The Cogito
[quote= Being and Nothingness, p 156]
...the reflective achievement of Descartes, the cogito, must not be limited to the infinitesimal instant. Moreover this conclusion could be drawn from the fact that thought is an act which engages the past and shapes it outline by the future. I doubt therefore that I am, said Descartes. But what would remain of methodical doubt if it could be limited to the instant? A suspension of judgment, perhaps. But a suspension of judgment is not a doubt; it is only a necessary structure of doubt. In order for doubt to exist, it is necessary that this suspension be motivated by an insufficiency of reasons for affirming or for denying -- which refers to the past -- and that it be maintained deliberately until the intervention of new elements -- which is already a project of the future.
Doubt appears on the foundation of a pre-ontological comprehension of knowing and of requirements concerning truth. this comprehension and these requirements, which give all its meaning, to doubt, engage the totality of human reality and its being in the world; they suppose the existence of an object of knowledge and of doubt -- that is, of a transcendent permanence in universal time. It is then a related conduct which doubts the object, a conduct which represents on of the mods of the being-in-the-world of human reality. To discover oneself doubting is already to be ahead of oneself in the future, which conceals the end, the cessation, and the meaning of this doubt, and to be behind oneself in the past, which conceals the constituent motivations of the doubt and its stages of development, and to be outside of oneself in the world as presence to the object which one doubts.
[/quote]
Top paragraph looks to me to be the core of the argument without any jargon, and the second paragraph I separated because of the use of "pre-ontological", but thought it fleshed out Sartre's position on the cogito more than the argument against Descartes' methodology.
I liked this quote because:
1) I've been looking for quotes in Being and Nothingness that might inspire good threads here at TPF.
and,
2) As we ought expect from a master critiquing a master it's an excellent example of philosophical engagement without agreement, and without simply negating. In some way it even reads like a deconstruction.
*****
So the question: Must the cogito rely upon a notion of the past and future in order for its doubt to make sense?
If so then it seems the skeptic must at least admit of knowledge of time. And so cannot be universally skeptical. If we know about time then just how could there be an Evil Demon behind the appearances? Is it outside of time? If so then the cogito has nothing to do with it, as per the argument.
Also of interest is how the argument does not touch on Pyrrhonian skepticism, which explicitly courts the suspension of judgment. This has more to do with the sort of skepticism inspired by Descartes which desires a certain foundation.
...the reflective achievement of Descartes, the cogito, must not be limited to the infinitesimal instant. Moreover this conclusion could be drawn from the fact that thought is an act which engages the past and shapes it outline by the future. I doubt therefore that I am, said Descartes. But what would remain of methodical doubt if it could be limited to the instant? A suspension of judgment, perhaps. But a suspension of judgment is not a doubt; it is only a necessary structure of doubt. In order for doubt to exist, it is necessary that this suspension be motivated by an insufficiency of reasons for affirming or for denying -- which refers to the past -- and that it be maintained deliberately until the intervention of new elements -- which is already a project of the future.
Doubt appears on the foundation of a pre-ontological comprehension of knowing and of requirements concerning truth. this comprehension and these requirements, which give all its meaning, to doubt, engage the totality of human reality and its being in the world; they suppose the existence of an object of knowledge and of doubt -- that is, of a transcendent permanence in universal time. It is then a related conduct which doubts the object, a conduct which represents on of the mods of the being-in-the-world of human reality. To discover oneself doubting is already to be ahead of oneself in the future, which conceals the end, the cessation, and the meaning of this doubt, and to be behind oneself in the past, which conceals the constituent motivations of the doubt and its stages of development, and to be outside of oneself in the world as presence to the object which one doubts.
[/quote]
Top paragraph looks to me to be the core of the argument without any jargon, and the second paragraph I separated because of the use of "pre-ontological", but thought it fleshed out Sartre's position on the cogito more than the argument against Descartes' methodology.
I liked this quote because:
1) I've been looking for quotes in Being and Nothingness that might inspire good threads here at TPF.
and,
2) As we ought expect from a master critiquing a master it's an excellent example of philosophical engagement without agreement, and without simply negating. In some way it even reads like a deconstruction.
*****
So the question: Must the cogito rely upon a notion of the past and future in order for its doubt to make sense?
If so then it seems the skeptic must at least admit of knowledge of time. And so cannot be universally skeptical. If we know about time then just how could there be an Evil Demon behind the appearances? Is it outside of time? If so then the cogito has nothing to do with it, as per the argument.
Also of interest is how the argument does not touch on Pyrrhonian skepticism, which explicitly courts the suspension of judgment. This has more to do with the sort of skepticism inspired by Descartes which desires a certain foundation.
Comments (203)
No. It seems as though there is something more to it than the solipsism Descartes allowed in his analysis on the cogito. I think that one can allow skepticism about things like God's intention or even the Will itself.
Quoting Moliere
Yes, I think Sartre is right, at least with respect to doubt.
Quoting Moliere
Agreed.
Quoting Moliere
I don't follow this. Are you supposing that the Evil Demon cannot manipulate our experience of time?
Quoting Moliere
Doesn't Descartes explicitly court the suspension of judgment? It seems to me that Descartes thinks he can descend even below the level of Pyrrhonism and nevertheless re-surface with certain knowledge.
The idea that doubt can, dialectically so to speak, lead to certainty, is dependent on a pre-established conceptual context, which is historically, culturally mediated, and is thus itself open to doubt. hence the importance of the past. And the possibility that the said conceptual paradigm might one day be completely supplanted brings the future into play.
We don't see the skeptic Sartre is responding to in the OP. I find it difficult to tell exactly what radical doubt he's responding to.
This is almost a troll reading, but I want to give it anyway - no further resources are needed to talk about the validity of "I think, therefore I am" than seeing if, in the circumstance of the utterance, predicating an entity entails it exists. In normal circumstances it does. Therefore the argument ought to be understood as valid by competent speakers of English.
What isn't a troll reading about it - Sartre's commentary is transcendental, a reading of the necessary preconditions of Descartes' ability to argue, judge, doubt ensuring the truth of the claim it seeks to demonstrate. That the doubter exists. The above account involves only norms of language, and specifically talks about predicability rather than any phenomenological, a-priori or transcendental structure.
If an account of the argument can be given without use of the specific transcendental concepts Sartre is using, how can we say his analysis of necessary preconditions follows? Since the argument can be conceived otherwise.
I mostly just wanted to throw this in the thread to see what happens.
Yeah, but it's very different -- methodical doubt is a process for finding a certain foundation for knowledge in Descartes. He's using it as a tool to dig out the foundations from the confusion.
Also, since he finds his certainty, he's no longer a skeptic at all by the end of the meditations. Whereas the Pyrrhonian wants to sustain the attitude of suspension of belief to the point that supposing someone came up with a persuasive argument then it would be the Pyrrhonian skeptic's task to invent another way to dissolve that belief.
Well, Descartes wants to occupy the same space as the Pyrrhonist. He has a different goal, but he does not want to provide himself with a guarantee that he will get there (just as the Pyrrhonist is not supposed to provide himself with a guarantee that he will reach his goal of ataraxia). See:
He's not responding to a skeptic here really, but using Descartes as a foil and it seems to me to fit a certain conception of the self as popularized in The Matrix, and so serves as a certain disentangling of concepts -- the topic he's writing about here is the structure of temporality after a bunch of other stuff. Mostly I've been looking for quotes that could be decontextualized and this is one of the first that struck me as a good entry into an old topic.
Quoting fdrake
The way Sartre is talking isn't quite like having necessary preconditions, though the critique of Descartes relies upon that notion. But since it's Descartes that sets up the problem by using doubt it's not Sartre's necessary preconditions but Descartes' starting point (which is why it kind of reads like a deconstruction to me).
I don't think he intends this against a skeptic as much as I could see how his reflection on the cogito mirrors pop-understandings of the self as an instantaneous moment. At the moment he is describing the structure of temporality -- what I have in mind with the cogito here has more to do with The Subject, in elevator word terms, but I thought Sartre's text provided a nice entry way into that thought topic. As well as being something new to throw into the mix of thoughts here.
Quoting fdrake
I'm fine with this approach. The quote is an entry-point, not a barrier.
I see a problem though. Descartes wrote "I think, therefore I am", and Descartes does not exist. He's dead.
Right. My interpretation so far would emphasize the phenomenological method more than the other bits. In a lot of ways there's a certain dissolution going on of transcendental structures through the phenomenological description that doesn't just waffle around in a circle like Heidegger.
At least so far.
Quoting fdrake
Keep at it, I say! :D -- I brought in the skeptic because it's another topic that I think on, and the description here reminded me of The Matrix, and how that can easily lend itself into -- if you do not accept Descartes' solution -- thinking the only thing certain is the repetition of the cogito at the moment.
The Cogito is: I think, I am. Maybe we could show that change is integral to thought. Is that Sartre's point?
Scholastic schools who dominated the discussion of nature at the time. So, not about skepticism at all.
To doubt is to doubt. It is somewhat contrary to suggest we 'rely on' doubt. What cannot be questioned cannot be appreciated. That is all there is too it.
The Evil Demon could make you believe that. The quote in the OP is pointing to something intrinsic to thought. Something the Evil Demon couldn't fool you about.
I don't think so.
My line of thinking here is if we know something, then at least in that respect we are not deceived. I think the change in outcomes with respect to the thought experiment has to do with emphasizing doubt over certainty -- rather than looking for a certainty that I cannot doubt, and so cannot be decieved by even the evil demon the process of looking for certitude requires I already know things that are uncertain.
To kind of do an inversion here on that line: In some sense we could say that if we accept the certitude of the cogito then we must also accept the certitude of the before-after, and so the self is not this indivisible point-particle that thinks.
Quoting frank
I think his point is to argue for a tripartite division of time which the cogito seems not to require. But mostly I'm riffing from the text here while thinking about skepticism and the philosophical self.
Quoting I like sushi
I don't think we rely upon the cogito, exactly. This isn't really a pragmatic question. When we doubt some statement or other there's a huge web that the judgment is embedded within. Here, though, the philosophical concepts are cut new to demonstrate some point or other, and so the doubt isn't that kind of doubt, but the radical kind of doubt often associated with Descartes.
Quoting Paine
Yeah -- though I can see how the ideas taken out of context can easily lead one to a skeptical conclusion.
One of those ideas I think the argument is targeting is the notion that the self is an indivisible point-like unity.
For purposes of this thread I think I'd like to simply stipulate the difference rather than get down into the exegesis of whether or not Descartes was really a skeptic or not.
Taking Descartes at face value in the Meditations we end with knowledge of self, God, and world. So the doubt is surely methodical rather than radical.
