Good grief; it is easy to confuse you people. It seems that the confusion arises by the fact that when I talk about ‘I’ the word I keeps turning up in reference to me, the person typing the text on the computer screen. Perhaps all of you believe that when you consider things in the theoretical case, they must automatically be real.
I do not think that you consciously believe that. However, the consistent failure to consider the separation between argument and arguer tempts me to give credence to the belief.
A theoretical case can be constructed which can after the fact be applied to ourselves, thus bypassing claims that we are starting with the assumption of existence. The easiest way to do this is with a proof by contradiction.
Consider the case where nothing exists, anywhere. Though existence is a slippery concept, I choose to define it (<-definition warning) such that in the absence of existence, an object could have no observable attributes. (Or unobservable ones, but that is mostly irrelevant.) Because distortion can occur, any property can manifest in any way, incuding the failure to be observable. However, no amount of distortion can create the appearance of properties if there are no properties whatsoever, anywhere.
So, we have considered the implications of total everywhere-wide non-existence. These implications are not dependent on our existence; they are an isolated theoretical case.
Now, compare the theoretical case to what we percieve to be reality. If nothing else, there are observable properties in abundance. This contradicts the absence of properties which would be the case if nothing existed. Because the only premise to the theoretical case was that, in the theoretical case, nothing existed. it cannot be the case in our reality (whatever that is) that nothing exists. Existence is necessarily proven, without anything that is even close to a circle.
Now that we have proven that something exists, is there anything else that we can determine? Such as, what is it that exists? Can anything be determined?
Depends. In one way, everything that appears to exist exists, because it all has some basis in existence. After all, if there weren’t any existence, there wouldn’t be anything at all, or the appearance thereof. It is certainly valid in this sense to claim that “I” exist, in the same way that everything exists that seems to be displaying properties.
There are reasonable discussions that can be had about cogito ergo sum, you know. I’ve been waiting for weeks to hear some of them. But, unfortunately, everyone keeps singing out the same old tired ‘It’s circular’, in one form or another. As shown above, the existence of ‘I’ can be demonstrated with absolutely no circularity whatesoever.
A resonable comment would be, “I don’t like your definition of ‘exist’!” Mindless squalkers will then fail to give a preferred definition for ‘exist’. More intelligent people might actually give alternate definitions.
I have doubts that any “looser” defintion of ‘exist’, that is, being less restrictive, would retain any of the meaning of the word. If someone can come up with a definiton of ‘exist’ that does not state that things that don’t exist have no properties, then I will happy agree that by that definition, existence is not impled by the illusion of reality. The definition should still have some relation to existence, however.
Much more likely is the case where people’s defintion of existence will be tighter, limiting the set of things that are considered to exist. For example, Descartes considered the object of illusions to be nonexistent, as do we the subjects of pictures. It’s actually kind of interesting to think about; existence often depends on context. Thoughts in a mind are said to exist in the mind, but they are not considered to exist in the reality through which the mind moves. It seems clear that the specific details of the definition of ‘exist’ vary from context to context, and are thus not generalizable. But, I’m willing to discuss attempts to do so.
One might ask why, in Descartes’s argument, is ‘I’ singled out? Hard to say, him being rather dead and all, and difficult to ask directly. (Perhaps we should ask on the psychics thread… :)) Personally, I suspect two reasons: one, because Descartes had already ‘doubted’ everything else, and two, because philosopers don’t like to devalue their own cognitive processes. That’s their meal ticket, after all.
It shoud be obvious to all but a rare few that I’m perfectly happy to believe that Descartes could have stated himself better; however, to imply that his famous cliche cannot be banged into a valid, noncircular form is crap. Take the above argument and rather than feeding in all of reality as a counterexample, simply feed in what you consider to be the definition of ‘you’. I actually don’t give a tinker’s damn what your definition is; surely you have some way of telling what’s you from what’s not you. If you like you can limit the sphere of examination to what you seem to be thinking. Then, note that “you” (the set under examination) are exhibiting properties not symptomatic of nothingness, note the contradiction, note the necessary existence of something existing, all as in the above general example. Still non-circular, since the non-existence scenario is left general and doesn’t refer to you. Now, however, since the input set of “non-nothing stuff” could be called ‘I’, whatever existence is backing the illusion of ‘I’ can also be called ‘I’, largely because ‘I’ is an open-ended pronoun that can refer to anything. It’s not so tough to understand. We actually are quite forgiving of that kind of thing everywhere; most people don’t go around saying “None of this stuff exists; it’s actually just composed of subatomic particles.” Labels and names of things are consistently applied to collectives of source material. So, you think, therefore, you are, because anything that anythings, therefore, it is (at some level).
Again, a non-circular argument that proves necessary (basic) existence can be made, and included among the various refined forms it can take is “I think therefore I am.” It is difficult from what I’ve read to tell wether Descartes was aware that the arguement form was more generalized, but as such an argument is required for him to have finally come to the assertion “I am” in a valid way, I give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he had something the like in mind.
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