/lit/ - Literature

>>19561899
>inserting ego
Nice 1 punchy
The cogito proves that there is existence due to thought and nothing more. It doesn’t prove individuation or identity.
/me zips up leathers, dismounts motorcycle.

>>19561899
These ecuadorians are getting more and more retarded, why are they allowed to come to this board?.

>>19561918
Descartes had several formulations of his famous dictum and some did, in fact, include the ego, as in his Principia Philosophiæ.
Seethe and cope.

>>19561941
>These ecuadorians
??? I'm not even an Ecuadorian
>are getting more and more retarded
Refute it—no wait, you can't—just seethe and cope, I guess.
>why are they allowed to come to this board?.
Seriously, take your meds, faggot.

I wrote this in a Descartes threar yesterday here on /lit/, Ill just copypaste it

You have misunderstood Descartes' claim.
First of all, the "I" is not the psychological I (what people call personal identity). In this case the I is just the phenomenical subject of a certain series of representations (if there's a representation of a blue sky, the cartesian I is simply the subject that is representing said blue sky).
Secondly, the sentence "I think therefore I am" is not meant to express a strict, necessary causal correlation. Descartes is NOT saying that we are because we think (this, at best, is a consequence of what he's saying here, which will have to be motivated with other arguments), as if we make ourselves exist out of nothing with an act of thought. It helps to remember when Descartes makes this claim. He says it when he's examining his hyperbolic doubt, in which he tried to imagine to what extent an evil demon could have tricked him into believing in certain items of knowledge. Descartes realized that the demon could have tricked him about the truths of the world, of morality, and even mathematical truths. Suddenly he realizes that the demon could not have possibly tricked Descartes into believing that Descartes exists, since, if Descartes is capable of being tricked, then he already exists. In this sense "I think, therefore I am" can be read as "I think, therefore I can be infallibly sure of the fact that I exist"

>>19561967
You are from Ecuador, I can see your IP

>>19561977
thank you

>>19561977
Exactly what I'm saying; the thought has the property of identity in it's substance.

>>19562003
No you can't and you're still wrong. Take your meds.

>>19561942
That's worse, that means that like you, Descartes is *also* wrong.

I accepted the Cogito ergo sum
with less reserve than I should have, although I might have had enough
sense to realize that any proof of what is self-evident must necessarily be
illusory. If there are no self-evident first principles, as a foundation for
reasoning to conclusions that are not immediately apparent, how can you
construct any kind of a philosophy? If you have to prove even the basic
axioms of your metaphysics, you will never have a metaphysics, because
you will never have any strict proof of anything, for your first proof will
involve you in an infinite regress, proving that you are proving what you
are proving and so on, into the exterior darkness where there is wailing
and gnashing of teeth. If Descartes thought it was necessary to prove his
own existence, by the fact that he was thinking, and that his thought
therefore existed in some subject, how did he prove that he was thinking
in the first place? But as to the second step, that God must exist because
Descartes had a clear idea of him—that never convinced me, then or at
any other time, or now either. There are much better proofs for the existence of God than that one.

>>19562205
>If Descartes thought it was necessary to prove his own existence, by the fact that he was thinking, and that his thought therefore existed in some subject, how did he prove that he was thinking in the first place?
I think he could use the same argument used to prove the existence of the cogito: if he can be tricked into thinking that he thinks, then he is already something that thinks.
I'll add that without further clarifications, this does not tell us much, and as such it is not that controversial. Specifically, he is still not operating on the Kantian notion of "thought" as "spontaneous activity". More specifically, Descartes treats as "thoughts" also our sensory perceptions. If I think I am looking at a green chair, what I am really experiencing is an "idea" of a green chair: even when talking about sensible perceptions, he still argues in terms of "ideas", and therefore "thoughts".
In this sense, the basic cogito argument is compatible with a picture of the world in which thoughts "happen" to us (as it is the case when a stimulation of my sensory organs produces in me a certain perceptual impression). For example, this will be the reading of Malebranche, and also Hobbes and Spinoza.

That said I am also, like you, skeptical of Descartes' ontological argument. Not only I'm not sure wether it actually works (if you want I can give you my objection, which is about the possible "casual" source of our ideas), but I also think that he attributes to God attributes that he could not possibly justify. For example, his proof of our knowledge of the external world relies on the act of attributing "morality" as a perfection to God (from which it will follow that God is not a liar, and that therefore we can trust our perceptions of extended objects), but he has absolutely no way to prove that morality is a perfection. In fact not even in the further developements of his philosophy he ever managed to find a suitable ground for morality. I think that only from Kant onwards such an argument could be made.

