This was a good read. Thank you for elaborating clearly on your interpretations.

As with some other great thinkers, I recommend taking their antiquated ideas with a healthy grain of salt.

Descartes was a brilliant thinker, but he, like everyone else, can make only so much progress in evolving humanity's view of things. No surprise his thought looks clunky in places today.

I think it's more respectful and more useful to think that if Descartes were still alive today, he would revise his ideas considerably.

His cogito, whatever its flaws, paved the way for the world view we have today. I don't understand people "canceling" him or the people who didn't see all his flaws, when imho they wouldn't have the perch on which to know better if it weren't for Descartes in the first place.

It's kind of like criticizing the Wright brothers for building a clunky airplane.