[RD] Cogito ergo sum
- Thread starter Lohrenswald
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Timsup2nothin
Deity
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This is a huge improvement on the norm. The complete unreliability of most people's memories hasn't even been noticed.
Bumping due to mention (and link) of it today by its OP
Also it is a valid question if Descartes is correct.
Answer is No (like in the greek referendum in a week).
*
Longer answer:
In his 'treatise on first philosophy' (which i do not recall if he used the term to refer to how Aristotle meant 'first philosophy', ie 'metaphysics') Descartes argues that if a human was somehow robbed of all senses, but could still think, he would know he exists due to being able to think.
But 'to think' is a process. It is not the same as sense you have a mental world, or sense of 'being'. Descartes uses pretty crude syllogisms in his work, including an infamous circular argument to 'show' that god exists ('if god did not exist then there would be no basis to know that a thinker being honest and able, is thinking something true if he strives to find truth, since god in his benevolence would not allow such a thinker to be then wrong', well, not really, and there are two circles there at least, non?
)
Lohrenswald
世界的 bottom ranked physicist
I do not understand what this means. I'll grant you that thinking is a process, but so is sensing (seeing, hearing etc.). And I don't see how a sense of being categorically can't be a process.
I know his god proof is absolute bonkers, but it is in no way a fundament for cogitio ergo sum. The fact that one thing he said is untrue, does not mean that another thing he said is untrue as well.
I always thought it was a crying shame that there wasn't a philosopher called De'Orss who preceded Descartes, so that if anyone messed up their order in a list, people could could say, "You fool! You put Descartes before De'Orss!"
Spoiler :
Timsup2nothin
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Overly simplified. The far more important
is much more on point.
is much more on point.
Lohrenswald
世界的 bottom ranked physicist
The issue is simply wether you exist or not at all, and that any sort of thinking whatsoever confirms that you do exist, Timsupposedlyso.
It was established in this thread that this argument isn't particularely useful at all, but the issue is whether it is correct or not.
It was established in this thread that this argument isn't particularely useful at all, but the issue is whether it is correct or not.
JohannaK
Heroically Clueless
May I specify "What you think you are determines what you are"?
Timsup2nothin
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No. I might think I'm a god fearing good citizen, when what I think actually makes me a fascist bigot. Timely example, but easily recognizable.
JohannaK
Heroically Clueless
Good point.
I partly agree that we may also think of 'sense that we exist' as a 'process', but then again this would be a different (and at any rate far more instantly experienced) type of process than the process of any thought. In a thought you effectively move to somewhere (regardless of that being likely largely predetermined; the process is there nonetheless). In the sense you exist you do not as evidently move to anywhere.
Of course it is likely that this sense also is not singular even at any given moment, ie it also is a smaller process. But we always do use contrast between sizes (or any other trait) to argue on relative quality of anything, it is part of how we think.
Ultimately the phenomenon of existing and sensing you exist is not bounded by your own sense of it. But that isn't really a factor in examining if the sense of existing is apparently closer to being 'singular' than any thought progression
gay_Aleks
from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
According to cogito ergo sum, rocks don't exist.
This was covered, and in fact you asked it again in this very thread, and i did answer before
(thanks for repressing memory of talking with your neighbour).Indeed the Cogito ergo Sum refers to a claim that if something does think then it can prove it exists due to thinking (and only through that, which is the point we contest in the thread). It does not cover non-thinking stuff, which do also exist either as things-in-themselves or as what they appear from the point of view of an observer
madviking
north american scum
well, as an expert on all things cartesian*, i found this thread way too late. what are we talking about here, now?
*not really i just took two semesters of courses on him
alternatively, 'putting descartes before the whores'.
i guess i should say that there's discussion of adult matters but the linked comment should be safe.
*not really i just took two semesters of courses on him
I always thought it was a crying shame that there wasn't a philosopher called De'Orss who preceded Descartes, so that if anyone messed up their order in a list, people could could say, "You fool! You put Descartes before De'Orss!"
Spoiler :
alternatively, 'putting descartes before the whores'.
i guess i should say that there's discussion of adult matters but the linked comment should be safe.
JohannaK
Heroically Clueless
It seems to me that what we're discussing is cogito ergo sum is a valid definition of existence while it actually is a demonstration of one's existence? I should read the book again, probably.
Pretty sure that the phrase is in the context of Descartes trying to argue that while sensory info may be illusion, mental procedure is not, etc. But the argument has many flaws, and it is really poor next to older versions of it, such as in various Greek philosophers.
And Descartes' referral to a god in all this would have made Plato blush despite the latter's (modest in comparison, and again far more refined) mentions of god in philosophical matters.
What is even funnier is that in the same work Descartes argues that the christian god is much more than just the greek gods of old, cause those are not omnipotent and have vices etc, and apparently Descartes is entirely unaware that this point was made already in the 6th century by Xenophanes to juxtapose notions of god in art/epics to some more distant/shadowy god, etc. Xenophanes is the start of the eleatic philosophers, Parmenides was likely his student.
JohannaK
Heroically Clueless
As I understood it, the reasoning was that, if the world was an illusion, senses are useless to determine its and our own real existence. Yet if we were to eliminate outside input we would still be thinking and in fact able to reflect that we are thinking. Therefore, thinking proves that he is real.
It's similar to a reductio ad absurdo, unless I'm messing up my concepts. Again, I should reread to refresh.
It's similar to a reductio ad absurdo, unless I'm messing up my concepts. Again, I should reread to refresh.
'Illusion' again presupposes a point of view. Which for any human would be his/her own, human and particular in each person also. Any object sensed does not logically have to be 'illusionary' by itself at any rate. Descartes iirc (as noted here i only had to read his brief work for the first year of my uni studies, and that was in the past millenium
) is really very much a low-level philosopher metaphysics-wise (ie notion-examining wise). His own standing contribution is the eponymous 2d axis, which again can be seen as causing problems too i suppose, but surely is still in use and historically important.
