Willis had a problem. See experience told Willis that everything he knew was due to his senses. A three hundred year old corpse his class was studying, on the other hand, told him otherwise. The corpse blabbed on in his book about how we learn through our minds, not our senses, even going off on this tip about melted earwax or some crap. It just couldn’t make sense. How could that be when everything he knew, he learned from reading a book, listening to his teacher, or studying for a helluva lot of tests? He figured the whole lot of it was nonsense and that Descartes was nothing more than an aged moron. Without a second thought, he tossed aside his copy of ‘Meditations’ and got onto his computer.
That morning, he managed to get a hold of a bootleg copy of ‘The Hangover,’ which, by the way, is a good, funny movie but one he never got a chance to see. Excited to watch it, he put it into his DVD Drive and waited for the magic, but nothing happened. He tried a few tricks he thought might get it to work, but still, nothing happened. He figured his DVD Drive was malfunctioning so he opened up his computer and looked through it, testing it out a few times and trying to diagnose the issue. From his perspective, there was nothing that could’ve been wrong. The lens was fine, the bootleg spun, and he was certain it was being read. Everything was in perfect working order. Almost everything, anyway.
He finally settled on the idea that maybe it was the bootleg, and not anything in his computer -- after all, he did buy it for three dollars. Putting another DVD in, one he knew would work, he waited again for the DVD to respond but once more nothing happened. Again, he ran his tests and concluded that there was nothing that could've been wrong. At this point, he grew angry. He really wanted to see that really funny Mr. Chow he heard about. Out of the corner of his eyes he spotted ‘Meditations’ but noticing the book that had caused him so much grief before didn’t help at all. He yelled violently as he flung the book across the room. ‘You dead, stupid fool!’ And that was that.
Then, suddenly, it happened. Something just clicked. He shot an apologetic glance toward the book and began to smile. He then went to work on his computer and finally managed to fix it without running into any issues whatsoever. It was a simple fact that he had been focusing on the wrong thing the entire time. It wouldn’t have mattered if the DVD Drive was in pristine condition, or that his copy of ‘The Hangover’ was legitimate and straight out of the proper packaging. He could’ve put a hundred and one DVDs into the Drive, or even replaced it, but without what processed the data being fixed, it wouldn’t do anything but hit a virtual wall. The info on the disc would be floating around in electrical limbo.
‘Hmmm…’ He thought with a grin, ‘Whaddya know, I guess the old Frenchman had a clue after all. All the senses do is bring images, or waves, or textures to our minds and it’s up to it and reason to sort the stuff out and turn it into information. And hey, that earwax example wasn’t too shabby either. Similarity is an idea formed by our mind, without it we could even be looking at two identical apples, or an apple and its reflection, and have no hint in hell that they’re one in the same, we wouldn’t even have the mind to be confused. The fact that there’s any contemplation in the slightest that the two apples might or might not be the same is a product of reason. A camera can't distinguish the people in the photos it takes. An audio recorder doesn’t learn from the voices it records. Those things don’t have the reason to. Sure it could be retained all the same, but these things have no idea what’s going on. Now that I think about it, the senses work a lot like a downloading program. We might’ve gotten an app, music file, or video through the program, but it’s because of the data, scripts, and processes already in our computers that we’re able to install, or even use them. It all makes sense now, Descartes was a genius!’
A week later, Willis took his Philosophy midterm. He got everything wrong except the bit on Descartes. When he got his results, he was positively satisfied.