For the Pyrrhonist I'd stipulate that the purpose of their philosophy is to remain in a state of suspended judgment. With respect to Sartre's argument that's permissible because he's relying upon a more full-throated notion of doubt that Descartes uses which the Pyrrhonist escapes by noting they're the ones not interested in belief so have no need to defend it, but are forced to do so by those who insist on having them. For them belief is a disease to be cured.
I think stipulating what the evil demon can and cannot do is a part of the game, in a way. By stating what the evil demon is or isn't limited by you begin to pick out a foundation, be it certitude or something else.
Even the instantaneous cogito?
Descartes' foundation is a benevolent God, right? The Evil Demon is used to show that logical truths aren't indubitable. For a piece of knowledge to survive the Evil Demon, it would have to be intrinsic to the Cogito itself. Is change intrinsic to the Cogito?
I think of the Cogito as experiential. At this moment, I experience the world around me. I find that I can't doubt that this experience is happening. That I think of cognition as something that's happening does suggest that I think in story arcs.
An instantaneous cogito implies the structure of doubt, that is, suspension of judgment. But the cogito is committed to more than mere suspension of judgement; it is by necessity interwoven within a time "architecture."
The architecture of doubt is directly mirroring the architecture of the cogito itself, in time, but as a negation.
This architecture is pre-ontological in the sense of not yet truly ontological. That is, it is prior to the formulation of an ontology. The movement from pre-ontological knowing, the cogito, to a pre-reflexive ontology of being-as-such (that is to actually study being), requires transcendence of the cogito, where "doubt" is understood as just the negation of the cogito, ego.
It may be strange for pre-reflective awareness to be after the cogito's pre-ontological mode, but this is just the path of consciousness. Whereas pre-reflection is wholly prior to the cogito, in consciousness it comes after, as it is from the perspective of the negation of the ego that pre-reflection is attainable in a self-conscious way. This is why the saying "I think, therefore I am" is concluded after Descartes' "doubt" meditation. The saying is not the culmination of cogito but its transcendence.
Bad faith. Hidden fullness. Sense-certainty. Ego. The other. Contradiction. Doubt. Clarity. Certainty. Thinghood is thought, thought is thinghood; being-in-itself; "I am." Being-for-another. Implication. Enlightenment. Reason. Authenticity. Absolute knowledge. The unfolding of the Absolute. Return to the beginning. Faith.
I'd say certainty -- clear and distinct ideas -- is how he gets there. Looking at Meditation 3 right now:
[quote=Descartes Meditation III]
....For without doubt, Those of them which Represent Substances are something More, or (as I may say) have More of Objective Reallity in them, then those that Represent only Modes or Accidents; and again, That by Which I understand a Mighty God, Eternal, Infinite, Omniscient, Omnipotent Creatour of all things besides himself, has certainly in it more Objective Reallity, then Those Ideas by which Finite Substances are Exhibited....
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I read up to about there to refresh my memory. The theme I see is certainty, which is understood as something which is clear and distinct that cannot be doubted.
I'm noticing upon looking at this that Descartes allows a past for his own argument, and seems to include objects even as he builds up there so it seems, at least by the Meditations, he's closer to Sartre than I was getting on about, and that this is really mostly a pop-notion that I'm describing.
Quoting frank
Does "I think" refer to the experiential whole?
Quoting Moliere
I think so too, and this kind of engagement seems crucial to doing any deep work in philosophy. Disagreement should, in my view, produce puzzlement, and then curiosity -- what might we learn here? I wouldn't necessarily pick Sartre as my favorite interlocutor, but I like it that he has no interest in "refuting" Descartes.
Second thing: I rooted around in B&N for the context of these quotes and found this interesting passage (my emphases):
To de-jargonize, "in-itself" means, more or less, without self-consciousness or awareness; "for-itself" characterizes the being of conscious creatures like us. So my past might as well be a rock, for all that I can re-enter it or use it as a postulate about my current being. But Sartre does appear to believe that my previous existence can be a conclusion derived from "I think," which may pertain to your OP.
I think the project he sets is to find an indubitable proposition. Once he's there, there doesn't appear to be anyway out of the brain vat except to just have faith that God wouldn't let the Evil Demon torture us with lies. Kind of dubious, but maybe it made sense at the time? I think Descartes uses an old scholastic(?) idea about the necessity of God. God is existence itself or something like that.
Quoting Moliere
Some commentators insist that it does, but I'd have to go on an expedition to find those sources. :smile:
Well, given that Sartre is talking about radical doubt as being given to us only through time reference (something like Kant's intuitions I feel) there is nothing other to hang experience off of is there?
'Rely' is probably the sticky word here. Sartre likes to make words less like words.
I think it's correct to assume that we cannot understand the world without reference to time, and so the Cogito must be understood within the context of time.
However, that does not mean that the Cogito proves that time exists, nor does it suggest that Descartes failed in his attempt to be infinitely skeptical by assuming the existence of time. It only means that an understanding of the world is impossible without placing events within time.
This approach I'm arguing is consistent with Kant's view that time does not necessarily exist outside humans because it is a form of intuition necessary for our perception of reality, but not an inherent property of the world itself.
I understood Sartre here to mean (and I don't think he was terribly clear) that doubt must occur in the past, present, and future for it to be real doubt. So, if I doubt a pen is in front of me, I have to doubt all that I previously knew of pens, the current pen I see, and the future pen that I have grown accustomed to seeing over time. I can't just say I question the pen's existence in the here and now and that be the radical and complete doubt Descartes is looking for.
On the Kant intuition issue, I don't think Sartre was suggesting that we must doubt time if we want to be radical skeptics. I think he was saying we must doubt an object in all phases of time: past, present, and future. The pen never was, is not, and never will be. I don't think he's suggesting we doubt our Kantian intuitions. In fact, all the Kant is committed to saying about time is that we think there is time, which doesn't give any external reality to it. That is, a radical skeptic would not be required to say there is time, but would only say he thinks there is time, which is consistent with solipsism.
Yeah, probably. Tedious though. If we pull the rug out from under our feet things get weird; or we ignore the effects!
Quoting Hanover
I believe my remark is more or less a reflection of Descartes. We can "doubt" therefore. If we cannot, there-not.
I believe Sartre's 'radical scepticism' is more or less constructed alongside 'radical freedom'. I would assume so? I have his book under a pile of other books and although I am tempted to move them I am resisting :) Anyway, my guess would be because we are self creating all that we are comes into question - hence 'radical scpeticism'. I have no idea if this is either a good or correct interpretation of his view, just an educated guess.
@Moliere care to chime in? Save me reading ;)
The cogito is I think. Does the validity of the notion that I think, require time?
The notion of past, future and therefore time itself, would be necessary regarding that which I think about, iff it is the case thoughts are always and only singular and successive. Even in the occurence of a single thought, i.e., not-x, or the instantaneous act of doubting, there is the antecedent time of its non-occurence, but that is in relation to the thought alone.
On the other hand, I at one time didnt think to doubt x, and iff I subsequently think to doubt x, there must be a time of my not thinking the one then a different time of me thinking the one.
I vote for time being a necessary condition for the cogito to make sense of anything thought about, which is the same as any thought in general, which is the same as thought itself. I am, after all, nothing but my thoughts.
Descartes mistake: the subject isnt as much a different substance than the object, as it is differently conditioned than an object.
In the Third Meditation Descartes says :
I take it that it is in response to this that Sartre says:
If I am a thinking thing, and if thinking is not something that exists anew from moment to moment but rather extends from the past to the future, then as a thinking thing I do not exist anew from moment to moment and thus do not require some cause to keep me in existence.
Yes, "the subject" is what an object does and, as Spinoza suggests, a complementary way of attributing-describing an object's predicates. In other words, "for itself" is only a kind phase transition of "in itself" (pace Sartre).
(2020)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/539399
I don't think these two are in conflict. If change is inherent to thought, it doesn't matter much if that change produces discrete moments or comes as a stream, does it?
According to Descartes existence occurs in discreet moments. It requires a cause, namely God, to create it moment to moment.
Yes. I like that view, it's a spin on one of Aristotle's proofs of God. We aren't doing a textual analysis of Descartes though. In other words, we aren't using any writings of Descartes as the limit to the discussion.
But Sartre doesn't like it.
Quoting frank
Sartre references Descartes and the infinitesimal instant. The passage from Descartes is about that. Sartre says:
In other words, Sartre is saying that thought is not a series of discreet infinitesimal instants. The thinker, the cogito, according to Descartes essentially a thinking thing and not simply a thing that thinks, is then not a series of discreet moments created anew .
An infinitesimal is part of a continuum, though. It involves the idea of a limit. I don't think Descartes would have used that idea.
I'm cool with introducing jargon and technicalities and revisiting these themes. In large part I've been looking for a good quote for entry to force myself to go back over the text from where I'm at and respond to various objections people might bring up with what I've read so far of the text to sort of solidify where I'm at.
I just wanted to avoid them so that the barrier to entry was relatively low.
Is everyone on the same page that Descartes gives an argument for his existence from doubt? (link) Some, like , seem to be missing this. The "shift from certainty to doubt" is not Sartre, it is Descartes, and it is not a shift from certainty so much as an avenue to certainty.
Quoting Moliere
But think about why Descartes responded so vehemently to Gassendi when Gassendi made a similar claim. What you are saying is, "Descartes' wrangling with skepticism wasn't real; it was just a charade." If it wasn't real, if Descartes did not really descend into skepticism and really come out, then his meditation is completely worthless. "Descartes came back up with knowledge, therefore he never seriously entertained skepticism," is a really problematic way to assess Descartes' meditation, and Descartes explicitly rejects this problematic/cynical reading.
My thinking is that the text and some exegesis is there to give us a little something more to dig into than our own thoughts, but I do mean to ask the question about what it is I or we think about the cogito -- what is it we can infer from stating "I think"? Can you infer "I am" by thinking "I think"?
But I don't know how to interpret Descartes as getting stuck on the evil demon since he moves past the evil demon in the meditations. It seems to me that this is a temptation for modern readers because the solution isn't persuasive to us but the problem, as stated, is.
But Descartes didn't get stuck there.
Quoting I like sushi
Skepticism is something I'm bringing in to thinking about the subject, or the cogito, but Sartre is not a skeptic.
The cogito in Kant is interesting since it's just an abstract appendage to every assertion that one could possibly make. It refers to the transcendental ego -- a necessary feature of any assertion prior even to being baptized in the schematism of time.
I think the phenomenological approach gets by Kant's objections (well... not really objections, since the order of argument started with Kant and a lot of the ideas Kant started are "baked in" to phenomenology as a concern. Perhaps better to sya "gets around Kant's conceptions"). Using Chalmer's idea of the philosophy room: In some sense since we're in the phenomenology room when Kant shows up we can point him down the hallway towards the noumenology room where his points will stand. But since we're only speaking of the phenomena we can leave the things-in-themselves and the various noumena behind and underneath the phenomena, forever locked away.
