Cartesian Self Cartesian Self In philosophy, the Cartesian Self, part of a thought experiment, is an individual's mind, separate from the body and the outside world, thinking about itself and its existence. It is distinguished from the Cartesian Other, anything other than the Cartesian self. According to the philosopher Descartes, there is a divide intrinsic to consciousness, such that one cannot ever bridge the space between one's own consciousness and that of another. Descartes concluded famously that Cogito ergo sum, "I think, therefore I am", but realized that according to his wax argument you could never similarly demonstrate the existence of the
Cogito and the History of Madness at the end of the renaissance and the beginning of the classical age. He then discusses the treatment of madness by Descartes in the "Meditations on First Philosophy". Foucault argues that Descartes refuses to recognise a commonality between himself and people who are mad and uses this dissociation as an excuse not to take madness seriously as a grounds for doubt. For Foucault this exclusion of madness by Descartes leads to a cogito that is more or less arbitrarily self-assured of its own rationality. Derrida argues that Descartes might appear to dismiss madness at the point of the meditation to