"I think, therefore I am," wrote Descartes, the father of modern philosophy. Of course, he wrote his famous maxim in Latin ("Cogito, ergo sum"), not because he wanted to sound pompous, but because back in the seventeenth century you had to know Latin in order to be invited to the best parties, the kind where they served fish eggs. Not that Descartes was a party animal - in fact, he eventually had to leave France and move to Holland because he enjoyed thinking more than drinking - an unforgivable sin in a Frenchman and a legacy we have inherited here in Trinidad. (The idea that Descartes left France in order to escape persecution from the Catholic Church because he believed in the rotation of the Earth and an infinite universe is, presumably, too ridiculous to be true. Perhaps Barnabas J. Ramon-Fortune, that indefatigable letter-writer on matters Catholic, could enlighten us.)
Descartes's aphorism has been hotly debated through the centuries, mostly by men who have never had orgasms. There are only two states of being when thinking is suspended: when having an orgasm and while holding political office. Trying to think during an orgasm is like trying to sneeze with your eyes open. (I don't know why thinking is so impossible when in political office, but the empirical evidence is clear.) This is why the issue of Cartesian scepticism has never been resolved in France. Frenchmen have more sex than men from any other European country (a little over twice a week, which explains why so many European countries have negative population growth) and French politicians still take pride in the Revolution.
In Trinidad, however, the men whom Descartes's assertion should logically interest the most - I mean those biased against orgasms, like Thusian elders, Catholic priests and Police Inspector Cyracius Liverpool - are not interested in intellectual matters. But, paradoxically, it is in Trinidad that Descartes's maxim has been proven to be incontrovertibly incorrect since, if it were true that you think and therefore you are, House Speaker Hector McClean would have already vanished in a twinkling of an eye. (So too would Morgan Job, Anil Mahabir, Burton Sankeralli, Abu Bakr and Pastor Cuffie among others, if further evidence is needed.)
Descartes's error was in assuming that thinking is equivalent to consciousness. Whatever one can conceive very clearly must be true, he wrote. But, although I conceive Hector McClean to be very clearly a pompous twit, I could well be mistaken. Perhaps he merely imitates a pompous twit really, really well.
After all, there is a crucial difference between thinking and consciousness. It is quite possible to get by without thinking - if it weren't, Pastor Cuffie wouldn't have got a $225,000 van or Pope John Paul his designer robes. It was this confusion which caused Descartes to declare that animals are merely automata, plus the fact that he had never seen Babe.
But you can't blame Descartes. In The Conscious Mind. philosopher David Chalmers writes, "The progress in the understanding of the mind has almost entirely centered on the explanation of behaviour...[But] this progress leave the question of conscious experience untouched."
So, while one might take Speaker McClean's behaviour as evidence of lack of thinking, this is not to deny him conscious experience. It is true that he may sometimes not seem conscious, especially when Education dentist Adesh Nanan is talking. But there are many psychological notions to which the term "consciousness" is frequently applied. These include Attention, which is what the general public doesn't pay Parliament; Awakeness, which is what several Parliamentarians do not do on Friday evenings; and Reportability, which is what the Speaker seems to have a problem with.
Consciousness is easiest to define in negative terms. For example: "The UNC administration is not conscious of the requirements of a modern democracy." It is true that Mr Panday keeps insisting that "his" government poses no threat to democracy but, between proposed Green Papers, ICN revamping, and stiffer penalties for public protests, I feel I can treat his assertions, apologies and even his atman with complete Cartesian scepticism.
However, one should not assume that the House Speaker simply has a very selective form of consciousness. The Indian philosopher Sankara, who lived around 700 A.D., defined the real as "that whose negation is not possible" and, anticipating Descartes, went on to assert that this could only be true of consciousness since to deny consciousness would first require one to admit its existence. Yet, since McClean announced his intention of banning print journalists from using tape recorders, many people have been asking if he for real.
My point is, he must be. "We have good reason to believe that consciousness arises from physical systems such as brains," writes Chalmers, but then goes on to suggest that thermostats have some sort of consciousness, which means that Wade Mark can be conscious, too. And Buddhist philosophy even identifies 89 different states of consciousness, which is not so amazing when you consider all the different ice cream flavours you can get in Dairy Bar these days.
But it is clear that consciousness of any sort is a serious disadvantage in a House Speaker. I haven't been earning much money since I resigned from the Guardian after the Board of Directors caved in to Prime Minister Panday's chutney ranting, but I would never take a job which required me to listen to Parliamentarians for at least four hours every Friday, no matter how exorbitant the salary or housing allowance. I don't know if I have 89 types of consciousnesses, but my consciousness of pain is well-developed: I feel true agony when exposed to sheer hypocrisy.
Still, in the final analysis, consciousness is impossible to define. "Nothing worth reading has been written about it," says the International Dictionary of Psychology, and I hope in this column I have proven that statement to be true.
Copyright ©1997 Kevin Baldeosingh