What is the substance of the object (and, thereby, the subject by your sentence)? And what is this different conditioning?
being, and he states Poincare's definition as "a=b, b=c, a÷c" -- when I did the dig, because I had no idea what he was on about, what I found was that it's better to read "a÷c" as "a divides from c"; this got along with another rendition of Poincare's definition which made more sense to me: "a=b, b=c, a
That "flow" from the past towards the future with a nothing that divides the two as the present is very much what he's getting at rather than a continuous series of instants.
By "Shift from certainty to doubt" I mean that Sartre is asking what would remain of doubt if we were only an instant, whereas for Descartes the instant in which one speaks to themself the cogito that is a certainty that even an evil demon could not deceive. Descartes uses doubt, and his doubt is even a genuine exploration, but he's on a search for certainty. Whereas Sartre is trying to explicate the metaphysical structures of a being which can lie to itself, or find itself in bad faith. How is it possible for this seemingly singular unity which flows through time, that seems transparent to itself, can lie to itself? So he focuses on the necessities of doubt in order to divide up the cogito into the tripartite division of time.
Quoting Leontiskos
Because Gassendi was passing over the important part to his argument. I'm not saying that Descartes' methodological decision is a charade, only that if we keep reading the meditations we eventually get out of skeptical doubt and find knowledge.
I don't want to sidetrack the thread, but Descartes claim of life being divided into separate independent moments seems suspect to me, especially given his claim about the mind or soul being indivisible and immortal. I think it has something to do with his defense against accusations of atheism.
So I'd be more than happy to grant that Descartes may escape this charge that Sartre is bringing up, when we consider the whole of his work. I think that all the greats are like this when they speak about one another: We can choose one or the other in defending them because they're just that rich of thinkers.
But with something as... airy?... as the philosophical subject I want something to grasp onto in thinking out the concept.
I think, generally speaking, the trap of skepticism which these thoughts can inspire is worth skipping over, but I'm hopping in and just looking at the dimensions of it. Why is this temptation here? What brings people to the Inn of Solipsism as they travel the philosophy road?
I don't believe there is any instantaneous cogito.
So if I think then I think.
Indubitability is the easy thing to attack, I think, but in some ways this is to give into the Cartesian impulse -- to look for a certain foundation. So it is easy to point out that just because I think "I think" that it does not follow that "I am" in some kind of logically deductive fashion. It's just something that makes sense: in order for me to do I must be.
The part that doesn't follow from all this is that the "I think" refers to the same "I" as the "I am": in the context of the meditations it makes sense because we're presented with a story of a man who goes to his desk and thinks a few things until he gets tired, then comes back the next time to push his thoughts further. But in the context of Being and Nothingness it doesn't immediately follow because the "I think" is the in-itself, whereas the "I am" is the for-itself. (there's no reliance upon "clear and distinct ideas")
Now it seems apparent to me that Descartes and Sartre don't get lost in the cogito, but rather see certain things as equally indubitable or conceptually interdependent -- the turning point for Descartes, as you hinted at @frank, is God -- going further into the Meditation 3:
But I don't see it as magical or faith-based -- it seems to follow from the arguments presented.
Though if we're inclined to believe that being cannot be derived, but must be given, then we'd say that Descartes' argument, more or less, is the ontological argument and since existence is not a predicate it does not follow that the idea of infinity, which is not in me, can only come from God.
But having a benevolent God is how I understand we begin to get out of the solipsistic experiment where all that we are is a thinking thing (and not even our body), based upon the method of doubt.
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It makes me think that the cogito in Sartre does not rely upon ourselves as a thinking thing: If we remove ourselves as a substance which thinks (and is not extended) then there is nothing for the "I think" to refer to -- though "I am" remains true, it's not through the indubitability of the cogito that we come to this. Rather, given that it's phenomenology, existence isn't even attempted to be proven: rather "the things themselves" are described as they are in the phenomenonal capacity
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A point of contention with Kant here @Hanover is Sarte's notion that Being-in-itself is transphenomenal; but there isn't any of the arguments which Kant tries to bring to bear on separating the noumenal from the phenomenal, and usually if something "has being" then it exists. But with the phenomenological turn the meaning of being is in question, and even non-being has its own being such that when Pierre is not in the room then that absence still has being.
[quote= B&N, lxii]We must understand that this being is no other than the transphenomenal being of phenomena and not a noumenal being which is hidden behind them. Itis the being of this table, of this package of tobacco, of the lamp, more generally the being of the world which is implied by consciousness. It requires simply that the being of that which appears does
not exist only in so far as it appears. The transphenomenal being of what
exists for consciousness is itself in itself. [/quote]
So being is transphenomenal, but he's still relying upon the intuitive move that Kant makes -- he just includes time within phenomena, even though being-for-itself is actively synthesizing being-in-itself. The cogito is respected, it's just given more dimensions than a point-like certainty or than a formal "I think..." which can be appended to any judgment.
In some way the repetition of "I think" allows for our bodies to be entirely different from what we experience, as well as the world, but the proposition of thinking leads to the indubitability of my own existence. I'd go that far with Descartes.
I'm not following how your justifications justify "no" -- I'd almost think you were saying the opposite, even. I've given it a bit to think over but I'm afraid I'm still scratching my head.
Quoting NotAristotle
Can you unpack that more? I've read over a few times and find myself confused lol.
Do you think anything can be inferred from the cogito, whatsoever? Or is it entirely different from the philosophical subject, or are they one and the same and yet meaningless tautology?
My question for both Descartes and Sartre is this: Are you offering a psychological story -- that is, a story about actual thoughts -- in which case it must indeed occur in time? Or is the "moment" of the Cogito pointing to a different mode of understanding? I hesitate to use the word "transcendental" because Descartes probably wouldn't know how to respond, and Sartre had his own very special understanding of transcendentality in phenomenology. So I'm struggling for words here. What I'm groping toward is the idea that the indubitability of the Cogito doesn't rest on any account that involves time at all. Suppose we all agreed that it's impossible to experience a present moment. I think many psychologists believe this; it's a version of the Achilles-and-tortoise problem. Would that mean that the Cogito is no longer operative? That, since it doesn't report an actual experience, my existence is thrown back into doubt? That doesn't sound right. I dunno . . . pardon me if this is too murky for response.
Does Sartre say that the for-itself is an object of experience, in addition to being the ground for the possibility of experience? I can't remember.
Why?
I can answer better for Sartre since that's what I'm more mired in at the moment:
tl;dr -- no.
Extended: his is not a psychological story in the sense that he rejects reducing philosophy to psychology and he is pursuing philosophy, and in particular, metaphysics. So knowledge isn't as much the focus, though Sartre relies upon a notion of knowledge (that I'm told is, of course, unique to him -- why make it easy?)
For Sartre the cogito is referring to the three ekstases, which I'm gathering is the past, the present, the future -- but in metaphysical speak. To practice the lingo: I think the cogito temporalizes itself in all three ekstases in any rendition of the cogito. I think therefore I was, am, and will be, and these are not discrete one from another but rather I carry my past into my present towards a future each of which is divided by a nothing.
:D
Quoting J
Not too murky at all. This is exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for.
I'm struggling with words too -- it's part of why I've been looking for passages -- to force myself to attempt to explain some of these things to others as a "check" that even I'm understanding my own interpretation as I read :D
I think the cogito would still be operative, it only implies more than the singular indubitability which Descartes rested on -- if we accept the cogito, so I'm gathering Sartre to be saying, then we have all three of the ekstases which are metaphysically equal to the objects which they are about.
But it'd be an argument against what Sartre is saying, I think, if you could argue that the cogito was no longer active, due to this move, and so existence is thrown back into doubt -- that'd be an interesting skeptical response.
Quoting J
No expertise here, just reading it right now. The for-itself is consciousness, and the thing which makes consciousness what it is is that it is about the in-itself. The in-itself is what it is, and the for-itself is what it is not. The for-itself/in-itself are both modifications of Being as such, so they are written Being-for-itself and Being-in-itself in the English translation. That's part of the puzzle he's working through.
No ground for the possibility of experience type argument seems to be going on here -- that'd put him squarely back into the comprehension of being as a given existent, rather than the expanded notion of being which phenomenology relies upon (or, perhaps, merely chases).
So the in-itself is the object of experience, and the for-itself is about those objects, and the cogito secures being-for-itself, being-in-itself, and the three ekstases through which being-for-itself temporalizes itself.
Back to your question on psychology, though: He starts in metaphysics but the part I'm reading now is dealing with questions of how these metaphysical concepts relate to a very highly abstract psychology. So it fits in that funny place phenomenology often does -- between metaphysics, but then sort of drifts into psychology. What I really like on this front, however, is it gives a solid theoretical foundation for rejecting Freudian analysis -- the id/ego-superego are the in-itself, and it's the psychologist who is crafting this in-itself without access to the for-itself except through their own for-itself.
No. Yes. Re: the last sentence of my post that you left out of the quote:
Quoting 180 Proof
A reasonable inference is that God is necessary in order to avoid solipsism.
That seems to be the larger argument he was making.
Cogito is still temporal but not understood as temporal; it merely resides within the architecture of temporality; only the process of doubt, a process of negation of cogito (ego) discloses the cogito by standing apart from itself; in other words, from the hill of certainty that has been climbed by doubt the cogito sees itself in a separate moment, and from that vantage point has a grasp of itself in time. Similarly, the doubting which is again temporal and is the negative mirror of cogito is engrained in this process.
Meanwhile, what is the conclusion of methodological doubt? It is being itself; therefore, I am. The assertion is contentless and that being the case it is also pre-reflective; unmediated awareness. And yet, it is an ontological claim; and in that regard it is full of content though perhaps it is undescriptive (being, but what is being?). The I am claim is the voice given to being by being itself; self consciousness.
And, the being there posited is instrumental. Not only is being in a sense externalized from itself, but it is instrumentalized as a means for acquiring knowledge; it is foundational. So, being is no longer just being-in-itself, but has become being-for-itself. Both in the sense of self-consciousness and in the sense of its use for itself. Thats what I mean by saying that I think therefore I am is not the culmination of cogito qua cogito but of the transcendence of itself viz. the externalization of being through the process of doubting. Thinking that thinks itself.
Sartres critique of Descartes is critique-as-exposition. That is, Satre critiques Descartes not by contradicting what Descartes said, but by saying what Descartes left unsaid.
Quoting Moliere
Quoting Moliere
Quoting Moliere
Quoting Moliere
Okiedokie. That looks like a terminus, though I think there's more to the cogito than that.
Quoting Hanover
Descartes, you mean?
That's an interesting read, if so -- a theist twist on the interpretation of the Meditations. If I'm entirely wrong on that, well, then I am but to explain myself: I've heard it argued that Descartes' argument for the existence of God is so bad, and Descartes so smart, that there must be some explanation as to why it's in there when the preceding arguments are so crisp and clean.
