So I am taking a class in the philosophy of consciousness. I’m doing it for fun.  I love research, loving slowly coming to understand how we humans do what we do. I love thinking about the assumptions we make as we move through our days.

Since it is right at the beginning of term I have only been to one class so far but in it I got the first reading assignment. Descartes.

Again. Descartes.

OK, so I know why. I even agree with the teaching strategy. He is clearly important to the development of Western thought about the idea of what consciousness is, but — Descartes.

Every time I read the bugger I want to hurl the book across the room. Radically doubting everthing down to the phenomenological subject, OK, I get that. But to say that we are going to rebuild the world, rebuild our sense of what we can trust (i.e. things our senses tell us, you know that there is monitor in front of your face, that it is not an illusion) after all that rigorous doubting by saying, ‘well we know god isn’t a deceiver…”  Excuse the fuck out of me! How does he know that, if all he can really trust is the fact of his existence? And if he can trust this thing he was told (you know the god thing), then why not some other thing he was told?

Bleh.

So I put down all my non-fiction, and went to the bookstore and found a Kate Shugak novel. I like Kate and her dog/wolf Mutt. An Indian woman that has a bunch of fearsome aunties, this I understand.  I like the way Kate kicks nasty ass. I like the way she is just plain honest about things.

I have another class tomorrow, but before then I will read Kate’s most recent (to me anyway) story and get the taste of Descartes gone. Bottom line: there is only so much of this rational irritation I can take before I need to take a bath is something more real.

Still there are lots of good authors coming up in the course handout. There’s Locke and Putnam, Fodor, Turing, Searle, Dennett, Churchland and Heil. I don’t agree with all of them, or even most of them (especially some days), but none of them make me want to hurl the book either.