I’m not really sure this is a great debate…I’m more looking for an explanation…
In his First Meditation Descartes casts radical doubt on all of his sources of knowledge, more specifically his senses and his ability to reason. He realizes that his senses have been deceived on occasion and, employing doubt at its fullest strength, then concludes that none of his senses can be trusted.
He then posits the existence of a “demon” who’s only purpose is to guide his rational thought askew. For example, 2+2=4 isn’t actually true, but is merely what the demon wants him to think.
Just as reason can be used to show fault in information, the demon has dominion over the rational realm. It is futile to try to use reason to fight against the demon.
At the beginning of his Second Meditation Descartes realizes that in order for the demon to tinker with his thoughts, he must first be doing some thinking. To me, this doesn’t fly. Isn’t Descartes using his reason (which he admitted can’t be trusted)to come to the conclusion that he must be thinking?
I had no problem with this until after I wrote a paper on it…:smack:
I think Descartes saw personal experience, the experience of oneself as a thinking being, to be something so fundamental it could not be doubted. If one doubts it, then who is doing the doubting? It’s not reason Descartes doesn’t trust–in fact his whole system is based on trying to figure out the Universe by pure thought alone–but the senses. Thus the cogito funtions something like an undefined term in geometry
But if it is an axiom, it isn’t as strong a statement as Descartes thought it was. I.e., he thought it was THE proof: the only one thing he could be sure of.
I’d say either way it amounts to the same thing. You can’t trust outside data, and thus your conclusions must always be mutable. That works whether you can trust cogito or not.
Doesn’t the -act- of recognizing “Cogito ergo sum” as an axiom require Descartes to formulate a thought, using his reason? If it is an axiom, Descartes still shouldn’t be able to acknowledge it as such and still maintain his “demon” argument.
Descartes doesn’t doubt his reasoning when putting forth his argument. His doubt is methodical, not really sceptical. He professes to try to found a certain basis on which to build knowledge. For that purpose he tries to eliminate everything that is not really certain, which means anything on which one can have even the slightest doubt. The only ‘thing’ he cannot eliminate in this matter is the cogito.
So there is no contradiction. Descartes only says that matters of reason are not completely certain, hence are not fit as a basis. He doesn’t say that he doesn’t trust his own reasoning in the Meditations.
An axiom is a proposition that cannot be proven true, but is assumed to be true within a specific mathemetical theory. Like ‘two parallel lines do not intersect’ in Euclidian geometry.
The cogito, on the contrary, is true (at least according to Descartes).
By the mere fact of thinking that you are thinking, you prove it true for yourself. A different tack would be: by the fact that I think about X, it follows that I must be thinking. Hence from the fact that I do think about anything it follows that I think. (I’m not sure whether this is Descartes’ approach, this might be more like Kant).
Maybe I should put it differently, though: the cogito does not function as an axiom in Descartes’ argument: a random proposition as basis wouldn’t do to get certain knowledge. He needs a factually true statement to start with.
But he’s not just stating that he’s thinking, he’s essentially stating that existence is a necessary condition for awareness. That strikes me as an assumption (however intuitively convincing) rather than a truism.
I’m not really sure whether that is an assumption or something that follows directly from the concepts themselves. I do not immediately see how you can have awareness without that awareness existing. Existence seems to me to be indeed a necessary condition for awareness. If you think it is only intuitively convincing, do you have a reason why you suspect it might not be true?
Descartes’ argument goes the other way around, though: the fact of consciousness shows existence of this consciousness. Consciousness implies existence: cogito ergo sum (not an exact translation, I know).
FTR: I don’t buy Descartes’ argument on the whole, if that’s what you’re thinking.
Don’t get me wrong. I do believe that consciousness necessitates existence. I guess I’m just saying that the statement of such strikes me as propositional (i.e. axiomatic) rather than as a formal proof.
Incidentally, we had a long thread a while back in which several posters actually did try to argue that cogito wasn’t true. I’ll see if I can find it.
Mmm, maybe we are using ‘axiomatic’ in different senses of the word. What I wanted to say boils down to this: the cogito argument does not say that Descartes theory of knowledge is based on simply accepting this proposition without knowing whether it is true outside of the theory. Instead the argument says that the cogito is an incontrovertible truth (which is found by an analysis of the terms and our own experience with the very act of thinking), on the basis of which certain knowledge can be derived.
I’m used to seeing axiom used in the former, mathematical manner, but I cannot vouch for other uses of the word.
as someone who participated heavily in the previous thread, i think it can only be concluded that descartes’s basis for knowledge was not based on a truism, and as such, is not nearly as strong as he would make it out to be.
to me, the conclusion “i am”, is a necessary condition for the proposition “i think”. so the argument is circular. at the very least, he was begging the question, in that “i think” is at least as doubtable as “i am”.
so, to respond to the OP, yes that is my take on it. descartes is essentially not doubting as hard as he could. he is making an assumption (“i think”) that is based on the truth of the conclusion.
in that previously linked thread, i don’t think anyone really tried to argue against the truth of “i am”, just that one could not accept the proof provided. an attempt at a proof, though, might center on the lack of a single entity that makes “me”.
to touch on something the OP hinted at, no one ever gets anywhere by doubting one’s ability to reason. if one’s basis of reasoning is faulty, one can’t make any sort of conclusion, and all knowledge is unrepresentable nonsense. it is impossible, for example, to imagine a world without logic, or without a concept of truth.