I'll call this the "Secret Atheist" interpretation: The idea is he must have been an atheist but because the church was so powerful at the time he had to include proofs for the existence of God, given that it's philosophy after all.
So, if I have you right, you're making the argument that he's more targeting atheists in saying that if they do not believe in God then this is all they can know, and given that they know more than that, they ought consider believing in God. Sort of like the Secret Atheist, but instead he's dressing it up for the church while talking to his contemporaries too.
I just think that what Descartes did was to doubt all basic foundations and then all he had left was knowledge of his self as a doubting thing. That is a solipsitic conclusion. In order to get himself back to where he could have some knowledge of the world and of other minds, he pulled in God and used God to form the foundation for all knowledge of the world.
If you buy into this approach, God becomes necessary in order to avoid solipsism. It doesn't mean God exists. It just means that you cannot know anything without God's existence (except knowing that you exist as a not knowing thing).
Many find Descartes problematic because they believe he has doubted that which no person would actually doubt and that he has created a fabricated quandary and from that Western philosophy has gone down this road of trying to prove that which no person truly doubts. I don't find Descartes problematic at all because I never doubted that the foundation for our beliefs was faith and that without faith you will have nothing but doubt. Perhaps the opposite of doubt is faith.
Its material composition, whatever it may be.
Quoting Moliere
Time.
Yes, but it does feel like a "move," and I wasn't suggesting it seriously.
Quoting Moliere
Good observation. I think that philosophers who are hostile to phenomenology want this liminal place to be a mistake, an inability to be clear about what the topic is. A more sympathetic reading, starting with Husserl, is that the distinction between metaphysics and psychology must be put into doubt as a first step toward a new conception of doing philosophy in the first person.
One example where it does create confusion, though, is what I tried to straighten out with @frank, above. He quite reasonably wanted to know why a thought must occur in time, which leads us into the two common meanings of the term "thought." One is psychological, the other metaphysical. And see Frege on psychologism.
Similarly, the resolution of an appearance by thought is thought contending with the contradictions inherent in its own systematic approach where understanding is the return of thought to itself, self-sameness, being-as-it-is.
Also:
Descartes sort of invented the idea of nerves because through dissecting bodies, he saw the "strings" that go from the central nervous system out to the muscles. He thought that these strings are plucked in some way so that the body moves like a puppet. He also famously concluded that the soul must be in the pineal gland. I think it's pretty clear from the Meditations that he isn't defining "thought" as an event in the brain, though. It's more of a first person thing.
Fair enough, but is the first-person thing an event that happens from T1 - Tn?
"So my question about the Cogito was, Which sort of "thought" is it?"
For Descartes it may only be the former, for Sartre it may be both. Though for Sartre I would say that the latter is "cogito" only in a way that is mediate; that is, present but only through phenomenal "glasses." Not to say that such glasses are not needed for the rendering of the phenomenal in terms of thought (it (the phenomenal realm) contains a kind of solution to the problem that it (the phenomenal) posed in the first place when consciousness encountered otherness (read: the other, opposition, negation of self) and the phenomenal became "a reality" to consciousness.
In other words, when thought discovers someone as-they-are through phenomenal encounter, the phenomenal collapses into noumenality. But this is the same as the noumenal encountering the noumenal.
The answer to that depends on your hinge propositions. If you believe time is an illusion and the soul resides in eternity, then you would say no.
Is Sartre worth reading? I've only ever read his novel Nausea, which was really good.
I find his phenomenology (the bits I've read) dubious, but you've quite likely read more than me.
Become aware now of the sights and sounds around you. Do you detect a beginning or ending to the experience?
He would not be on my shortlist. If someone is interested, however, I would recommend Existentialism is a Humanism
In this work he says:
Really? That's wild. What's that like?
I know this isn't what you mean, but it's what I mean when I ask about a temporal slot for a particular thought, understood not psychologically as a brain event but some other way. Brain or no brain, isn't it still an event in time?
Like a curtain coming down. You just need some credits rolling. :grin:
Quoting J
Yes, probably. You're kind of stomping all over the existentialism with your intellectual observations, tho.
Subjectivity comes up too often for me to think the cogito, or the philosophical subject/self, is a mistake to attempt to articulate, though. "What is it that makes an individual what they are?" strikes me as a perfectly sensible question, and even Descartes' desire for certainty -- given all the falsehoods he now knows he's believed -- makes a good deal of sense to all of us. It's nice to be certain.
But I see no reason to start with methodical doubt to find certain propositions -- and even if I were to begin with the cogito I'd still build towards a world with knowledge and such that's part of it. Or at least I'd like those things to be addressed in a given philosophy.
Descartes gets out of the solipsistic hole through God, and you have no problem with admitting that all knowledge is faith-based, except perhaps for the certain knowledge of your own existence when thinking the thought "I think". Do you follow Descartes in putting God into the rational frame, though? That's what I think is missed with Descartes, frequently: he's not a skeptic, but a Rationalist who, through a priori reasoning -- due to the power of Reason in Man, to link this to our narrative of the Enlightenment -- deduces the foundations of knowledge. So, given his arguments -- at face value -- he knows God exists, rather than it being faith-based.
How does faith get us out of the cogito?
Quoting Mww
Am I to infer that the cogito's material composition is thought, then? So when I think about the cogito the object of my thought is thought and the composition of the thought thinking about thought is thought.
Wouldn't this analysis apply to the objects thought about, no matter what? Is the material composition of what is thought about itself always thought, and Time is what seperates out the object thought about from the thought which is directed towards the object?
Quoting Mww
Also, I'm not sure I'd sign up for the notion that thoughts are always and only singular and successive, which would put me in trouble.
Heh. I don't mind things that feel like "moves" -- they all feel like that, really! It's just which move feels right to the reader which chooses what Descartes really meant. :D
In general I like the skeptical hypotheses, so I'd be open to an argument like that. I'm not fully committed to the notion that there even is a self -- so that would be like a nihilism of the cogito -- but it comes up often enough that I think worth thinking about.
Quoting J
Yeah. I actually like the move, but because some of it is obscure or has multiple interpretations or just isn't mathematical enough to taste it's easier to designate that side of philosophy as meaningless wankers cosplaying as sages while saying nothing but poetic drivel** while the serious logicians clarify what we utilize everyday and so cannot help but be really right -- language and science and the language of science and the logic that governs such talk.
Though, to be real, it was always about competition over employment. Philosophy isn't given enough budget to fund a whole two different ways of doing it.
:D
Yeah there's a lot of confusion at first, but I think that's part of what makes it philosophy. Eventually there's a certain clarity even while there are more than one way to interpret the texts.
What the other side says about the Clear Hard Thinkers is that they are clearly lazy navel gazers because they obsess over language and refuse to learn even 2 different languages**.
** Though I roast both because I find that distinction hilarious, and really probably not so relevant now so the roast shouldn't even sting.
I'd be interested in hearing more from you on this comment. (I've read some of Husserl's anti-psychologist arguments and found them amenable, but not Frege's)
To be clear on my end -- by the cogito, even if there is a psychological theory of it, I explicitly mean a philosophical theory. (For some there's no distinction, but for thems that there is one -- pick the philosophy side)
I don't see anything wrong with saying an experience ends. Some experiences are episodic.
But I don't think the cogito, even with the structure of temporality -- even though consciousness is being described -- is even at the level of an individuals' experience (at least in the story so far). The structure of reflection is, but the relationship between the general structure of reflection and even a being-for-itself -- which I'd read as still a general category rather than an individual, only more specific than simply being-for-itself -- isn't specified yet. And the individual hasn't even shown up on the scene.
So I'd say that our personal reflections, while we'll be using them to relate to the phenomenological description, are not themselves yet relevant. They are "too close", as it were.
Quoting frank
I'd disagree here. The flow of time is being presented in a manner which is a flow, but the various existential writers are attempting to be very precise about their topics in the exact way that philosophers have always done -- they have their own particular meanings and such, but it's still very intellectual.
I'm not sure I understand what you're asking. I was saying faith gets us out of solipsism, which is the net result of the Cartesian method of complete skepticism. The cogito leaves us with just knowing that the single mind of the single doubter is all that exists. To get beyond that, you have to have faith. That's what Descartes indicated by his reliance upon God.
But maybe I didn't fully understand your question.
I'm just going to state my confusion and see where that takes us instead of trying to rephrase the question:
I'm tempted by the exegetical hole again -- I want to at least do a side-by-side interpretation with yours.
I see what you're saying as a reasonable interpretation; and to restate it in my own words to see if I have it right: the ontological argument is thrown in there but given its weakness to persuade those who are not already convinced this indicates that Descartes was relying on God. (At least, that seems like something you could say to excuse why the argument is in the text on reasonable grounds)
The interpretation I'm relying upon is to treat the Meditations at its face value -- and at its face value we start with doubt and, through the power of Man's Reason alone, find true and certain knowledge of the self, God, and the world.
So I see Descartes as claiming not faith but knowledge of God's existence -- and this need not even counter faith. Especially at the time scientists and theologians weren't far apart. In a way I'm trying to bring out "the spirit of the times" by focusing on the prima facie meaning to put Descartes in the context of the Enlightenment.
This I think you'd find amenable because of your reliance on Kant. I see a strong through-line to Kant here where a disagreement is clearly spelled out (though in the abstract).
But Kant wouldn't say that knowledge requires faith, either. So I'm left wondering how to interpret you with respect to these two interpretations of the prima facie Descartes and Kant.
Sorry. My fault. I dont want to work that hard unpacking your posts.
I don't think so. Kierkegaard is the beginning of existentialism. His point was that the the more fully you become lost in the landscape of the intellect, the more disconnected and alienated you'll be from the knowledge that's most direct and intimate: the knowledge of what it feels like to be alive.
I don't know if you saw my SEP quotes, but Descartes also points to this as what he meant by "cogito": he is talking about awareness, which is only sometimes of ideas.
Yeah, but Kierkegaard also took up several writing personas to demonstrate a kaleidoscope of thoughts (one I do not claim to understand). Nietzsche wrote a parody of the Bible to expand on original philosophical concepts. These aren't exactly acts of becoming lost in what it feels like to be alive.
Or, more properly, they are -- but they are also acts of intellect.
Quoting frank
I've now read them, and am including them here for reference in the conversation -- but I'm not sure what I've said that disagrees with them.
Quoting frank
Yea. Existentialists tell you to pay attention to your first person experience, but they do it in an intellectual way. Kind of contradictory. :grin:
The ontological argument is one of the big targets of Kant's epistemology. I'd say the ontological argument Kant criticizes is more Leibniz's version than Descartes, but close enough to count for concepts.
