All philosophy must necessarily begin with the philosophy of the mind.

What are we? And how can we know anything else without first knowing this?

So first we must turn our attention upon ourselves and with the sharp scalpel and laser beam of philosophical inquiry inspect what we are, first.

I love Rene Descartes' story about locking himself up in a huge empty furnace in order to be isolated from everything and everyone else in order to probe his own mind and come up with first principles.

I love his initial discovery: I myself -- whatever I am -- am thinking, therefore someone must exist to be doing the thinking, therefore I must truly exist. A very simple algorithm that is self evident on an a-priori level requiring no further proof.

I find it amusing and very virtuous that having thusly discovered and proven himself, that Descartes then immediately turns his attention to the problem of the Philosophy God and His antithesis, the Evil Genius. Because the Evil Genius could have made things infinitely worse, or even could have refrained from creating us at all, therefore Descartes concluded that no Evil Genius reigns in the Universe. This was sort of a forensic discovery based on the absence of facts supporting an Evil Genius.

I would like to clarify that whereas Descartes was able to prove that no Evil Genius rules the Universe, he was not able to prove there is no Evil Genius at all, even one subservient to the Philosophy God.

Thirdly, Descartes turns his attention to the matter of the Philosophy God himself, on how to prove his existence. I am surprised that Descartes did not simply rely on Aquinas to do so. First Cause, Prime Mover, Artistic Artificer, and Purposeful Designer have always been good enough for me, and both Descartes and I are Roman Catholic. So he must have heard of Aquinas at least. Aquinas is the heart and soul of Catholic philosophy.

Instead however, Descartes comes up with his own proof of God, in that Descartes formulates the notion that if Descartes can conceive of a most virtuous perfect infinite Being then one must exist. That seems to have worked for him, but Aquinas works better for me.

The next problem is to decide what is mind and what is it not, and whether it is somehow connected with the body or not. It is obviously connected to the body somehow or else we ourselves could transmigrate from body to body during our days. But Descartes came up with a more flimsy theory in the notion of the two equal clocks. One clock is the mind and the other clock is the body and they go on ticking together perfectly. Not very convincing unfortunately.

So although Descartes was able to give us valuable insights about our own existence, and the likelihood of God, and the unlikelihood of an Evil Genius, he did not get very far explaining how the mind and the body interact.

Not an easy subject.

Still we must be grateful to Descartes for what he did give us.

Please feel free to agree or disagree.

If you disagree then please provide your analysis supporting why, and then also present a feasible alternative as well.

If you went to college then you should have learned in bonehead Freshman English and again in upper division Technical Writing to use good content, good organization, and good grammar/syntax, with an intro, body, and logical conclusion supported by analysis and/or facts, and complete sentences formulated around a subject, verb, and objects of the verb.

If you only went to public high school however then I guess we can try working around your writing prose in that case. Just at least give it a try the right way.