Is Yellow Good? Essay -- Philosophy, Descartes

Can yellow be good? Can it be evil? Can it inherently be anything? As humans, we have only one way of coming to conclusions and that is through thought. As John Locke says, â€Å"External objects furnish the mind with the ideas of sensible qualities, which are all those different perceptions they produce in us; and the mind furnishes the understanding ideas of its own operations† (Locke 62). As we pass through our lives in society we assume so many things; things that have been accepted for years by those before us. In reality however, there is no constant, there is no guarantee, there are no universal morals or traits in the world around us. Everything around us is neither good nor bad, it simply is, and our projection of its nature is solely our doing. How do we even now know what yellow is? As humans, there is only one thing that we know with absolutely certainty. All other â€Å"facts† may be disputed; however the understanding that we as humans think must be true. Descartes, who began his search for reality with a completely open mind, a blank slate, said, â€Å"It was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, must be something; and when I observed that this truth, I think, therefore I am, was so certain and assured, that no reason for doubt, however extravagant, could be advanced by the skeptics to shake it† (Descartes 24). What Descartes claims is that all things in the world around us can be argued and debated as each person experiences them differently or sees them in a different light. Morals, the physical world around us, it is all a culmination of general agreement. Descartes believes that this does not lay the groundwork for factual information. â€Å"†¦Approval by the majority is no guarantee of the truth† (Descar... ...d comes to reflect on its own operations about the ideas gotten by sensation, and thereby stores itself with a new set of ideas, which I call ideas of reflection† (Locke 64). Therefore, the question of why men are so different is not a question of the individuals themselves, but more of their lives’ journeys and experiences. The very foundation of our identity and understanding is in our absorption of the raw world around us. At risk of sounding redundant, Descartes summarizes the notion that we are not solely ourselves but are influenced to follow different paths of thought and lifestyles when he states that â€Å"The diversity of our opinions, consequently, does not arise from some having a larger share of reason than others, but solely from this, that we conduct our thoughts along different ways, and do not fix our attention on the same objects† (Descartes 22).