Thoughts on Certainty of Thoughts

When I wrote about Descartes in my in-class mini-essay this morning, I neglected to mention my concerns about his certainty in the indubitability of his thoughts. He knew that his senses could have been falsified, and he even said that it was possible that there was some evil genius feeding him false senses, yet he was certain that his thoughts were his own.

Having grown up in the church, I have known for basically my whole life that there is an "evil genius" purposefully attempting to deceive us, but he doesn't do it by feeding us false senses (so far as I know); he does it by feeding us false thoughts. Satan gives us impressions of things that aren't true and gives us advice that we most certainly should not follow. These are not our own thoughts and impressions, but those of one who is trying to destroy us. We know that not all of the thoughts in our minds are ours.

Thankfully, there is at least one other spirit who also plants thoughts in our minds, and He testifies of the truths we learn, corrects the misinformation fed to us by other sources, and inspires us with true information that we may not have been able to learn otherwise. His thoughts our not our thoughts either, though we should strive to make our thoughts more like His.

So, I have my doubts about how many of Descartes' thoughts were actually Descartes', and I think that he was wise to be concerned about the possibility of an evil genius trying to fool him. He just got a few things a little bit off, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the evil genius Descartes was concerned about had a hand in that. I could easily see Satan planting doubts and false certainty into Descartes' mind, making him believe that he could trust the thoughts in his mind but that he had to doubt all else, including his own senses. The devil is tricky like that.

But we who know of him are wise to his tricks. We know that not all of our thoughts are actually ours, and we are cautious about any thoughts or impressions that might actually have come from him.

At the same time, we eagerly look out for thoughts and impressions that might have come from other, far more Celestial sources. Again, we know that the thoughts aren't ours, but in this case, that actually makes them even more trustworthy. We may be wrong about many things, but we are confident that God isn't, and it's through His Spirit that we can learn things even more certainly than if we had seen them with our own eyes.

So, I think Descartes may have been wrong to think that he was the only one in his own head and that the thoughts he found in there were completely trustworthy. I'm sure that some of them were and some of them weren't, and I believe that, if we want to know which is which, it would take an impression from the Holy Ghost to be certain.