“I think therefore I am” certainly is an axiom. If we’re being logical, the only way to prove something is to derive it from previously accepted truths using the rules of Aristotlean logic. If you don’t have anything previous to build the statement from, then the statement is an axiom. It is assumed true.
Incontrovertable Truth is a powerful and oft-abused characterization of certain axioms that people want very much to hold. But to think this way is merely rhetorical, connotative, and has no philosophical value because:
As far as the rules of LOGIC are concerned, an “Incontrovertable Truth” is logically identical to an assumption.
I’ve never met an “Incontrovertable Truth” that wasn’t controvertable. All statements are prey to nihilistic arguments (which are perfectly coherent) and most statements are weak to lesser arguments as well. In the case of “I think, therefore I am”, one must ask what the speaker means by “I think” and “I am” before any resolution can be reached.
Many “Incontrovertable Truths” that sound good at first devolve into banal tautaologies when you actually define the vauge terms involved. For instance, we could say:
“I think” = “I am interacting with myself through thought”
“I am” = “The entity I think of as I am interacting with myself through thought”.
If we ignore problems with definition HERE, then what we’re left with is the statement that A=A, prettied up to sound important later. The thing about tautologies (and this is what Objectivists don’t get) is that, alone, they CANNOT BE USED TO PROVE ANYTHING ELSE. Stating A=A, which is correct as far as Aristotlean Logic is concerned, gets you nowhere itself.
So, in summary, if you define an “Incontrovertable Truth” tautologically, it’s true but meaningless.
Tautological definition can take a different form when dealing with epistomology. We could define “thinking” as “anything I label thinking” and go on to claim that whenever someone argues, they are thinking. Then we can define “existence” as “anything I percieve as existing” and then go around pointing out that people can’t possibly counter our bang-up argument! The problem is, we’ve just re-defined our statement so that it embraces nearly everything (or worse, that it embraces a set defined by our narrow prejudice and experience) and so the statement is similarly powerless.
There’s nothing wrong with admitting worldviews are based on axioms. Mathematics is not “self-evident”- the community got over that in the early 1900s - and there’s no reason other worldviews can’t similarly exist that way. People have a great hostile reaction to the fact that there isn’t an objective truth, but it seems to me that this only exists because they only attatch value to objective truth. People need to respect axiomatic world choices. After all, axiomatic does NOT mean arbitrary- mathematics choose the 5 axioms it now rests on because they were the most powerful and useful in the system, and best reflected our organic intuitions. We should do likewise in our world. But NEVER forget we’re basing everything on assumptions.
“I think therefore I am” certainly is an axiom. If we’re being logical, the only way to prove something is to derive it from previously accepted truths using the rules of Aristotlean logic. If you don’t have anything previous to build the statement from, then the statement is an axiom. It is assumed true.
Incontrovertable Truth is a powerful and oft-abused characterization of certain axioms that people want very much to hold. But to think this way is merely rhetorical, connotative, and has no philosophical value because:
As far as the rules of LOGIC are concerned, an “Incontrovertable Truth” is logically identical to an assumption.
I’ve never met an “Incontrovertable Truth” that wasn’t controvertable. All statements are prey to nihilistic arguments (which are perfectly coherent) and most statements are weak to lesser arguments as well. In the case of “I think, therefore I am”, one must ask what the speaker means by “I think” and “I am” before any resolution can be reached.
Many “Incontrovertable Truths” that sound good at first devolve into banal tautaologies when you actually define the vauge terms involved. For instance, we could say:
“I think” = “I am interacting with myself through thought”
“I am” = “The entity I think of as I am interacting with myself through thought”.
If we ignore problems with definition HERE, then what we’re left with is the statement that A=A, prettied up to sound important later. The thing about tautologies (and this is what Objectivists don’t get) is that, alone, they CANNOT BE USED TO PROVE ANYTHING ELSE. Stating A=A, which is correct as far as Aristotlean Logic is concerned, gets you nowhere itself.
So, in summary, if you define an “Incontrovertable Truth” tautologically, it’s true but meaningless.
Tautological definition can take a different form when dealing with epistomology. We could define “thinking” as “anything I label thinking” and go on to claim that whenever someone argues, they are thinking. Then we can define “existence” as “anything I percieve as existing” and then go around pointing out that people can’t possibly counter our bang-up argument! The problem is, we’ve just re-defined our statement so that it embraces nearly everything (or worse, that it embraces a set defined by our narrow prejudice and experience) and so the statement is similarly powerless.
There’s nothing wrong with admitting worldviews are based on axioms. Mathematics is not “self-evident”- the community got over that in the early 1900s - and there’s no reason other worldviews can’t similarly exist that way. People have a great hostile reaction to the fact that there isn’t an objective truth, but it seems to me that this only exists because they only attatch value to objective truth. People need to respect axiomatic world choices. After all, axiomatic does NOT mean arbitrary- mathematics choose the 5 axioms it now rests on because they were the most powerful and useful in the system, and best reflected our organic intuitions. We should do likewise in our world. But NEVER forget we’re basing everything on assumptions.