Broad strokes here but with respect to the cogito the differences that pop out to me for each thinker are:
Descartes: existence is a genuine predicate of logic.
Kant: Existence is not a genuine predicate of logic, but is given.
Sartre: The meaning of being is different from what either Descartes or Kant are talking about, and Existence precedes essence. Descartes' reflection is correct, and there's more apodeictic knowledge that comes with it.
Interesting to note, at least to me, is how Kant's cogito is de-emphasized from Descartes', which makes a kind of sense since he's trying to protect the belief in the immortality in the soul from scientific knowledge -- limiting knowledge to make room for faith.
Whereas Sartre has no problem denying such things. Though, simultaneously, isn't coming from a strictly scientific perspective either.
With Descartes, existence and essence are the same. For Sartre there is a divide between the two, hence our situation as humans. Maybe everything is supernatural for Descartes, while Sartre keeps it as an illusion out of distance, focusing on material problems
I'd say that neither believe in the supernatural -- and even if we mean "supernatural" in the sense of "outside of nature" Descartes still believes in nature -- res extensa is just as real as res cogitans, and while God may sit outside of nature and we have knowledge of his existence nature still exists.
And, on the other hand, I believe some would be inclined to call Sartre's notion of being-for-itself, and its radical freedom, a superstition in the modern, scientistic use of that term.
Though I believe both are doing philosophy in the sense that they're appealing to reason.
I think, supposing we were to take up Descartes' side in this back-and-forth, Descartes could reply that Sartre has no right to claim externalization on the basis of his methodological doubt. Whether the process of doubting requires time is beside the point from the metaphysical set-up of the method of doubt.
Which is why I keep coming back to thinking that difference between them is the how they interpret being and "...exists". As well as their overall philosophical goals being very different, since they're in very different times.
We might ask: Why not? What's wrong with externalization, Descartes? But then we might add that externalization appears to be implicit in methodological "doubting."
If you're distinguishing between faith and knowledge, you'll have to define those terms. If we accept that knowledge requires a justified true belief, it would seem that the distinction between faith and knowledge would somehow hinge on the justification element. Those who believe in God based upon faith do not admit to having no justification for their faith, but they might use personal conviction, religious text, mystical feeling, or even pragmatic reasons to justify that faith. Some might even suggest an empirical basis (as in their experience of reality leads them to believe there must be a God), so that question is somewhat complicated.
That's not to say there are not differences between the justificaitons used by the faithful and those who are not of faith, but it's difficult to say one "knows" something and the other doesn't. What I think those who question those of faith really are attacking is the "truth" element, meaning they simply think there is no God and there is no way you can "know" something that isn't true. So, if you say Descartes knows there is God, then you are saying there is a God because to know something means it must be true.
My main point here isn't to suggest that Descartes made an intentional argument proving God by arguing that failure to accept God led to an incoherent solipsitic position. I just think that by working backwards and seeing what Descartes required to avoid solipsism you can come to the conclusion that God is necessary for Descartes to avoid that.
I do see the similarities with Kant's approach, but I also see the differences. With Kant, as it pertains to time, he argued that you could not begin to understand something without placing it in time. That is, an object outside of time is meaningless.
With Descartes, there is an private language argument problem that can suggest a complete incoherence to solipsism. https://iep.utm.edu/solipsis/#:~:text=The%20Incoherence%20of%20Solipsism,-With%20the%20belief&text=As%20a%20theory%2C%20it%20is,his%20solipsistic%20thoughts%20at%20all. What this would mean is that if God is necessary to avoid solipsism and solipsism is incoherent, then you need God to avoid incoherence.
Whether you want to go down that road, I don't know. I'm not necessarily arguing that a godless universe would result in a complete inability to understand anything, but, even if I did, I still see a distinction between that sort of incoherence and the one Kant references when he says time is imposed on objects and therefore a necessary element of the understanding.
This whole argument here has expanded as I've thought about it, so maybe there is a good argument that human understanding is impossible without God if one follows Descartes' reasoning. This wouldn't mean there is God. It would just mean you can't know anything without God.
My novel contribution to the field of Cartesian analysis that appeared for the first time here argues that God is required in order to avoid to solipsism, an inherently incoherent position. That is, feel free to be an atheist, but your position is incoherent.
Descartes saved us from the unsalvagable pits of eternal and infinite skeptism by reminding us that God would not allow for such. There being no other way out, God becomes the only way for such salvation.
That's my contribution to the field.
I knew a guy who claimed that if we don't go over to the Mayan calendar, the world will end. He wrote letters to the UN trying to explain to them that the word "week" sounds a lot like "weak", and based on that, we need to change the way the days are named. "Like for instance, today is Blue Galactic Monkey day." he said.
"It would just mean you can't know anything without God."
I think this is a good reading of Descartes.
"So, given his arguments -- at face value -- he knows God exists, rather than it being faith-based"
Maybe Descartes can be interpreted to be making this argument:
If not for faith in God, I, Descartes, wouldn't know anything after methodological doubt. (Knowledge requires faith in God).
If I, Descartes, have knowledge, then God is real.
I, Descartes, have knowledge.
Therefore, God is real.
See how the argument guarantees knowledge of God, and yet that knowledge depends on faith in the first place?
One day the world will end, and we won't know why it will end until it does end. Until then, the jury is out as to whether the guy you knew is correct.
Husserl and Frege seem quite similar to me, re psychologism. They both reject the idea that thoughts can only be said to be caused, rather than explained or justified. One of the things I see Husserl doing is to separate the fact that thought-terms describe mental/psychological phenomena from the further fact (as he saw it) that phenomena like judgments and syllogisms are also normative. Similarly, a number is not to be understood as a presentation, a thought that occurs to me or you. Husserl says, The number Five is not my own or anyone elses counting of five, it is also not my presentation or anyone elses presentation of five. Freges emphasis, as far as I know (I dont know his work deeply), was more on what wed call the analytic quality of logical truths. But the point is similar: The psychological origin of subjective (synthetic) and objective (analytic) truths may be the same theyre all thoughts but its the way we demonstrate them that shows the difference. So, the psychological is to be distinguished sharply from the logical, as the subjective is from the objective. (Foundations of Arithmetic)
That's good. I want it to be a surprise.
Yes.
"...exists", as I'm construcing these thinkers, means...
Descartes: A first order predicate which can be deduced from the concepts.
Kant: A predicate without logical significance -- it is only applied to what is given in intuition
Sartre: Precedes essence, which I gather is that existence is prior to predication; there isn't a logically deductive argument, but neither can we infer the existence of God by ourselves "lacking perfection".
And being: I think for Descartes and Kant, at least with respect to the phenomenological turn, are using the same notion of Being as Presence. But Sartre takes up Heidegger's terms and analysis/critique of Being as presence -- rather it's an unfolding of the horizon which discloses itself (and in the disclosure usually there is also a closure)
But whats different between Sartre and Heidegger on Being is that Being is explicitly transphenomenal in Sartre, while I'm not so sure about that in Heidegger (Heidi often gets put into the idealist camp because he's not really clear either way, where Sartre seems to be very clear on the realist/idealist distinction)
Good question (and I'm wrapping around to the other posters still, but this one looked like an easy answer for me): I'd say that there's a two-stepper that goes on. Initially he's looking for an indubitable proposition and from that inference from "I think therefore I am" he notices that these are clear and distinct ideas.
Once he infers God must exist the rest is easy. I cut out the bits of meditation to try and get at the heart of the argument (well, the first argument for God. I've read that the 2nd argument is a little different from the first one)
***
Short answer, by my lights, is that the inference "I think, therefore I am" is indubitable in the moment of saying to the point htat even an Evil Demon couldn't deceive me, and so a foundation of certainty is found for knowledge. (Quotes pulled from here)
I'd put it that faith is outside of the frame of discussion, but not opposed. We can have faith in something we know and in something we do not know, and the inferences of Descartes and Kant aren't appealing to faith. That is, I would not be inclined to put it in opposition to knowledge, and I don't think Descartes or Kant would at least either.
Faith is centrally important to Sartre's metaphysics since he's trying to given the metaphysical frame which explains how it is possible for us to end up in good or bad faith, and Sartre frequently makes references to knowledge -- so they're not opposed there either, though also "faith" in Sartre isn't the same as our everyday notion of "faith", since it's the kind of faith an atheist has (and has no choice in participating with -- it's either good or bad faith)
Given that I think I'd put faith to one side of justification -- the faithful may accept different sorts of justifications from the unfaithful (though my suspicion is that's not quite right -- it's probably how the justifications are used rather than the kind of justifications), but justification isn't the basis on which I'd separate faith from knowledge. I'm tempted to say they are orthogonal to one another such that different views of either can be made coherent.
I've been thinking about a response for too long to wait, but I'm still not sure how to tie this back to the cogito. (Of course, that's not your fault -- the original question has been answered, I'm still stuck on how to develop it though.... but I felt I owed you a response)
Yeah... I just don't think that's the argument Descartes is making.
I'm insistent that he's not appealing to faith at all, but rather is deducing that God exists from the thought experiment.
It's because we live in the time after we've killed God that this inference is seen as implausible, rather than because the argument is obviously fallacious.
Quoting J
Cool. I'm going to include Sartre in that broad range because while he begins to drift into psychology he does so explicitly and he doesn't start there. I think it's safe to say that his philosophy, at least, is not depending upon a psychology or reducing phenomenology to psychological terms even though -- due to the Cogito's centrality -- psychology must be addressed.
I have problems with the second step. What is at issue is the problem of judgment, that is, whether the idea, the image in his mind, corresponds to something outside the mind. In order to solve this problem he introduces the idea of God and perfection. But God is not the only possible source of the idea of perfection.
Toward the end of the third meditation he says:
And in the fourth meditation:
and:
So, it seems that the source of his idea of something perfect and without limits could come from himself. If an:
is not certain then certainly this cannot be the foundation of the certainty of knowledge. Descartes' certainty of his own existence, established by reason, is his Archimedean point. At the end of the fourth meditation he says:
He has within himself the ability to become more perfect by avoiding error. Note that he allows for degrees of perfection. His will is perfect and thus the proximate and more likely source of his idea of perfection. But he goes further. It is not just the idea of perfection, but the reality of perfection, as he avoids error and becomes more perfect, that is within him.
But nature for Descates is separate from the supernatural and is known psychologically. Logically for him i'm saying all that is is supernatural, although he roams around the objects of extension. I have not finished Being and Nothingness, so I better leave that one alone
Contrary to Descartes' claim, it comes from a lack or want, from a need or desire to improve, to have or be without defect.
With regard to the perfectibility of man, perfect comes from the possibility of avoiding error by limiting what I will to what I know.
In the third meditation he says:
In the fourth meditation:
And:
He asks:
M'kay; I can go with what you say.
