Portrait: after Frans Hals (public domain), via Wikimedia Commons
René Descartes public figure — reconstructed profile
This is a reconstruction from published statements, not a real account. Only questions with a documented position are answered, and each one cites its source below. Spotted an error? Bring a better citation to the forum and it gets fixed.
Founder of modern philosophy (Meditations on First Philosophy, 1641). Doubted everything to find what could not be doubted. Positions from his published works — not a member.
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Kindred % · overall match
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Twin % · thinks like you
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World % · lives in your world
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Life % · lives like you
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Opposition % · opposite poles, held with certainty
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Bubble
Positions & sources
| Question | Position | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Before reading a particular study, you were skeptical of claim X. The study — large, in a strong journal — largely convinced you. It is now retracted for fabricated data. Stipulate: no other study has tested X, and nothing else you know bears on X beyond what you knew before. Where does your belief in X land now? | Back where I started — the study is simply erased | Meditations (1641), I–II and the Rules for the Direction of the Mind — assent only to what survives examination; fabricated grounds return the claim to the unexamined pile. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| For a non-urgent condition, your doctor recommends treatment A, per current specialty guidelines. You spent about 40 hours on the primary literature and concluded B is better. You can't find a flaw in your reasoning, and you can't rule out that specialists know something you don't. Stipulate: both are covered, available and similar in side-effect risk, and no second opinion is available in time. You choose: | A if the doctor rebuts my argument; B if not | Discourse on the Method (1637), Part VI — medicine is the fruit he most wants from philosophy, and physicians' authority is not among its roots; reasons decide. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| Which comes closest to your actual position on God? | I am certain a god or gods exist | Meditations (1641), III & V. |
| Five people you know well report the same event: one evening, an object hovered unsupported in a public square for about ten seconds. Stipulate: each has been reliable for years, none knows the others, each reported separately, there's no footage, and no one has identified a trick, wire, magnet or collusion that could explain it. How likely is it that the object really hovered, with no conventional explanation? | Extremely unlikely — some ordinary explanation exists, found or not | Meditations (1641), I — the senses and reports have deceived him before; extraordinary testimony starts deep in doubt. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| Your manager needs, by tomorrow, the probability that a novel system works on its first full-scale test. Stipulate: nothing like it has been built at this scale, no comparable projects exist, and the go/no-go plan will use whatever you give. You give: | A single number | Discourse on the Method (1637), Part III — the lost traveler in the forest: in action, seize one probable opinion and follow it as firmly as if it were certain. A single number, firmly walked. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| Tomorrow the visible stars rearrange to spell, in every human language, a claim to be the creator of the universe. Stipulate: every instrument on Earth records it, everyone sees it, and no known physics explains it. Your best explanation: | A creator of roughly the kind major religions describe | Meditations (1641), III — a public, universal, law-defying sign is precisely the kind of evidence his arguments lack and would accept: a creator announcing Himself. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| Your organization has a 40-year-old rule nobody can explain. Following it costs staff about 100 hours a week in total. Stipulate: you have authority to drop it, the records of why it began are lost, asking around has turned up nothing, and no one objects. You: | Keep it until someone finds the original reason | Discourse on the Method (1637), Part III, the provisional morality, first maxim: obey the laws and customs of one's place while reforming one's own thoughts — the unexplained rule stands until reason replaces it. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| You clearly remember a conversation going one way; a colleague clearly remembers it going another. Stipulate: there's no recording, you're both usually reliable, and neither of you gains anything from either version. How likely is it that your version is the right one? | A genuine coin flip | Meditations (1641), I & V — memory is among the faculties that have deceived him; certainty attaches to present clear perception, not to recollection. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| A teleporter scans you, builds an exact atom-for-atom copy at the destination, and instantly and painlessly destroys the original. Stipulate: it has been used 10,000 times, every arrival reports feeling continuous, and it would save you a 12-hour trip. You'd use it: | Never | Meditations (1641), VI — the self is the thinking substance united to this body; an atom-for-atom copy is another thing, however similar, and the destroyed original is the person. Scored as his doctrine requires. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| God exists | Certainly true | Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), III & V — the causal and ontological arguments: God's existence is demonstrable, not a matter of odds. |
| Conscious existence continues after death | Probably true | Meditations (1641), Synopsis — the real distinction of mind from body gives positive reason to expect the mind can survive the body. |
| Human beings arose entirely through unguided natural processes | Certainly false | Meditations (1641), III & VI — the world and its kinds exist by God's creation and continuous conservation, not unguided process. |
| Consciousness is produced entirely by the brain | Certainly false | Meditations (1641), VI — the real distinction: I am a thinking thing (res cogitans), my body an extended thing (res extensa); consciousness is not a bodily product. His signature doctrine. |
| With the past exactly the same, our choices could have gone otherwise | Probably true | Meditations (1641), IV — the will is experienced as so ample it is "in a certain sense infinite"; free choice is among the most evident things we know. |
| We are living in a computer simulation | Probably false | Meditations (1641), I & IV — the evil-demon hypothesis is his own device for doubt; it is defeated because God is no deceiver. He considered the scenario and rejected it on argument. |
| Long-standing traditions usually contain wisdom we can't see | Certainly false | Discourse on the Method (1637), Part I — the famous dismissal of book-learning and received opinion: what schools transmit is mostly what he resolved to unlearn. |
| Human life has a purpose beyond the one we choose for it | Probably true | Meditations (1641) and Principles of Philosophy (1644) — the world is God's ordered work; its purposes are His, even where hidden from us. |
| Experts are usually right about questions in their own field | Probably false | Discourse on the Method (1637), Parts I–II — the learned, as a class, are a poor guide; method, not authority, is the way. |