>>19561977
>As if we make ourself exist out of nothing with an act of thought
But isn't that exactly what happens when we think?

>>19561899
Philosophy is inventing problems which don't actually exist

>>19562958
Define existence

>>19562951
No, that's a consequence of the existence of a soul, a thinking substance. For us to be able to think, we must first exist, and the ground of our existence (of the existence of the thinking substance we are) is to be found elsewhere.
A similar argument can be made in another way, by pointing out that we are not capable of constructing a thought, even the simplest one, unless the materials required to do so are "given" to us (for example through sensory perception).

>>19562980
Existence in abstracto means nothing and can only be given tautologically, which means there is no definition for existence in abstracto. The question is actually what it means for a problem to be genuine, to exist. A non-genuine (ie "non-existent") problem is a problem which arises, quite literally, from nothing, which is why it is a non-existent problem (it has no relation to any object). Its existence is a linguistic fabrication of the mind, and it only possesses existence insofar as the mind considers it. On a side note, the only philosophy and philosopher I consider to be genuine, in the sense that he is the only man in history to properly rectify the meandering fabrications of countless others, is Aristotle. He is unsurpassed in understanding and expounding what I have just stated. Which isn't to say that he didn't make some mistakes, the point is his mistakes were not significant ones.

>>19563032
So then what are genuine problems

>>19563016
Oh I see, thinking is just proof of existence, however existing comes before thinking. But existing also comes from thinking too right, since in order to think we must first exist, and therefore since we think, we do exist? The root of existence comes from somewhere else, but existence can also come simultaneously from thinking.
While we are incapable of contructing thoughts without material given to us first, the fact that in thoughts is this material found, legitimizes the material

>>19563099
Or, in other words, we think because we exist, but we don't stop existing, because we think

>>19562356
>Descartes treats as "thoughts" also our sensory perceptions. If I think I am looking at a green chair, what I am really experiencing is an "idea" of a green chair: even when talking about sensible perceptions, he still argues in terms of "ideas", and therefore "thoughts".
>In this sense, the basic cogito argument is compatible with a picture of the world in which thoughts "happen" to us (as it is the case when a stimulation of my sensory organs produces in me a certain perceptual impression). For example, this will be the reading of Malebranche, and also Hobbes and Spinoza.
And this is what Hume will also assume, right?

>>19563395
Yes. It must still be said that after the cogito argument Descartes will add bits that are seriously incompatible with what philosophers like Hume said. Here I was specifically focusing on the cogito argument.
>>19563099
>But existing also comes from thinking too right, since in order to think we must first exist, and therefore since we think, we do exist? The root of existence comes from somewhere else, but existence can also come simultaneously from thinking.
If by "simultaenous" here you mean that thought is directly entailed by the soul's essence, in the sense that we cannot talk about a moment in which a soul exists without thinking, then you're right. After all Descartes says that souls are "thinking substances", meaning that thinking is an essential part of our substantiality. This is in fact one of the famous formulae that will become extremely famous after his death: "the soul always think".
I think this is a fair point, even when we translate it into contemporary terms. After all, what is a consciousness without cognized contents? If a consciousness has no content at all, if it doesnt think or experience anything, then we would have no reason to speak about a "consciousness" in the first place: rather, it will be an unconscious (inanimate) object.

>>19563626
But I mean, philosophy is entrapped in this conundrum of ideal representations vs direct sensible impressions that the skeptics were aware since antiquity but only until Kant (for Hume does not resolve anything, he just affirms custom and habit as epistemological basis). Descartes is not outside this dichotomy, his dualism affirms the former representationalism, right?

>>19563876
Descartes affirms both, but I do not trust the argument he uses (see here >>19562356, and what I have said about the notion of "truthful God"). But I would still claim that his cogito argument, by itself, is not what leads to these conclusion. I think it could be easily retrnslated n Humean and Kantian terms (e.g. in the case of Hume, by pointing out that doubting that there is a bundle of perception is self-contradictory; Kant goes even as far as saying that we cannot doubt we are subjects possessing absolute free will)

>>19561899
I don't think, therefore I don't exist