Do you agree with my prima facie reading of the Meditations? That Descartes claims to deduce knowledge of God's existence on the basis of the foundation of certainty he finds in the Cogito?
From De Trinitate:
The shorter Cogito in the Confessions is probably more famous, and he builds on the dialectical relationship between being, knowing, and willing much more in the second half of De Trinitate.
For St. Augustine, a key to moving beyond skepticism is "believing so that we might understand," a view St. Anselm takes up. For a good example of what this entails for practical concerns, suppose you wanted to learn about chemistry. Now suppose you doubt everything your professor and textbook says and refuse to accept it until you have drilled through layer after layer of justification. Will this be a good way to learn chemistry? Probably not. The justifications only make sense in a broader context, and one must have some faith in order to make progress towards actually understanding/knowingand for Augustine this applies to religious practice as well.
As to the denial of the "I" in the Cogito, who is "smeared out across time and changing," e.g. Hume's replacement of the thinking subject with a "bundle of sensation" or Nietzsche's "congress of souls," there is a good quote I found on this from Eddington's "The Rigor of Angels: Kant, Heisenberg, Borges, and the Fundemental Nature of Reality." I think it's fairly "knock down," and Borges' story "Fuentes the Memorious," is a good example of why.
I agree, but do not think it prima facie. I think all the stuff about God is nothing more than a rhetorical defense to avoid the fate of Galileo. Descartes took his motto from Ovid:
I think your interpretation likely. It makes sense of why he didn't publish The World, after all.
And I thank you for saying my reading isn't prima facie -- I only want to focus on how, by the text's surface at least, we can conclude God exists. At least necessarily, though I don't know how much Descartes' notion of God -- like Leibniz's -- is really "orthodox" either.
For my part here I think modern existentialism, from Husserl on, has taken from Descartes' notion of the cogito and attempted other things.
I'm a bit mired in a confusion of where I'm going with this, though....
Heh. I've certainly wanted to learn about chemistry and my method was not to doubt what they said. i showed up to class wanting what they knew and had no problem with correcting myself -- that's why I was there.
I think Descartes is coming from a place of learning, though -- he's already gone to the greatest colleges and listened to the most learned men in the world and found them saying uncertain things he's already believed and found wrong.
So, yes, there's something to be said for not doubting, but learning. It's only by learning that we learn how to doubt well, perhaps?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I'm not sure how the quote is knock down, or what it's knocking down exactly -- but I'll make guesses and respond:
Hume's notion of the "I" is a bundle of sensations, yes, though I don't think it replaces the thinking subject -- coming to Hume from Descartes we could say that Hume's is a rational psychology of the human thinking subject in res extensa. And Kant's theory is not far from this while still accommodating the cogito within his philosophy, just not like... either of them did.
But I've not denied the cogito, at least I don't think I have. I'm more wondering what we can derive from it, metaphysically or epistemically or whatever.
Derived from I think, one relatively well-known philosopher suggests .
.The I think must accompany all my representations, for otherwise something would be represented in me which could not be thought; in other words, the representation would either be impossible, or at least be, in relation to me, nothing. ( ) All the diversity or manifold content of intuition, has, therefore, a necessary relation to the I think, in the subject in which this diversity is found. But this representation, I think, is an act of spontaneity; that is to say, it cannot be regarded as belonging to mere sensibility. ( )
It is in all acts of consciousness one and the same, and unaccompanied by it, no representation can exist for me. For the manifold representations which are given in an intuition would not all of them be my representations, if they did not all belong to one self-consciousness, that is, as my representations ( ), they must conform to the condition under which alone they can exist together in a common self-consciousness, because otherwise they would not all without exception belong to me. From this primitive conjunction follow many important results. ( )
The thought, These representations given in intuition belong all of them to me, is accordingly just the same as, I unite them in one self-consciousness, or can at least so unite them; and although this thought is not itself the consciousness of the synthesis of representations, it presupposes the possibility of it; that is to say, for the reason alone that I can comprehend the variety of my representations in one consciousness, do I call them my representations, for otherwise I must have as many-coloured and various a self as are the representations of which I am conscious.
The supreme principle of the possibility of all intuition in relation to sensibility was ( ) that all the manifold in intuition be subject to the formal conditions of space and time. The supreme principle of the possibility of it in relation to the understanding is that all the manifold in it be subject to conditions of ( ) apperception. To the former of these two principles are subject all the various representations of intuition, in so far as they are given to us; to the latter, in so far as they must be capable of conjunction in one consciousness; for without this nothing can be thought or cognized, because the given representations would not have in common the act of the apperception I think and therefore could not be connected in one self-consciousness.
(CPR B132-137)
.and even if the cogito is represented as this kind of something from which can be derived that it does this other something, one could still be left to wonder what the I itself really is.
That it is, is given; what it is, may be better left unasked.
Paul Ricoeur also raises this question of the nature of the "I" of the cogito -- whether what it is is self-evident as a consequence of the cogito. Sample passage:
Ricoeur attributes this problematic to Nietzschean, Marxian, and Freudian critiques of the identification of the conscious ego with the "I" or self. But it stands on its own as an important point, I think. We can all agree that "therefore I exist" says nothing about whether this thinking "I" is also the primal seat of my self, my agency, even my soul. What guarantees my knowledge of my existence, the cogito, may not necessarily reveal very much about that existence.
Agreed. That consciousness of mine that proves that I am, insofar as its negation is a contradiction, says nothing at all about what I am.
So there are thoughts and feelings, sights and sounds, etc. Why does there have to be a seat of consciousness? Why does there have to be an observer for the observed? A thinker for the thought?
There doesnt have to be; consciousness is not a physical necessity. But, the metaphysical argument, is that it is necessary in order for there to be represented, not so much that which comprehends the relations thoughts, feelings, sights and sounds have with respect to their causes, but moreso that upon which the comprehension is bestowed.
Why does the comprehension have to bestowed upon something? I'm not so much arguing with Descartes, just asking the general question.
In the second meditation Descartes says:
Is there an answer that doesnt just invite another question?
Comprehension needs to be bestowed on something representing a particular accomplishment, iff one wishes to express himself in regard to it. The cognitive system, in and of itself, in its normal modus operandi, doesnt require it, insofar as it just IS it.
-
Quoting J
Agreed. Thinking is something I do, and it does tell me something. It tells me there is a thinker and I am it. And I am .what, exactly? If I am that which thinks, I am conscious of that already. Even if it is that determines what it is to think, I still havent said what I am, other than I am a necessary condition for that which thinks, which is highly circular or abysmally tautological.
Hence .psychologists. (Sigh)
Yes. When I first read philosophy, the cogito seemed a miracle of cleverness and reliability. What a great result! -- I've discovered not only that I exist, but what sort of thing I must be. It does take a lot of reflection, and getting comfortable with some of the traditions after Descartes, to realize that this result is much less complete than it seems. I think, and thinking can be a special item for epistemology (it allows me to learn that I exist), but to go from that to any further knowledge about the self is unwarranted. Regardless of how one feels about Freudians, Freud himself made a huge contribution here by showing us the importance of the unconscious, which we are so loath to acknowledge.
Right, there's experience, which is seamless, and then when we reflect on it, and go to say something about it, we automatically become dualists of some kind. To talk about it, we need to pull it apart:
experience -- the one doing the experiencing.
Does it just have to do with talking about it? Or maybe it's just the way consciousness turns back on itself, whatever you call that.
.because for that knowledge, we must have recourse to empirical science. But then, how does one experiment for that which isnt to be found? Which gets us to : we automatically become dualists ..
-
Quoting frank
.or, we always were, and must necessarily be.
I agree. The most fundamental duality is unity vs disunity. The Cogito points to the indubitability of the disunity part.
How else would you say disunity? What other word carries similar implication?
Divided? Although it's more than that. As an idea, the self makes sense relative to its negation: the not-self, whatever that is. The Cogito signifies that I don't just blend into a monolithic universe. I arise out of it as a distinct thing.
At the risk of being obtuse, what is the unwarranted conclusion? I agree that what he says falls short of the task of self-knowledge, but that is not Descartes' task. It does seem clear though that whatever he is in its fullness he doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wants, refuses, imagines, and senses.
Ooooo .I like that.
I recall debating on cogito some while ago. My point was cogito has some ambiguous parts. For example, when you say, I think therefore I am. Does it mean if you think, then does it automatically warrant existence? Where does that transition (from think to existence) come from?
Is "I" extendable to other subjects such as he, she, you, it or they? Or is cogito strictly to "I" only? If it does, then could you say, "He thinks therefore he exists", or "It thinks, therefore it exists."?
If it is only for "I", then wouldn't it be just a solipsistic utterance?
As I understand it, doubting entails existence. Existing is a necessary condition for doubting.
Quoting Corvus
Whoever thinks, whoever doubts, whoever is subject to deception much exist.
Thought and doubt have their objects or contents in their operation. The content or object could be anything. What if, the content of the thought was the negation of existence?
I think I don't exist, therefore I exist.
Wouldn't it be a contradiction in that case?
I doubt that I exist, therefore I exist.
Doubting can also deny own existence, and when it does, it falls into a contradiction. And there is no rule, doubts cannot doubt its own existence or the acting of doubting.
One must exist in order to think the negation of existence.
Quoting Corvus
A paradox but not a contradiction.
What does this mean? Is it unwarranted to conclude that he is a thing that thinks? Isn't thinking essential to being human?
Quoting J
How much of the problem of consciousness can be found in Descartes?
Quoting J
Where does Descartes discuss the problem of consciousness and the unconscious? Or is the problem that he does not discuss this? An analysis of consciousness is not his concern. That he is conscious suffices.
Quoting J
The thinking thing is the most important part for his purposes - to displace the authority of the Church with the authority of the thinking/reasoning subject.
does suggest that Descartes believed that being a thing that thinks was an identity. It is the answer to his self-posed question, "Well, then, what am I?" Perhaps Ricoeur would answer the question this way: "I do not know what I am, on the basis of the cogito. I identify a number of activities I can perform as a conscious ego (doubting, understanding, et al.) and am at the same time aware of many other aspects of myself that lie hidden. Maybe the question 'What am I?' will prove unanswerable, or maybe I will discover that I have an essence. But either way, the cogito shows me nothing pro or con."
So,
Quoting Fooloso4
As to the first question, it's unwarranted if the "is" of "he is a thing that thinks" is construed as an essence or identity. (It doesn't have to be. To say "I am thinking" seems quite warranted, because it leaves open the further question, "Ah, but what am I?") As to the second: No, we have no basis in the cogito for concluding anything about what is essential to being human. Or, more liberally, thinking may be one of the essential items, but we have no way of knowing if there are not others equally essential. The cogito's epistemological value as a guarantor of existence doesn't extend that far, into ontology.
He wouldn't have needed to displace the authority of the Church if that was his agenda. He could have just left and gone to live in Protestant territory.
