Cogito ergo sum
All philosophy must necessarily begin with the philosophy of the mind.
What are we? And how can we know anything else without first knowing this?
So first we must turn our attention upon ourselves and with the sharp scalpel and laser beam of philosophical inquiry inspect what we are, first.
I love Rene Descartes' story about locking himself up in a huge empty furnace in order to be isolated from everything and everyone else in order to probe his own mind and come up with first principles.
I love his initial discovery: I myself -- whatever I am -- am thinking, therefore someone must exist to be doing the thinking, therefore I must truly exist. A very simple algorithm that is self evident on an a-priori level requiring no further proof.
I find it amusing and very virtuous that having thusly discovered and proven himself, that Descartes then immediately turns his attention to the problem of the Philosophy God and His antithesis, the Evil Genius. Because the Evil Genius could have made things infinitely worse, or even could have refrained from creating us at all, therefore Descartes concluded that no Evil Genius reigns in the Universe. This was sort of a forensic discovery based on the absence of facts supporting an Evil Genius.
I would like to clarify that whereas Descartes was able to prove that no Evil Genius rules the Universe, he was not able to prove there is no Evil Genius at all, even one subservient to the Philosophy God.
Thirdly, Descartes turns his attention to the matter of the Philosophy God himself, on how to prove his existence. I am surprised that Descartes did not simply rely on Aquinas to do so. First Cause, Prime Mover, Artistic Artificer, and Purposeful Designer have always been good enough for me, and both Descartes and I are Roman Catholic. So he must have heard of Aquinas at least. Aquinas is the heart and soul of Catholic philosophy.
Instead however, Descartes comes up with his own proof of God, in that Descartes formulates the notion that if Descartes can conceive of a most virtuous perfect infinite Being then one must exist. That seems to have worked for him, but Aquinas works better for me.
The next problem is to decide what is mind and what is it not, and whether it is somehow connected with the body or not. It is obviously connected to the body somehow or else we ourselves could transmigrate from body to body during our days. But Descartes came up with a more flimsy theory in the notion of the two equal clocks. One clock is the mind and the other clock is the body and they go on ticking together perfectly. Not very convincing unfortunately.
So although Descartes was able to give us valuable insights about our own existence, and the likelihood of God, and the unlikelihood of an Evil Genius, he did not get very far explaining how the mind and the body interact.
Not an easy subject.
Still we must be grateful to Descartes for what he did give us.
Please feel free to agree or disagree.
If you disagree then please provide your analysis supporting why, and then also present a feasible alternative as well.
If you went to college then you should have learned in bonehead Freshman English and again in upper division Technical Writing to use good content, good organization, and good grammar/syntax, with an intro, body, and logical conclusion supported by analysis and/or facts, and complete sentences formulated around a subject, verb, and objects of the verb.
If you only went to public high school however then I guess we can try working around your writing prose in that case. Just at least give it a try the right way.
What are we? And how can we know anything else without first knowing this?
So first we must turn our attention upon ourselves and with the sharp scalpel and laser beam of philosophical inquiry inspect what we are, first.
I love Rene Descartes' story about locking himself up in a huge empty furnace in order to be isolated from everything and everyone else in order to probe his own mind and come up with first principles.
I love his initial discovery: I myself -- whatever I am -- am thinking, therefore someone must exist to be doing the thinking, therefore I must truly exist. A very simple algorithm that is self evident on an a-priori level requiring no further proof.
I find it amusing and very virtuous that having thusly discovered and proven himself, that Descartes then immediately turns his attention to the problem of the Philosophy God and His antithesis, the Evil Genius. Because the Evil Genius could have made things infinitely worse, or even could have refrained from creating us at all, therefore Descartes concluded that no Evil Genius reigns in the Universe. This was sort of a forensic discovery based on the absence of facts supporting an Evil Genius.
I would like to clarify that whereas Descartes was able to prove that no Evil Genius rules the Universe, he was not able to prove there is no Evil Genius at all, even one subservient to the Philosophy God.
Thirdly, Descartes turns his attention to the matter of the Philosophy God himself, on how to prove his existence. I am surprised that Descartes did not simply rely on Aquinas to do so. First Cause, Prime Mover, Artistic Artificer, and Purposeful Designer have always been good enough for me, and both Descartes and I are Roman Catholic. So he must have heard of Aquinas at least. Aquinas is the heart and soul of Catholic philosophy.
Instead however, Descartes comes up with his own proof of God, in that Descartes formulates the notion that if Descartes can conceive of a most virtuous perfect infinite Being then one must exist. That seems to have worked for him, but Aquinas works better for me.
The next problem is to decide what is mind and what is it not, and whether it is somehow connected with the body or not. It is obviously connected to the body somehow or else we ourselves could transmigrate from body to body during our days. But Descartes came up with a more flimsy theory in the notion of the two equal clocks. One clock is the mind and the other clock is the body and they go on ticking together perfectly. Not very convincing unfortunately.
So although Descartes was able to give us valuable insights about our own existence, and the likelihood of God, and the unlikelihood of an Evil Genius, he did not get very far explaining how the mind and the body interact.
Not an easy subject.
Still we must be grateful to Descartes for what he did give us.
Please feel free to agree or disagree.
If you disagree then please provide your analysis supporting why, and then also present a feasible alternative as well.
If you went to college then you should have learned in bonehead Freshman English and again in upper division Technical Writing to use good content, good organization, and good grammar/syntax, with an intro, body, and logical conclusion supported by analysis and/or facts, and complete sentences formulated around a subject, verb, and objects of the verb.
