mean the same thing. One cannot think without going through the process of thinking. Some may argue that if someone says, “I think,” then they are saying that they think but they may not be thinking right now. Though if they were to say, “I am thinking,” they are expressing that they are thinking at the very moment. To this one could reply, to say “I think” requires you to be thinking about saying, “I think”, or to come up with the notion that “I think” requires me to be thinking about the notion "I think". So in this way, in order for you to think you have to be thinking. They are one and the same.
Descartes believes he exists only because of thinking. Since he is not sure if what he is doing is actually what he is doing. That what he is doing could be a mere misconception of his own mind. Descartes is not sure if he is really eating or sleeping or reading or writing, he says it could all be in his head. Descartes believes there is no proof of anything. To him everything is too person dependent; there is no constancy in life. Descartes does not trust his sight, his hearing, his taste, his feelings, and his sense of smell. The only thing logically makes sense to him is thought. For if he is thinking, he has to think, thus he has to exist in order to think. So thinking is the only reassurance he has for his existence. Descartes concludes from his writings that "I am a mind, or intelligence, or intellect, or reason." The problem with this argument some may say is that Descartes doesn't specify where these ideas come from. There is no proof that the body is incapable of thinking, or is there proof that it is. Ideas or thoughts may be generated from the brain; therefore, the body would exist as well. So the body exists because of the brain, which exists because it thinks.
Descartes concludes from his writings “I am a mind, or intelligence, or intellect, or reason.” I realize that he is questioning everything that he once thought was for sure. However, I wonder how could he just be a thought. He denies the body, the brain, feelings, senses and sensations, but yet he believes that he exists. The question I have is how? If he has nothing, except thought, then what is he? The problem with the argument that Descartes has is that he doesn't specify where these ideas come from. In the beginning he denies that he has a body, but he doesn’t specify what allows him to think. There is no proof that the body is incapable of thinking, or is there proof that it is. Ideas or thoughts may be generated from the brain; therefore, the brain would exist as well. For that thinks must exist.
In the Sixth Meditation Descartes argues that as the mind is not divisible whereas any extended thing is always divisible, the mind is neither identical to any physical thing nor dependent for its existence on the existence of any physical thing.
Then, we have an argument that seems to rely on Leibniz’s law. Unfortunately divisible equals ‘can be divided’, which is a modal property and hence one that cannot reliably be used in conjunction with Leibniz’s law. This suggests that the argument needs to be rebuilt around the property not of being divisible but of having component parts. Descartes thought of physical objects as exercising their causal power in relation to other physical objects through pushing and pulling and surface channeling.
Thus abandoning this supposition would undermine large sections of Descartes’ overall metaphysical position. This account claims that an event x is the cause of an event y if y occurs after x and events of type x are regularly followed by events of type y. Unfortunately Descartes is, of course, insistent that minds do not have any spatial relationships with physical objects.
The fact is more scientifically oriented, for the complete absence of mentality from the nature of physical things is central to making way for Descartes’. The motive for arguing that mind and body could each exist without the other is more scientifically oriented, stemming from Descartes’ intended replacement of final causal explanations in physics thought to be favored by late scholastic philosophers with mechanistic explanations based on the model.
Descartes is claiming that the concept of a substantial form as part of the entirely physical world stems from a confusion of the ideas of mind and body. The real distinction of mind and body can then also be used to alleviate this confusion and its resultant mistakes by showing that bodies exist and move as they do without mentality, and as such principles of mental causation such as goals, purposes, and knowledge have no role to play in the explanation of physical phenomena. So the real distinction of mind and body also serves the more scientifically oriented end of eliminating any element of mentality from the idea of body. In this way, a clear understanding of the geometrical nature of bodies can be achieved and better explanations obtained. Descartes is a very unique study but without him we would have not had the views or been able to create our world today.