One of the reasons I tend to stay out of cogito-ergo-sum threads is that I never read Descartes and am only passingly familiar with it. I find the topic interesting, though, and this line is a good lead in for a problem I've always had with the response to this line.
You see, I came across this line in my childhood. I already knew enough Latin to parse the line, so I must have been between twelve and fourteen, not quite a teen yet. And for a long while this has been (a) intuitive, (b) banal, and (c) rhetorically witty. I quite liked the line. Only later did I learn that my intuition may not have aligned with Descarte's, and it certainly didn't align with a lot of other people's.
So on to your quote: according to my intuition, the thinking thing's importance is contextual. While I doubt (a form of cogitating), I can't doubt that I doubt. It's like a plug. A moment of certainty. As soon as I pull back only slightly, out comes the plug and life flows back in. Which is why "thinking thing" is a rhetorical stand-in. At the moment of "cogito-ergo-sum" you're certain of your existence, but nothing else. It's a holiday from doubting, but little else. Nothing can follow from it, since at that point no other interest can be cogitated about. You gained certainty at the expense of your worldview. No meaning is left. Cogito-ergo-sum is a dead end. You can pull back, but you can't take your certainty with you. But you, the radical doubter, have a place of rest. However the you-that-needs-such-rest only exists by virtue of its connection to a world full of doubt, and you take back that feeling and rationalise it. For example:
Quoting frank
Pulled back too far, but if that's the way you make sense of it...
Quoting Fooloso4
Pulled back too far, but if that's the way you make sense of it...
And so on. (There are many more examples in this thread, I just picked two from the page I'm currently on.)
I did come across a take on Descartes that resonated with my intuition once, but I forget what it was (a vague memory of "you can be certain you have a toothache, but not that you have teeth"). I want to say it's Ortega y Gasset, but I really am not sure. In any case, the collapsing of a world-view into the cogito and the reconstruction of the world-view in daily praxis feels quite compatible with phenomenology as I understand (which is not as far as some others on this board - I'm not a well-read philosopher).
Not sure I made much sense here, given that I'm not sure how compatible I've ever been with Descartes or his reception, but that's where I've always been.
For example, you might understandably feel justified in believing in God based on powerful mystical experiences, but those experiences of yours can never constitute justification for anyone else to believe in God, even if the telling of them is powerful and compelling enough to convince others of the existence of God.
Thinking and doubting and feeling is going on therefore something exists. What is that something?
Quoting Corvus
Just realised that you have not answered to this question. What's your thought on this point?
But the simple logical reflection seems to suggest otherwise.
If I think, then I exist.
I think
Therefore I exist. (Valid and ambiguous)
Cogito must have been induced from the MP above which looks valid. But when you try negating the premise,
If I don't think, then I don't exist.
I don't think
Therefore I don't exist. (Valid but definitely unsound)
I don't exist is untrue (not from cogito, but from my sensory perception), therefore it implies cogito is untrue as well. Agree?
Yes, we agree.
In the sixth meditation he says:
Quoting J
The essence of something is its nature. He says:
About the concept of nature he says:
and:
On the one hand:
but on the other:
If nature is what is essential and in the things themselves, and among the things bestowed on him by God is his body, then it would seem that the nature of the self is to be both mind and body.
And yet he says:
He distinguishes between his nature or essence and the nature of man, just as he distinguishes between a badly made clock which:
and a clock that work badly:
In the first case he is talking about the nature of a particular clock, a badly made one, while in the second he means the nature of clocks, that is, what it is to be a clock.His nature as a particular man is not the same as the nature of man. We might say of someone, for example that it is his nature to be timid or gregarious. It is Descartes' own nature to be a thinking thing. In this he aligns himself with an idea of the philosopher that goes back at least to Plato's Phaedo.
But there is another aspect to this. What he seems to be hinting at is made more clear when we take note of the fact that what he calls the mind is what the theologians call the soul. In the sixth meditation he says:
If the nature or essence of man is a combination of mind or soul and body, then the theological teaching that the soul is what is essential and Descartes claim that he is a thinking thing, to the extent it disregards the body, is like a badly made clock and its maker a poor craftsman.
But the idea that the self or I is a soul persists. If, however, the soul is the mind then it is given the kind of agency that may be missing from the concept of soul. Thinking for Descartes is not fundamentally contemplative or meditative but constructive. Thus he sought foundations on which to build. Although a lot of attention is paid to his epistemology it was the groundwork for a science that would change the course of nature. We might say, of his nature to find the Archimedean point from which to move the earth.
But Descartes' concern was not simply personal. It was to displace the authority of the Church from the mind of the thinking man,
In terms of a what that something is thinking. In terms of a who it is Descartes.
In response to your first question I said:
With regard to the second question, if he were to have stopped there then yes.
Quoting Corvus
No.I must exist in order to have sensory perception. He does not doubt that he senses. What he doubts is the judgment that what he senses corresponds to anything outside his mind.
Does it entail then,
God thinks (doubts), therefore God exists?
Quoting Fooloso4
But that is not the case from the scientific point of view. I must exist first before I am able to think, or sense the world. These are the biological facts. Remember when you were born? You didn't know anything, and you didn't think anything. You didn't know any language, so didn't speak anything intelligible. Your mind was a blank sheet of paper (by metaphor). Then you grew up picking up the ability to speak, see, think .... etc etc?
You have existed without having to think that you think.
- We see how conflicted Descartes is about what to say concerning essence, nature, thinking thing, etc. He wants "thinking thing" to be primary -- "nothing else belongs to my nature or essence" -- but he's aware that the mind's connection to the body is not merely like a sailor and a ship. Rather, it's an "intermingling". (I'd be interested to know the Latin here.)
-- He also clearly has trouble with using "mind" and "soul" interchangeably. If his own nature is a "totality of things bestowed by God," surely this is the soul, rather than a thinking thing. As you show, this results in a number of contradictions, both philosophical and theological.
-- All these represent criticisms of Descartes on his own terms, pointing out contradictions or inconsistencies. But what is most striking to me (and I think to Ricoeur) is that, for Descartes, the problem is a mind/body/soul problem: How can we best describe the capacities, natures, and overlappings of these three aspects of humans? Which is ontologically primary, if any? What depends on what? Whereas, for us moderns, the essential element left out of this analysis is the unconscious. I think Descartes might partially understand this as an aspect of the soul, an aspect not encountered by the thinking thing. This is in keeping with many spiritual traditions which describe the vital connections between unconscious processes and spiritual insight and experience. But I doubt if Descartes would have liked the idea that there are aspects of the soul (read "the self") that are not only different from thoughts and desires and sensations, but are actually unknown to him. Or, if he did grasp what this meant, he would probably dismiss it as unimportant: What counts is what we experience via the ego, the "I" (as he conceived it).
It does not entail that God thinks, but if God does think then God exists.
Quoting Corvus
No doubt that if Descartes has the benefit of contemporary science some of his views would change.
But all thoughts are private to the thinker. I am only conscious of my thought, and you would be, I reckon, too. If God thinks, is the same category of inference to If you think, If she think, or if they think, then they must exist. What makes "If you think, then you exist" more probable than "if God thinks, God exists"?
Quoting Fooloso4
Would you not agree it is a commonsense knowledge rather than a contemporary Science? Even ancient Greeks would have known about it.
I am not so sure. I ascribe to the idea that when a careful writer says things that seem contradictory that is is sign that we need to look closer and attempt to resolve the conflict.
Quoting J
I think it is an intentional rhetorical strategy.
Quoting J
In the language of theology it is a soul, but in Descartes terminology a mind.
Quoting J
I am attempting to point beyond the contradictions and inconsistencies. It is part of his art of writing to conceal certain things that the attentive reading will attempt to make sense of. A few quotes from the
online appendix to Arthur Melzer's "Philosophy Between the Lines":
He wanted the Church to reform, and he thought he could help it do that. He was a wild guy. He travelled around engaging in warfare when he felt like it, he was actively seeking members of esoteric groups (we know he knew one of them, but the connection was never revealed to him.) He was a rich man and a genius. He wasn't under anyone's thumb, and he knew it.
Not f he reveals them of makes them public.
Quoting Corvus
I don't see how this follows.
Quoting Corvus
You asked about the scientific point of view, which is not the same as common sense knowledge. In any case, he cannot be deceived about his existence because he must exist in order to be deceived. As to whether he first exists and only subsequently thinks, he rejects this. He exists as a thinking thing. As such, it makes no sense to separate his existing and this thinking.
Wouldn't the Church consider this heresy? Rather than reform the Church he attempts to reform man,
The Counter-Reformation happened a few decades before Descartes was born, so no. During his lifetime, the Church was focused on losing ground to the Protestants.
Quoting Fooloso4
I'll just comment that you do this a lot. You come up with some weird subterfuge related to a famous philosopher and then announce your theories as if they're facts. Just signal that you're doing this so you don't end up causing confusion.
Quoting Fooloso4
But that's just it -- on the basis of these contradictions, I don't think he was a careful writer. He just seems muddled about minds and souls -- understandably, since the theology of his era didn't give him much to work with, soul-wise.
I suppose it depends on how you evaluate Descartes' status as a philosopher. I grant his historical importance but have never found him especially deep or insightful. That said, the challenge to try to read ever more deeply is always appropriate.
My interpretation like any other is just that, an interpretation. Is your claim that Descartes wanted the Church to reform your own theory. If so, you do not announce it as such. If it is a fact, what is the evidence to support it?
Let's look at some facts:
From the Dedication to the Meditations:
He then asks for them to come to his aid by granting him their patronage. Rather than attempting to reform the Church, after asking for the help of the faculty he says:
None of the quotes are from 19th century authors.
Quoting J
I take going forth to mean not just a public persona but putting forth his writings.
Quoting J
This thought remained private because unpublished. His advise to his student:
This is a masking of one's opinion.
Quoting J
Good point.
Right. Descartes was clearly not on a quest to undermine the authority of the Church.
Is that a fact or an opinion? Evidence?
He dedicated the Meditations to the Jesuits with an appeal to consider his new way of approaching knowledge. It's clear that he was attempting to engage with the Church. If he'd wanted freedom from the Church, that was easily available in nearby Protestant territory.
He starts by saying:
and ends by asking for their help. He never gained their endorsement. Accepting his work is not the same as an appeal for them to change.
Quoting frank
Do you mean he could have avoided the fate of Galileo by escaping? Perhaps, but this would not save his writings from censorship by the Church. In addition, freedom of thought is not limited to his own thinking.
How does one reveal one's own contents of thoughts, and make them public?
Linguistic expressions are not thoughts themselves.
Quoting Fooloso4
"Whoever thinks must exist" is a guess at best. It is not a logical statement. Who is "whoever"? All thoughts are private to the individual who thinks. One can only be conscious of one's own thinking. All others' thoughts could be communicated to the others via language. But language itself is not thoughts.
