Descartes’s argument is not (or at least, not purely) ciruclar, since it is based upon the external observation of “my” thoughts, which, fascinatingly, cannot be logically doubted out of existence. It is reasonable to base an argument for proof of something by eliminating the possibility of it being false. Yes, to do so it has to draw upon observed phenomena. Just like every other proof.
It is easily as sound as any other proof we have, because all other proofs have premises that can be logically doubted.
More like, “There are ways to explain away this. There are ways to explain away that. But any justification that successfully explains away the first N things implies that I exist*. So, (since, obviously, failing to explain away everything else also would imply I exist,) I exist.” Assuming you are trying to restate his ‘deciever’ argument.
Have you figured out your reason for believing the ‘axiom’: “I exist” yet? Because if you’re really into believieng things with absolutely no justification, then I think I have a spare bridge around here somewhere…
*Because these deceptions just keep on happening, and if I didn’t exist, I wouldn’t know about them.
I think I’ve made my case as strong as it needs to be.
This is hardly the same thing. You cannot believe everything with justification, because that implies infinite regress. Descartes stopped falling into that black hole by making an assumption. Fine; but to then claim that he proved that assumption by using it is macaroni but not much else.
Your case is a strong as it’s going to get, I’m sure. It has an error in it though.
No he didn’t. Descartes’s argument stops at an observation, not an assumption. There is a distinct difference.
We have already covered why the observation of one’s own cogntion is not doubtable. Repeatedly. Several times. It also is a different observation that “I exist.”
But even if the observation had been 'I exist", this isn’t a problem. The problem is that you seem to be unable to discern between an undeniable observation and an unsupported assumption.
To me, the problem seems to be that neither Descartes nor begbert2 can recognize the assumptions that have already been made when one “observes one’s own cognition”.
BTW, the observation of one’s own cognition is quite clearly doubtable, unless one has already made assumptions about both cognition and self. I might, for instance, hypothesize that what I perceive as mental processes are nothing more than deterministic results of neurochemicals and that both consciousness and cognition are illusions created after the fact by associative memory trails. In such a model thoughts, thinkers, et. al. have no more claim to existence than unicorns: they are a fiction spun by the brain to make the stories it tells more interesting.
Another alternative: identity might lack continuity. Each moment of “realization” could form a discontinuous bubble of perceptions including both the “I” and the “other”. Such a model need not sustain (probably could not sustain) either causality or implication from thought to thinker. Whatever exists in the instantaneous bubble exists independently, without cause (requiring time) or implication (requiring alternatives).
To paraphrase the existent bard, “There are more doubts in heaven and earth, Descartes, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Greetings Spiritus Mundi! New life into the discussion! Welcome to this rather tired thread; I will address your alternate scenarios now:
Not quite. The thought has now been explained, it’s deterministic, no free will, etc. However, this does not mean that they do not exist; they are the aforementioned results, which are observed as thoughts by the owner of the brain.
Similarly for the thinker; the thinker is defined as the source of the thoughts; in this case, the brain that is generating them. Because the brain is, in this scenario, stated as existing, it backs up the claim that the brain itself calcualtes deterministically: that some real source of thoughts exists.
This isn’t an argument in favor of determinism or souls; merely the existence of the source of our thoughts, regardless of what the thoughts or that source actually is.
Descartes’ process is ony warranteed for the instant you are thinking; it makes no claims about past or future. He said this explicitly:
Note the “each time”; he has to keep doing it to maintain surety. And, while I grant that causality would be nonsensical in a non-temporal world, it does not follow that implication would be. Again, implication doesn’t imply causality. Nor does it require alternatives; it rather restricts alternatives, by explicitly stating that a particular combination of conditions does not occur.
Perhaps we mean a different thing by implication. But, suppose I combine your two scenarios to show that existence is still implied:
Consider the case where my ‘thoughts’ are the symptom of my brain structure, and my existence is not passing through time. This is exemplified by the notion of a ‘book of my brain’ which stores the image of my entire brain state, at the instant that I grokked ‘cogito ergo sum’. A core dump of my head, if you will.
Noone would claim that this book is alive, has volition, or even cognition. However, the instant of mind printed in the book is correct; ‘cogito ergo sum’ still applies to it! What is proven is the existence of the book. For, if the book didn’t exist, then the contents wouldn’t be there, and there would be no image of mind in the process of ‘having’ this ‘thought’.
