Special Guest Blogger: Rene Descartes

I might be known as the Father of Modern Philosophy and one of history's greatest thinkers but my early life was actually far from your average philosopher's as i earned a Baccalauréat and Licence in canon and civil law in accordance with my father's wishes that i should become a lawyer and then quickly gave up on that idea and joined the Army for a career in military engineering in Germany.
While fighting in the Battle of the White Mountain near Prague, i had an experience which would not only change my life but the course of philosophy when, to warm myself one cold winter evening, i climbed inside a large wall stove because back in the 17th Century men were men, and if you wanted to stay warm you damn well sat in a big stove.
While huddling there all toasty, i nodded off and had a strange dream and not the usual kind about being naked in a field while your teeth fall out or doing exciting things with the Countess of Gramont and a tub of goats milk, these were sent by God and had me caught inside a vicious whirlwind being chased by ghosts who trapped me in a room full of thunder and fire and a door to a peaceful room with only a book called 'What path shall I take in life?' for company.
I immediately knew what it meant, either i was in the early stages of carbon monoxide poisoning or God wanted me to reinvent the way humans think about the universe so i set about formulating a whole new philosophy, Cartesianism, based on the understanding that all truths were linked with one another and finding a fundamental truth and proceeding with logic would open the way to all science.
I wrote it all down in my essay 'Rules for the Direction of the Mind' concluding that we should never accept anything for true which we do not know to be true such as our own existence, we may just be a brain in a vat that thinks it's living in the real world or part of a game where we must score as many points as possible by the end so if we doubt others then the very fact that we doubt proves our existence, or to put it in a more memorable way, 'i think therefore i am', therefore you can be certain that you exist because you are thinking about possibly not existing.
Queen Christina of Sweden invited me to her court to tutor her in my new philosophy and i said give me a bit of time to think about it (that went straight over her head) so i arranged to give lessons to her in her cold and draughty castle. After only a few weeks i caught pneumonia and died, or someone moved the VAT or the game ended, i never did work it out exactly.
The problem with the idea of living in a game is that we don't know what we do to score or lose points so we don't know how well or bad we are doing as the game goes along, we may get points for something as seemingly trivial as opening a door or lose them for clapping our hands so after you finish reading this, spend the next 30 minutes opening and closing doors because you just never know.