If you only went to public high school however then I guess we can try working around your writing prose in that case. Just at least give it a try the right way.
Comments (12)
Quoting YIOSTHEOY
This is not the argument Descartes uses to disprove the Evil Genius. Within Descartes' theory of ideas there is an species of ideas that are called ''clear and distinct ideas''. We have an ''clear and distinct idea'' of God, and therefore God exists. And since God does not decieve us (it is not in His nature), we can trust our clear and distinct ideas. This is called the Cartesian circle (God proves C&D ideas, C&D ideas prove God), and this is how he battles the Evil Genius. To ask an honest question: where did you get the argument that you (sorry to say, falsely) accredited to Descartes?
Quoting YIOSTHEOY
Again, not true. It was Anselm who developed this proof of God and Descartes took it from him. It is called the ontological argument for the existence of God. God is perfect, and since it is more perfect to exist then to not exist, God must exist. But again, not Descartes, but Anselm.
Quoting YIOSTHEOY
Not really. The Cartesian circle argument has been well-esablised in literature on Descartes as an failure, since it is a form of circulair reasoning.
But I enjoy anyone who shares my enthusiasm for Descartes, so keep on re-reading Descartes!
To start, I disagree with your first sentence:
Quoting YIOSTHEOY
Philosophy could begin, either phylogenetically or ontogenetically, with any other (sub)branch than philosophy of mind. And in fact phylogenetically, our token progenitor Thales began with ontology. Ontogenetically, one could begin doing philosophy by wondering about and coming to conclusions about aesthetics, ethics, mereology--anything really.
There are some big holes in Descartes' line of thoughts (that were pointed out by empiricists and contemporary thinkers) that should be considered:
1) he says "I think/am" but even using of the pronoun "I" is problematic: is there something that can be unified under a single subject? If we want to put ourselves in the position of doubting everything we should consider the possibility that there is not a single unique subject but just a stream of toughts
2) the ontological argument for the existence of god has been deeply analyzed by modern logicians with advanced tools as formal modal logic and computers, check this paper:
http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/users/lex/lehre/compmeta/hajek_short.pdf
what came out is (as far as I understand it) that all the proposed versions of ontological arguments do have some logical problem and it is not clear how to correct them.
One has to make the step of the logical necessary connection between ''I think'' and ''I am'', and only then somebody can understand that it should stop at ''I''.
I equals or is or am One and One or I is all there is.
This absolute has been proven logically, empirically, and mathematically, it hasn't been accepted yet.
One day truth shall set us free.
"Free at last," =
Did not know we had Deepak Chopra on the forum
That being said, one of the perplexing problems of "I think therefore I am" is how to define the "I" without the corresponding context of the "non-I". As with all things, "I" would only seem to have meaning as it relates to something else. Just as hot only has meaning as it relates to cold, up only has meaning as it relates to down, and hard only has meaning as it relates to soft. It would seem that things can only be defined in contrast to something else. Thus the concept of "I" may be impossible to construct without the contrasting concept of the "non-I".
So even if the solipsist is correct, and all that exists is the "I", the "I" must still have two distinct aspects. That which perceives that I am, and that which gives context to what I am. The question for the solipsist then becomes, if these two things, the "I" and the "non-I", are but two aspects of the same thing, then how can one of them, the mind, be said to have given rise to the other one? If the "I" can't exist without the "non-I", then how can it be its cause?
The answer would seem to be that the "I" can't be responsible for the existence of the "non-I". Therefore there must be something else which is responsible for the existence of both of them. Thus it would seem, that even for the solipsist, three things can be known to exist, the "I", the "non-I", and that which gives rise to them. "Cogito ergo sum", followed to its logical conclusion asserts that reality must be triune in nature.
Now anything beyond this point becomes highly speculative, but it's possible to hypothesize about the nature of that which gives rise to the "I" and the "non-I", and about why reality looks the way it does. But that is best left to another time.
What other type could there possibly be?
Actually, as perceptive as this comment is, it's not quite correct, or perhaps it's better to say that it doesn't give a complete picture of the relationship between the "I" and the "non-I".
If the "I" and the "non-I" are but two aspects of the same thing, as I alluded to in my previous post, then what makes the opinion of one, any more valid than the opinion of the other? For example, if I say that I'm a genius, and you say that I'm an idiot, which of us is right? Remember, we may each simply be one aspect of the whole. What the conscious "I" holds to be subjectively true, doesn't necessarily reflect what's objectively true. In fact it could be argued that it's the "non-I" that's reflective of what's objectively true, and not the "I".
By this I mean, that if I ask you where the world came from, you may respond that God created it, and this is your subjective belief. But in reality, you can't be certain that this is true, and the "non-I" may simply be a reflection of this uncertainty. The world may embody theism, and naturalism, and idealism, and materialism, and creation, and evolution, and all the iterations thereof, because there's no way of knowing which of them is true. And so the "non-I" encompasses them all, with all the accompanying discord that such diversity necessarily entails. There's simply no way to harmonize nor eliminate this underlying uncertainty, and so as much as the conscious "I" may want to create an idyllic reality, it can't. Because it can't answer one simple question...where did I come from.
The conscious "I" may be torn by cognitive dissonance, generated by its inability to rationally answer that one inexplicable question, where did I come from. It may be that it wasn't the material world that gave rise to an immaterial consciousness, but rather the other way around. And the reason that consciousness doesn't create an idyllic reality, is because it can't. Because existence itself is irrational.
So the conscious mind does the best that it can to rationalize the irrational...its own existence.