‘cogito ergo sum’ doesn’t prove reality, perception, reason, temporality, volition, cognition, or anything else but some kind of existence, in some kind of sense. I suspect that virtually all ‘disproofs’ of ‘cogito ergo sum’ stem from giving it too much credit.
Many people have said this. They miss Descartes entire demonstration, then, which hinges upon everything possible to doubt being doubted. I dare say this requires memory. If we wipe memory away as doubtable (which I think it is) then I wonder where the “I” comes from that is distinct from “thought”. Clearly something else wasn’t wiped away: what was that?
What, are we having a difficulty with the english language? The thinker is that which is required for the thought to currently exist. If the thought currently exists with the capability of existing on its own, like toothpaste that was emitted from a tube, then the ‘thinker’ is the source of the thought. If the thought cannot exist in a vaccum, then the thinker is that which contains or sustains the thought. I might add that, since the argument is talking about that is being had now, there is no temporal gap between the creation of the though and now during which the creator could have ceased existing. And that most people operate on the assumption that a thought does not have the capability of existing uncontained anyway.
I dare say you’re wrong.
…
Oh, did you want justification for that? It’s just that so often you seem to make comments with little or no explanation. Like that one, “I dare say this requires memory,” for example. You seem to be implying that the lack of verified memory imples that the thinker and thought are one; that is, that the thought created itself somehow. This seems quite silly.
Wether your memory is real or wether there is enough temporality for you to have accessed the memory is irrelevant. Memory is not required; that your thought actually have content is not required. At the instant that you have a thought, that you create it, you are implying your existence.
And if you’re saying that it takes memory to remember that we’ve already doubted some stuff, duh. This doens’t mean we have to stop making the argument. What should Descartes have said?
“I am now going to doubt everything. First, I’m going to doubt I can spel. Thehn, Iy’m giong to dout Ay no grammr. Iy thn dout puntattion Iy doubb albbet 7216 2376 12347 23”? Please. It’s called metacognition. You can use cognition to doubt cognition without throwing your whole brain out the window.
Oh, yeah. …:
Five points off for taking something out of context. Plus two points back for being witty about it. Not that I found it amusing…
Apparently one of us is, because if the thinker is the source of thoughts and yet we are talking about implication, not causality, then one of us clearly has a problem. I’m happy to give you that benefit of the doubt, but words like “generate” and “source” largely use causality, not implication. That I can see my car implies there is a light source. The image of the car I see is “generated”, that is, caused, by my eyes.
Stop it. Right now. You want me to accept you are only discussing implication, then discuss implication. Do not “source” things, do not “create” things. You do not get the benefit of causality if you are going to get upset with me interpreting it into what you say.
Imply what? That I exist? Of course I exist! It was my thought, emphasis on the “my”. Do you suppose you can haphazardly toss subjects around like that when the entire point of the proof is an irrefutable demonstration of subject? It is good enough for Descartes and those that agree with him, it is not good enough for me.
I am fundamentally aware of the difficulty of presenting arguments in language that are not supposed to deal with language. This is not the problem with cogito ergo sum. The problem with the cogito is very definitely that there is
No reason to think that the cogito is more than what is thought, other than begged questions and unstated assumptions
No reason to think that existence was demonstrated when it was assumed in the first place. “Deceive me all he likes, I still am.” Of course! Because I am the one being deceived. Which was the assumption.
You misunderstand this scenario. There is no “owner of the brain”. Cognition, like thought, is an ilusion; it is a side-effect of the brain’s day-to-day regulation of neurochemical input. In this model, we are not conscious. Consider it the inversion of a Turing Test. There is no conscious agent, no originator of thoughts (as we think we understand them), no observer of internal processes. There are only neurochemicals which generate after the fact patterns of association which we mistake ofr active processes.
The brain in this model is equally the source of thoughts and unicorns, and both thoughts and unicorns have equal claim to existence. So does the thinker, if the existence of a thinker is concluded from the existence of a unicorn.
YES! Read that again: because the brain is stated as existing we can claim that it exists.
May the circle be unbroken.
That sentence does not make the claim you say it does. Descartes process in unmistakenly bound to time. If erl’s mention of memory does not convince you then please consider the phrase being maturely and carefully considered. The process is not an instantaneous thing, and I do not believe Descartes ever presented it as such.
What he does present as being “in the moment” is the truth of existence. To use erl’s breakdown, the ontological conclusion is instantaneous, the epistemilogical argument is not.