Quoting Fooloso4
You sounded as if Descartes had no contemporary scientific knowledge at his life time, hence he could be excused making a nonsense claim. And my point to that was, that one's bodily existence is precondition to mental operations is not a contemporary science, but a very basic biological fact which could be even classed as a commonsense knowledge.
Quoting Fooloso4
It would be absurd reject one's own bodily existence prior to thinking that one exists. Therefore cogito is not a sound statement. "I exist, therefore I think." is a valid and sound statement.
Right, just where you deviate from the common narrative about Descartes, point out that you're offering your own theory. That reduces confusion.
Well, Descartes did die working for a Protestant queen of Sweden who converted to Catholicism of a Jesuit variety and then got in trouble opposing the Church upon other issues. How Descartes fits into all of that is not clear. SEP has their version of the story. It does seem clear he did not have an established home to work from.
But "Kristina Wasa" was an intellectual in her own right. The IEP gives a helpful view of her life and circumstances.
Yes, he seemed to have enjoyed traveling around. That's interesting about Kristina Wasa. :up:
He did express pleasure in seeing new places. But the question of feeling compelled to move is the question raised above regarding opinions unpopular with those with power.
I know. I meant that your reading of these contemporary comments is "19th century" a la Kierkegaard and the Romantics, full of mystery that (to me) isn't there. Admittedly, it's hard to tell because you give no context for them. I don't want to pursue this in great detail, but a for-instance would be this one from Leibniz:
What is the context? Which opinions is Leibniz referring to here? What are "these kinds of subjects"? I'm guessing this was about religious doctrine, where plain speaking in a Catholic country could get you in trouble.
He liked to follow armies around, staying in his own encampment. I think he was just hungry for adventure. Do you have reason to believe he moved around because he was in danger of being arrested?
I only mentioned the last move before his death. The SEP article I linked to may have the circumstances right or wrong. I was not proposing all of his movements were based upon a singular motive.
You said he could have switched camps regarding testimony of faith if he did not like where he was. The Sweden adventure is neither proof nor disproof of that idea. It does point to a fluid environment where intellectuals who are cool with the Church one day may become kindling the next.
Okay, but I don't see the point.
Quoting Corvus
Can you explain how someone can think but not exist?
Quoting Corvus
Anyone and everyone who exists.
Quoting Corvus
I don't see the connection with existence.
Quoting Corvus
To the contrary, he was on the forefront of science.
Quoting Corvus
Descartes uses the terms soul and mind interchangeably. There are plenty of people who do not lack commonsense who believe in the soul exists apart from the body.
The point is even if you said, I think therefore I exist, it doesn't say anything about the content of your thought. It is just a linguistic expression. I wouldn't know what your true thoughts would be like.
Quoting Fooloso4
It is not about "can think but not exist", but it is about "must exist first before can think."
Quoting Fooloso4
Whoever exists, exists is a tautology, therefore meaningless.
Quoting Fooloso4
If all thoughts are strictly private to the thinkers, then your cogito is just a solipsistic utterance to me. It doesn't give any meaningful knowledge to anyone else.
Quoting Fooloso4
If that is the case, then he would have known the fact that he must have existed before thinking.
Quoting Fooloso4
He still must exist before thinking. The body must exist first before the mind can start operating.
It think it likely that this is part of it. He did not want to suffer the fate of Galileo. But from a letter to Mersenne
.
Quoting Corvus
But the content of his thought is not relevant to his not being deceived about his existence.
Quoting Corvus
I meant to say whoever thinks. You asked:
Quoting Corvus
in response to my saying:
Quoting Fooloso4
Quoting Corvus
Do you exist? Could you be mistaken or deceived about this?
Quoting Corvus
The issue is not as clear cut as you seem to think. Consider the current idea of the existence of sentient matter, panpsychism, and the idea that consciousness is fundamental. In Descartes time and for some in our time as well, the soul is believed to exist independently of the body. I am not advocating any of these beliefs. My point is simply that we cannot appeal to "science" as if the matter is settled or conclude that Descartes was ignorant of science because he argues that he is essentially a thinking thing.
In addition, as I pointed out in my discussion with J, Descartes also says:
Quoting Fooloso4
If the content of thought is empty or unknown, what meaning or relevance does the thought have with one's own existence on claiming cogito?
Quoting Fooloso4
Whoever is a name for nonexistence and unknown, hence meaningless.
Quoting Fooloso4
Isn't it a meaningless utterance?
Quoting Fooloso4
I do exist. But my existence is confirmed by my own sense perception of the world, the sensory perception of my own body and the actions I take according to my will. Not by cogito.
Quoting Fooloso4
My point is simple. Cogito is logically not sound.
Although Descartes isolates himself in his room, as a thinking thing he is not isolated. As a thinking thing he is connected to thinking itself, that is to say, to what is thought not just by him but other thinking beings before and after him. The nature of thinking is something we do together, a joint project, something that occurs between human beings. The thinking self is not just the individual but thinking itself, which is by its nature public.
That one is thinking and what is thought are not the same. He must exist in order to think.
Quoting Corvus
?
Quoting Corvus
No.
Quoting Corvus
In the second meditation Descartes says:
Is it not the case, that he must have existed in order to think? Existence is a precondition for thinking.
Thoughts without content are meaningless. All thoughts must have its contents or objects. When you say, a thinking being, it doesn't mean much without the knowledge of what the thinking is about. Without the content or object of the thought, Cogito is not saying much more than I dance, or I sing.
Quoting Fooloso4
A person called "whoever" sounds still ambiguous. Whoever doesn't seem to denote anyone. It is not, I, you, he, she or they. It is not everyone either. Could it be no one? Who is whoever?
"Whoever thinks, must exist."? How do we know unknown beings be thinking? or existing?
Quoting Fooloso4
These are the operations of mind which are only possible under the precondition of the living bodily existence.
You are mixing tenses.
Quoting Corvus
It is a condition for thinking. Whether it is a precondition is not as obvious as you think. From Anaxagoras to the present there have been educated people who belief in the existence of a non-physical nous/mind/intellect/consciousness. In addition there have been and still are those who believe in the existence of a soul separate from the body.
Quoting Corvus
Right.
Quoting Corvus
What is the point?
Quoting Corvus
Descartes concludes that he cannot doubt that he exists and cannot be deceived about his existing. He might be dreaming that he dances or sings but even if he is dreaming he is certain that he exists.
Quoting Corvus
Whoever mistakes "whoever" for what a person is called is confused. This reminds me of how the Cyclopes is fooled by Odysseus.
Quoting Corvus
Right, sensing and willing are operations of the mind or of a thinking thing. You have made it clear that you think this requires a body, but this is not a good reason to misunderstand or misrepresent him, especially in cases where you are in agreement with him regarding the confirmation of your existence.
Right I agree but surely to be consistent Descartes must have imagined that he had grounds for skepticism regarding the existence of those other thinkers.
You are not understanding the past continuous tense was used specifically to indicate, the existence precedes doubting.
Quoting Fooloso4
You seem to be misunderstanding him blindly taking his side even the ambiguity of the claim is evident.
My point was existence precedes doubting and thinking, which is also supported by the phenomenologists and existentialists.
I don't think so. I think his doubt is rhetorical. A way to doubt the teachings and authority of the Church by feigning to doubt everything.
Added: Doubt is methodical, the purpose of which is to gain certain knowledge based on what is indubitable.
Doubting one's own existence is a self contradiction. One cannot doubt without the preexisting living bodily existence. Doubting one's own existence negates one's own sanity.
So you have said, again and again and again. I agree, but it is not as simple as you assume. It is not a matter of taking his side but of trying to understanding him. When you say:
Quoting Corvus
you show that you do not understand him. He does not doubt his existence. That is the one thing he cannot doubt. That is his starting point.
One way to approach him is by attempting to read him as someone at that time might have. Belief in an immortal, immaterial soul was widespread and fundamental to the teachings of the Church. By substituting mind for soul reasoned thought rather than Church dogma and doctrine becomes fundamental. In addition, the unquestioned authority of Aristotle in matters of science is also called into question and replaced by certainty.
The question of whether consciousness is fundamental is an open question. We should not be too quick to dismiss Descartes because he held a similar view.
He doubted everything even his own existence. But he thought that cogito is the only thing that he cannot doubt. From Cogito, he induced his own existence. That is not quite logical.
He should have induced Cogito from the perception of his own living body.
He does not doubt that he exists. From the second meditation:
He briefly doubts his own existence, but then soon he realises that he thinks. He convinces himself that the fact that he thinks proves he exists. The truth is that he doubted his own existence in the beginning briefly.
Where does he say this? He doubts his body and his senses, but not that he exists. He posits a malicious demon that will do everything he can to deceive him, but concludes it cannot deceive him about his existing.
You can infer his doubts are about his own existence when he doubts his body and his senses.
Quoting Fooloso4
How could he exist without his body and senses?
You ignore what Descartes says and impose your own inference based on your own opinion rather than on anything said in the text.
Quoting Corvus
A good question, but your rejecting the possibility does not mean that Descartes thought, even briefly, that is it impossible. Imposing your own opinions onto your reading of Descartes is bad practice.
The logical analysis so far seems to reveal that my understanding is accurate and clear without any prejudice or distortion on the text. I was suggesting you to use your inference to understand him better.
Quoting Fooloso4
Ditto the above.
Do you think his conclusiona kind of ontological argument for the existence of Godis also feigned? Or that his skepticism regarding the authority of the church extended to the 'holy book' itself?
Yes.
Quoting Janus
He makes good use of the good book for his own ends. In Genesis 2 after man gains knowledge God says that man has become like one of us. God blocks them from eating of the tree of life and becoming one of them, that is, immortal. But Descartes, in agreement with the NT, says that the soul/mind is immortal.. The theme of being god-like is continued in the story of the Tower of Babel:
(11:6)
In the fourth meditation Descartes says:
Quoting Fooloso4
You're saying that the ascent towards God through the ontological argument is a necessary rhetorical device for the learned of his time.
But Descartes' actual position, coming from -- is that certainty comes from himself. God isn't necessary for knowledge, but rather there's a certain ascent from the certainty of him as a thinking thing, along with the others after he reaches that certainty, to his willing, his sensing, etc.
Do I understand you?
For the most part, yes. He wanted to avoid accusations of heresy and atheism. He was, however, placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, the Index of Forbidden Books.
In the first meditation he says:
His reason for doubting is methological. That is to say, in the normal course of his life he does not doubt all that he now finds some reason for doubting.
It is only now that he is alone and removed from the demands of life that he can call into doubt things that ordinarily he would be mad to doubt.
A preview of my thinking is that Sartre and Descartes aren't as much in conflict as I was initially thinking, given your reading.