Implication does require alternatives. Specifically, A -> B requires the alternative ~B. Otherwise, it signifies nothing other than A & B. In a discrete present, it is meaningless to speak about alternatives. There is no other. A & B & C . . . The implication operator (->) is empty of meaning, because there is nothing for it to differentiate. (Or, if you prefer, all things imply all else. But I believe that this thread has already addressed the “I _____ therefore I am” position.)
To the extent that Descartes tautology is still given consideration, it is due to the special relationship between thoughts and thinker. But in an isolated instant no special relationship exist. Indeed, no relationship exists between thoughts and thinker that does not exist between any 2 (or several) elements of the perceived now.
Wrong question. You made the statemnet that the observation of one’s own cognition could not be doubted. I disagreed.
Then no one should claim that your metaphor addresses the observation of cognition.
No, because there has been no cogito. As to “correct”, please consider what you are saying: if one makes a physical model of a thing, and the model exists, then the thing must exist.
Ever seen a statue of a unicorn?
Of course not, because it doesn’t prove anything. However, it does depend upon cognition. Hence the first word. Descartes also relied upon perception, of course, in the epistemological argument leading up to his tautology.
I wouldn’t know, I don’t think I have ever seen anyone try to disprove it. “I think therefore I’m not” doesn’t seem like an easy argument to make.
The relationship between implication (that is, in the formal logic world, which is when the term first came up) and causation is not a clear thing.
Let me present some sentences:
The existence of thoughts imply the existence of thinkers.
Thoughts cause thinkers.
The first is true (to some, obviously, to some tentatively). The second is false. Lesson 1: implication and causation are not the same thing.
The existence of thoughts imply the existence of thinkers.
The existence of thinkers cause the existence of thoughts.
This sounds better, at least, but you can’t always expect flipping it around to work:
If a number is divisible by six, this implies that the number is even.
If a number is even, this causes the number to be divisible by six.
The first is true, the second is false. Lesson 2: there isn’t a consistent direction of causality associated with implications.
And, of course, talking of two objects under the same water spigot:
If water is falling on object A, this implies that water is falling on object B.
Object A being watered on causes object B to be watered on.
It obviously doesn’t work to swap A and B around either.Lesson 3: You cannot know causality at all if you start from an implication.
But, surely, there is some relationship, right? Sure there is. If you start with a statement of causality, it can usually be beaten into an implication. Though not always.
‘A causes B’ can be written into ‘A -> B’, if A always causes B, under all curcumstances, or you can write ‘B -> A’, if B cannot occur without A causing it
Thus “buildings cause the sun to be blocked”, cannot be turned into an implication, because not all buildings always block the sun, and the sun can be blocked by other things than implications.
Lesson 4: Back off about the implications; you don’t seem to know what we’re talking about.
More specifically, we haven’t been talking about implications directly since we ditched the formal logic; why are you bringing them up now? I stand by my definition of ‘thinker’: anything that causes, spawns, or is entertaining a thought, as more fully explained in my previous post.
Unless you’re asserting that a thought spawns itself from nothing, the existence of a thought implies, at the instance of its inception, a thinker. THIS is an implication. A thought does NOT cause a thinker, which is the accusation I was refuting when I said that implication isn’t the same as causality.
We’re talking about causality now. Get a grip. It’s not that hard to work with these things, you just have to do it right.
You don’t seem to have a handle on what most people do when trying to prove wehter something exists. Here are some sample arguemnts, for real-life examples; go to damn near any thread under the Great Debates dicussion forum that discusses something vaguely probable.
A: “Ghosts exist!”
B: “Says what?”
A: “I got a picture of a cemetary with a ghost in it!”
B: “I doubt it! I can come up with other possible reasons for that light!”
L: “Psychic powers exist!”
B: “Says what?”
L: “There’s exactly one university that says so!”
B: “Their methods have been discredited; I can come up with other possible reasons for that result!”
L: “Those are wrong! And besides, I’ve had a NDE!”
B: “I doubt it! I can come up with other possible reasons for your experience!”
L: “Those are wrong! And besides, I’ve had a NDE!”
B: …
A: “God exists!”
B: “Says what?”
A: “He spoke to me in a vision!”
B: “I doubt it, I can come up with other possible reasons for your experience!”
Or a slight variant:
A: G-Dub is actually a Democrat!
B: “Says what?”
A: He said so!
B: CITE??
See a pattern? You seem to have a new approach. (I’M NOT TRYING TO ATTRIBUTE WORDS TO YOU, I’M TRYING TO POINT OUT THE FLAWS IN YOUR METHOD! NOBODY BAN ME!)
A: “God exists!”
E: “Says what?”
A: “He spoke to me!”
E: “You can’t use God as the object of a sentence; you haven’t proved it exists yet!”
A: “Wait a second!”
A: “My mother exists!”
E: “Says what?”
A: “She spoke to me!”
E: “You can’t use her as the object of a sentence; you haven’t proved she exists yet!”
A: “Wait a second!!!” erislover, your ‘method of disputation’ can be used to disprove ANYTHING, in ANY argument. It doesn’t have any relevance to reality. You’re not disputing my claim “I have sensed myself thinking”; you’re just trying to get it struck from the record for the crime of being relevant to the topic. NOT everything begs the question!!
As to your brain scenario, does the brain think it’s thinking, or doesn’t it? Because if the brain thinks its thinking, then there are most definitely “Things” which are being mistaken for thoughts. Yes? Well, I don’t care those things are thoughts or chemicals or jelly donuts, they’re something, which does exist, which can be mistaken as a thought by the brain itself. If they are states of or caused by the brain, then the brain’s existence is proven by their existence, which is proven by the fact that if they didn’t exist, the brain wouldn’t think they did.
The reasons that we’re not using the brain’s tendency to create unicons to base this proof off of, is the brain doesn’t know it is having unicorns. It knows it is having something, which it calls thoughts.
And as to this:
try reading it again; this is the bit where you the reader get to check the brains work. See that ‘brain itself calcualtes deterministically’ bit? That’s what the brain does. Unlike the brain, You were able to read the scenario, and can verify that the conclusion it came to is right. Read for meaning, people, not to sift out phrases that look suspicious.
To paraphrase:
There is no f-ing circle!
Sigh, What he’s saying is, “After thinking about it for a long time, I have come to the conclusion that ecah time I express or think the proposition “I am, I exist”, I am proving the fact.” Again, read for meaning.
And as to the book, if someone pakes a physical model of a thing, then the phyiscal model exists. If a book had a brin printed in it, the book exists, not a ‘live’ brain. I never said that the ‘I’ in the cogito was right about what it was, did I? Quite the opposite. The concept is simple: if NOTHING was there, then there wouldn’t be any illusions of cogito, even if they are merely static pictures of thought. Tearing memory and temporality and direct existence out of it merely make you unsure what the heck is going on, not wether anything is going on at all.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Spiritus Mundi Of course not, because it doesn’t prove anything. However, it does depend upon cognition. Hence the first word. Descartes also relied upon perception, of course, in the epistemological argument leading up to his tautology.‘Cogito ergo sum’ doesn’t translate into ‘thought implies existence’. It starts with an observation, “I think”, which is then used to conclude “I am”.
Disproving something and proving the something that looks similar but isn’t are entirely different things. The thing you’re trying to disprove is the claim “I think”, anyway. If you can prove “I don’t think”, then you might have a shot at it.
I did not bring formal logic, general implication, or causality into the discussion. In fact, I tried to remove it because none of them hold in Descartes possibly-illusory “world” of pure “seeming”. Your repeated appeals to them are quite frustrating. As far as they were illustrative, I took what could be gleaned from them, which is why you suddenly found me attacking logical arguments “after they’d been ok before” or whatever you said. Wrong, they were never “ok” before, they were illustrative. Descartes proof cannot be placed in logic. You spent considerable effort “convincing” me of that (when I never dissented).
Secondly, I would never dispute “I have sensed myself thinking” in as much as it makes sense. It is not, however, a proof. You do recognize that there are differences between motivation for a belief or element of knowledge and justification for a belief or element of knowledge?
Your examples of “my argments” show me you have entirely missed my point. I will, perhaps with considerable failure, attempt to demonstrate Descartes circle one more time.
Step one: “I can doubt all kinds of shit.” Note the assumption of subject.
Step two: “Can I be deceived (or even deceive myself) that I exist?” Note the repeated use of the subject.
Step three: “Of course not, because look at step one [who was being deceived?].” Note the circular reference and the appeal to memory.
begbert2, I have no desire to sift through your snide insinuation to locate the relevant points. I also am not inspired to draft the separate response which you deserve. Good bye.
Hmm; I hadn’t noticed an abundance of snideness to S.M., though erislover has grounds of complaint. Oh, well.
I would have phrased it, “It appears to me that I am thinking.” The evidence in favor of this statement is as described many times before; I can’t doubt it without reaffirming it, yaddah yaddah yaddah. That’s my justification. I don’t need a motivation beause I couldn’t reasonably doubt it even if I wanted to.
I would like to use this statement in a proof regarding my own eistence. If it is true, or for even a moment can be assumed true for the sake of argument, then that should certainly be possible.
Explain to me why this observation cannot be used in an argument; I don’t understand.
After this assertion is in place, the rest of the argument is basically a ‘where there’s smoke, there’s fire’ sort of tkinking. So, the argument seems to me analogous of:
“It appears that there’s smoke; I cannot doubt it.”
“Well then, there must be fire.”*
And to me your protests seems like: “You can’t claim ‘It appears that there’s smoke; I cannot doubt it.’; that statement implies that there is a fire. That’s circular reasoning!”
To me, this sort of protest seems to not only make sense, but to be an attempt to be deliberately irritating, since it in one fell swoop states that the arguement is sound, and then tries to throw the whole thing out the window.
Now, if you please, explain to me why your protest of circularity in the Descartian argument differs from the smoke/fire “circularity.” I would appreciate knowing, because until this is made clear, I cannot give credence to your protest.
*Yes, I know that smoke can come from other places than fire; that is why I haven’t brought up this examle before. In the cogito ergo sum, we have to gernalize ‘thinker’ to cover all sources of smoke, er, thought to account for this sort of problem.
The argument is fine; Descartes always has been and always will be correct. This is because the argument is circular.
It isn’t that the statement can’t be used in an argument in the general sense, it is that it cannot be used in this argument, in the argument meant to prove my existence.
No one disputes the claim that there is thought. The specious claim is that “I am thinking” when “I am” is what is supposed to be in question (if it wasn’t in question, then it wouldn’t need to be proved). But if “I am” is in question, noting that “I am thinking” can’t be used to demonstrate it.
One thing that must be clear is the context of a given statement. When I write out, “It appears to me that I am thinking.”, The goal is to clearly convey an idea to an audience.
The purpose of the phrase “It appears to me that” is to convey the idea to myself and others that my thoughts might not actually be what they appear to be. Individuals, for example Spiritus Mundi, might claim that my ‘thoughts’ are not really thoughts at all, but merely side effects of brain chemistry that I think are thoughts. I do not believe that that makes a difference to my argument, and have attempted to phrase my premise to avoid the issue entirely. If we agree that that that the reality of the composition of the thoughts is irrelevant to the fact of their existence, we can phrase the observation as:
“I am thinking.”
At this point, things get a bit more edgy. There are at least two assumptions that are made in this observation. They are valid points of contention to Descartes, if addressed specifically. Potshots claiming circularity are not sufficient.
Observation: There are thoughts.
Feel free to dispute this. We’ve covered this before, but we can do it again if desired.
Assumption 1: The existence of thoughts implies a thinker.
The thinker has been laboriously defined earlier. If you dispute this, then you are stating that the observed thougts always existed, were not created, and are not housed or supported by anything. If you wish to discuss this, say so and I’ll explain why I think otherwise. I believe that the long-previously mentioned Russell espoused this view.
Assumption 2: These thoughts are mine.
This is more a matter of definition than anything else; the largest problem would be if you entertained the assumption that possession is exclusive to a single owner, which I do not. (Protests that all ‘my’ thoughts are actaully God’s afterthoughts don’t phase me.) This assumption merely labels the thoughts ‘mine’, and fromthat, labels the generator of those thought ‘I’. As this is nothing more than a label and implies nothing about the properties of the thinker but what is independently observed (that it thinks), I doubt anyone has the right to dispute this. I can label things how I please, particularly if that labeling seems to fit observed (if doubted) evidence.
Taken together, these observation and assumptions can be combined into the sttement “There are thoughts (which are ‘mine’), which have a progenitor (which is ‘I’).” This is basically the entirety of Descartes’s argument. Maintianing the existence of the observer, which is not one of these assumptions, is also not necessary to the arguement.
erislover,
Or, alternatively, you could tell me that you do indeed think that the smoke/fire argument is invalid due to circularity. I would then back away slowly… :eek:
