I THINK, THEREFORE I AMPLITUDE MODULATE (AM)
I have this oddball theory [sorry @Banno] that I want to throw out there just in case people find it worth exploring.
First to explain the title: AM is a radio term and refers to Amplitude Modulation used in radio broadcasting. You can visit the Wikipedia page here
Rene Descartes has a made a mark in the history of philosophy with his famous cogito ergo sum argument (I think, therefore I AM). Descartes' argument is that since he's thinking, he must exist (as the thinker doing the thinking). In essence, Descartes identifies himself as the entity doing the thinking and what's germane to my theory is that Descartes considers himself as the originator of thoughts i.e. Descartes believes that he, Descartes, is the source of the thoughts that pass through his mind. This must be so for if it weren't it wouldn't be Descartes who's thinking and if that's the case, Descartes can't infer that Descartes exists.
What if...Descartes is wrong?
I remember my late grandfather who used to regularly listen to the radio. He would tune in to a station and listen for a while and when whatever program he was interested in ended, he would tune into another station and when the program there ended, he would switch to another station...you get the idea.
Now, a radio is - bottom line - a receiver; all it does is pick up radio waves and play it on its in-built speaker. The contents of a program playing on a radio don't originate in the radio but exist outside as radio waves, in the air.
Consider now the possibility that thoughts too exist like radio waves - disturbances in the electromagnetic field - permeating all space and our brains are simply receivers that pick up these thought waves, these thought waves being broadcasted by various "stations" that may be either natural or artificial (think ET).
If the above thought wave scenario is possible then, Descartes isn't warranted to conclude that he exists based on the mere fact that he thinks because the thoughts aren't his - it's not Descartes who's thinking. Just as a radio can't claim to be the originator of the contents of a station it's tuned in to and hence can only be a passive receiver of radio waves, Descartes too can't claim to be the originator of his thoughts i.e. he can't claim to be thinking for all that's happening is his brain is picking up thought waves from whatever "station" he's tuned in to. Ergo, Descartes' claim that he's thinking is no more justified than a radio's claim that it's creating the contents it's playing on its speakers.
First to explain the title: AM is a radio term and refers to Amplitude Modulation used in radio broadcasting. You can visit the Wikipedia page here
Rene Descartes has a made a mark in the history of philosophy with his famous cogito ergo sum argument (I think, therefore I AM). Descartes' argument is that since he's thinking, he must exist (as the thinker doing the thinking). In essence, Descartes identifies himself as the entity doing the thinking and what's germane to my theory is that Descartes considers himself as the originator of thoughts i.e. Descartes believes that he, Descartes, is the source of the thoughts that pass through his mind. This must be so for if it weren't it wouldn't be Descartes who's thinking and if that's the case, Descartes can't infer that Descartes exists.
What if...Descartes is wrong?
I remember my late grandfather who used to regularly listen to the radio. He would tune in to a station and listen for a while and when whatever program he was interested in ended, he would tune into another station and when the program there ended, he would switch to another station...you get the idea.
Now, a radio is - bottom line - a receiver; all it does is pick up radio waves and play it on its in-built speaker. The contents of a program playing on a radio don't originate in the radio but exist outside as radio waves, in the air.
Consider now the possibility that thoughts too exist like radio waves - disturbances in the electromagnetic field - permeating all space and our brains are simply receivers that pick up these thought waves, these thought waves being broadcasted by various "stations" that may be either natural or artificial (think ET).
If the above thought wave scenario is possible then, Descartes isn't warranted to conclude that he exists based on the mere fact that he thinks because the thoughts aren't his - it's not Descartes who's thinking. Just as a radio can't claim to be the originator of the contents of a station it's tuned in to and hence can only be a passive receiver of radio waves, Descartes too can't claim to be the originator of his thoughts i.e. he can't claim to be thinking for all that's happening is his brain is picking up thought waves from whatever "station" he's tuned in to. Ergo, Descartes' claim that he's thinking is no more justified than a radio's claim that it's creating the contents it's playing on its speakers.
Comments (56)
Assuming we're not talking about telepathy, and even still, kind of a disturbing and dystopian topic. I'd say it's a safe bet they didn't have that technological capability during his time. Of course, who's to say. I can't recall if it was an urban legend or not but I remember hearing something about someone who started picking up radio signals from a filling he had and was able to hear the programs. Maybe he was just crazy though. Again, who's to say.
I'm adding this to my jounal. i'm going to read this later
Yes, this is a new, interesting area of discussion and I am thinking about it before I begin replies to other discussions. But I can relate to it, of course, because playing music on my speakers is my basic mode of being,
As a child, one of the things that I found so fascinating was the way in which sounds can be impressed onto grooves of records and to the tapes inside cassettes, and I think that this relates to the whole area of radio transmission and the transmission of thoughts. It comes down to identifying the source.
It would be wrong to say that the radio is speaking or that the record was singing. They are the outer layer responsible for the transmission but did not create the sounds. However, unlike Descartes, radios, records and CDs don't have self-consciousness, so they do not begin to think they are identical with the sounds.
The question is to what extent, are Descartes and ourselves different from the radio? We transmit thoughts, but are not identical with the source of consciousness itself. The source can be identified as the brain or mind, depending on whether one is a dualist or not, and how reductionist one is. Or, the source can even be seen as the collective unconscious.
Where Descartes identified himself as existing on the basis that he was thinking, he was drawing on the idea of the 'I' as the observer, or as Ken Wilber spoke of 'witness' consciousness. But, on the basis that we observe or witness, what does this mean about the 'I'. Is the 'I' an entity, even a self, or is just an illusionary fragment.
Perhaps it is an entity in the sense that it is a means of establishing an autobiographical self through life, but perhaps it is not really an actual being but more like a device for channelling sensory and mental stimuli. But, having just written that sentence, I can sense my own inner 'I', saying, 'But of course I am real' So, what do we make of this mysterious I. It is the seat of ego consciousness and cohesive identity. Without it, we would be a jumble of sensory experiences. It would be wrong to see oneself, or Descartes, as the source of thoughts but it could be said that the I is able to, at least, establish itself as existing as the seat of consciousness.
How is "the self is the source of thought" different from "the self thinks"?
Descartes merely identifies himself as 'thinking being', in ancient language, the being which' essence consists of thinking. However, he needs not accept that thinking consists of 'originating thoughts'. He merely accepts that there is 'something doing thinking' and that that certain something self identifies. This is a very elaborate way of saying the same thing Streetlight says actually. Your 'radio-wave thinking' theory is therefore not incompatible with Descartes.
However Descartes' theory is metaphysically (in this case at least) more lean than yours. He does not have to accept any metaphysical nature of 'the thought as a certaon something'. He 'merely' has to accept that thinking exists and that it is located in a certain something, something which you also seem to accept.
Right, and thought is always directed toward some want or desire, indicating that something is lacking, so the more appropriate argument would be I think therefore I want to be.
Quoting Tobias
The issue then is how the thinking self-identifies. The self-identifying always requires another premise for the purpose of comparison. if the thinking thinks that it is necessary that there is something like a being which is thinking, then I think therefore I am, is appropriate the conclusion. But if thinking means something else to the thinking, then the conclusion would be otherwise. So the true question is what does it really mean to be thinking.
I came across that story too. It would've made my day if it were true. Unfortunately, it appears to be just one of those tall tales people spin to make their lives just that bit more interesting.
Quoting StreetlightX
The point is if there are thought waves of the kind I described in the OP, no one, including Descartes, is thinking. If this is a difficult for you to accept, consider vision. When we see objects around us, do we conclude that we're the light waves that enter our eyes? No, right? Similarly, if our brains are simply receiving (like our eyes receive light wave) thought waves, we can't assert that we're the thought waves and if that's the case, we can't claim to be thinking beings just as our eyes can't claim to be the light waves.
Quoting Jack Cummins
This begs the question. For to assert that there's self-consciousness amounts to saying that one exists as a thinking being but the catch is, if thought waves are real, no one claim to be thinking (see my reply to StreetlightX)
Quoting Tobias
See my reply to StreetlightX
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
See my reply to JackCummins
I'm open to ideas thought. First things first, we all seem to have some hardwired tendencies/proclivities which are very difficult to override - perhaps this reflects brain architectures that tune in to a certain assortment of thought waves (the brain has a preference for certain broadcasting "stations").
Secondly, there's the matter of how we seem to have some control over our thoughts - we can, for instance, decide to close a book we were reading and go out for a walk. This I suppose is what JackCummins means by "self-consciousness" but these instances can be explained in my theory as simply a preset sequence of contents broadcast from the "station" our brains are tuned in to. So deciding to stop reading a book and go out for a walk could simply be the next program in thought wave "station" broadcast.
Again, irrelevant.
You missed the point then. Did you get my eye analogy? :chin:
And those are?
What is the "I" in "I think therefore I am"? If it is not the source of thoughts then what? The receiver? Similar to a radio? Guess that works. But now what?
To establish the existence of the self, as every first year philosophy student knows. The 'nature' of the self in question is simply irrelevant for that purpose. Descartes answer to the OP would simply be: who cares?
Quoting TheMadFool
It was irrelevant, like the rest of the OP. Descartes does not set out to establish that the self is what thinks. Only that there is a self at all.
Thanks for clarifying. I'll look up the rest. It just seems odd that whatever he planned to use this concept of "self" for would accept both definitions. A radio OR a radio station. I forget how the whole "self" fit into his overall goals of finding undoubtable knowledge.
I do agree about your essential idea about our brains being transmitters, receiving information, and I think it is a bit similar to those of Henri Bergson and his whole idea of Mind at Large. Perhaps you do not need Descartes to be at the centre of the theorI about tuning into to thought waves. I have also been writing in response to @Possibility, about art, this afternoon, and reading her writing is inspirational for thinking about dimensions which we can tap into.
The example actually proves the point you like to disprove. By your lights, somehow when we discovered that vision and seeing consists of light waves falling on our retina and being transmitted to the brain, we stopped 'seeing'. Descartes does not contest that he 'is' thinking, in the sense that 'thinking' and 'Decartes' are absolutely identical, which seems to be what you presuppose he says. He does not contend: "I am thoughtwaves", het just states that he is thinking in much the same vein as I can say that I am seeing. Whatever it is that I am de facto doing when I am thinking, is irrelevant to Descartes point. I am a being that thinks, he contends and I cannot escape holding true the idea that I am thinking. That is different according to him with 'seeing' and therefore that cannot be the basis of the self.
I agree with you, but I think that question lies at the heart of metaphysics. At least the point of Descartes for me is the identification of thinking and being and therefore pointing metaphysics in a certain direction, namely the relationship of being and thinking. This connection came under heavy fire from Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein etc. but I think the point itself is momentous in philosophy.
I read it. I agree for the most part.
Nothing you've said creates a problem for Descartes. You cannot doubt you are doubting.
:up: According to Fritjof Capra the basic unit of cognition is a reaction to a disturbance in a state, and according to the Santiago theory of cognition : "Living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition. This statement is valid for all organisms, with or without a nervous system."
Your assertion fits very nicely into this understanding - as radiation effecting a state or a field, and hence the state / field effected by the disturbance self organizes in response to it. This phenomena occurs at the most basic level of cause and effect, then grows in complexity to eventually become thinking, and Descartes assertion "I think therefore I am" seems logical in this regard. What is illogical, or left undefined, is what is "I am"? In my understanding I am consciousness, or I am a process of self organization, or to put it in your words - I am something like a radio responding to radio waves. :smile: I don't think Descartes had this in mind when he made his claim, still he did a remarkable job given the information he had on hand.
Descartes follows your reasoning up to the point of noticing being-able-to-think is given as evidence rather an explanation of any kind. It is a proof of God in so far that an awareness of thinking can only be accepted as what we find ourselves doing. The empirical can only appear in the silhouette of absolutes whose existence can scarcely be imagined.
In one register, the phrase is saying: You want a mystery? I have one for you.
St. Augustine’s City of God (XI.26).
How would you separate "hardwired tendencies" from conscious thinking habits which are learned at a very young age. Perhaps it's the case that all pre-existent hardwired tendencies are actually overridden at a young age through the training of the conscious mind, by the influencing adults. This would mean that all such broadcasting preferences are actually conditioned, acquired.
Quoting TheMadFool
If what I said above is correct, then the only true self-control would be to tune out all conscious thought, these being the product of the influence of others. Until you do this, and tune into that radio station which such self-control might give you, you don't have any basis to say what that radio station might be like, because the only time you might have been tuned into it was when you were so young that you couldn't possibly remember it. If such a radio station could actually tell you anything, what do you think it would say?
I really don't believe that thinking can be identified with being in this way. This is because "being", though the "ing" signifies an activity, is really a passive, unchanging sort of thing, a temporal continuity of the same identified thing. If a thing is changing, it is better described as "becoming" and so we have the ancient dichotomy between being and becoming. Since thinking is better described as an activity of change, it is better classified as a sort of becoming, and Descartes would have been more accurate to say I think therefore I am becoming (as changing). Now, in modern philosophy we have much conflation of being and becoming, such that we have numerous understandings of "being", one supporting the logic of "what is", and another supporting the existence of a growing living being, which is more like a becoming. This makes it very difficult to have any metaphysical discussion of "being", because it's very difficult to know what the participants of such a discussion have in mind by that term.
I'm sorry to contradict you here but Descartes' self is the thinker but if thought waves are real, there's no thinking so we can forget about a thinker. There's no other way to interpret his argument: I think, therefore I AM.
Quoting Hanover
I'm sorry about repeating this part of my argument but it seems it hasn't sunk in. Doubting is thinking but if thought waves are real, there's no such thing as thinking and so there can't be a thinker and Descartes' self is, by all accounts, the thinker. Nobody is actively thinking in this scenario, everyone's just passively receiving thought wave signals that are traveling through space.
Quoting Tobias
Again, sorry for repeating myself but Descartes' argument is that he is the thinker in the sense actively generating thoughts. Now this is necessary for Descartes' cogito ergo sum argument because if he's a passive recipient of thought waves then it's not him that's thinking. Just give it some "thought" - If the thoughts that I'm thinking aren't mine, i.e. I don't generate them on my own, then, how can I claim to be a thinker and if I'm not a thinker then how can I identify my self as a thinker? How can I say I am that which I'm not!
:up:
I'm sorry I couldn't reply to all of the other posters. I'm a bit tired today. Thank you thought.
You're not contradicting me. You're just making clear that you've never read a word of Descartes in your life. Which is par for the course with you.
Focus on the argument StreetlightX :smile: Descartes would've appreciated that (a lot).
Regardless of how you define "thinking," and regardless of whether Descartes is actually thinking, he most certainly thinks he thinks.
Let's study this very carefully. There's "thinking", there's "Descartes", and then there's Descartes' "I" in "I think therefore, I am". To what does the "I" in Descartes' argument refer to? Surely, it refers to the thinker who's allegedly thinking but...if thought waves are real, no one, let alone Descartes, is actually thinking. If there's no thinking, there's no thinker and if there's no thinker then it becomes impossible for Descartes to identify himself with a thinker as a thinker doesn't exist.
Amplitude modulation presupposes a carrier. If thoughts are the modulation, they can’t be the carrier, which is the inherent characteristic of FM, so where does the carrier come from?
Descartes wouldn't have argued there were "thought waves" because a wave implies physicality, and thought was non-physical in his dualistic system. Regardless, though, it is entirely irrelevant what thought is composed of and what it means to be physical and non-physical. Descartes did something when he doubted, and that something, whatever it was, meant something happened. That's all the cogito proves.
:up: Descartes would have been more accurate to state that we are in a process of self organization. Not so much a being, or I am, but a becoming like an evolving process. A process of what you might ask? Self organization seems to be the answer, as this is the activity the entire universe and hence all of its component parts are constantly involved in. Self organization relative to the change we constantly experience, where time is a measure of change.
Descartes actually considers this. Its sometimes called "The Evil Demon" argument. Basically he questions whether everything he observers is falsified and put in front of him by an evil demon.
For your radio analogy, Descartes did consider that something else was streaming things to him. But he had to be able to process it. The "I" is the radio doing the processing.
Now if you're stating that the processing is also streamed, that the I is simply created elsewhere and streamed in to some processor, Descartes would still state the part that is thinking that it is a self, is the self. The "radio" receiving the processing would not be the self. Does that make sense?
The entire universe is involved in self-organization? I thought only living things did this.
From that point of view, it is the most unavoidable activity. I am the witness to myself that nobody else is. So, how does that work as a limit to anything else?
Descartes idea was to then build from that starting point. If he could find a starting point that was irrefutable, then he could use that to build his philosophy.
(Sixth Part, page 568 translated by Laurence J Lafleur)
The juxtaposition of humility and confidence is part of the method. The daunting presence of so many unknowns is no reason to stop operating.
You repeat yourself and you keep repeating the same mistake. Why would being a passive recipient undermine Descartes argument that he is thinking? Whether thinking is active as in generating a certain something or passive as in receiving a certain something is of no importance. Just as for me to be 'seeing' might be to actively construe an object in my eye or receiving light waves. For thinking it is only necessary for there to be thoughts in my head but whether they are generated by myself or by some evil genie does not matter. I keep thinking. That is actually all of Descartes' point.
That said the thoughts are of course mine, because of self identification of thought. Also that is the point of the cogito. I attach it to everything I think and utter. What you are doing is actually handily disproven by Kant, we cannot know the thing in itself, only what we make of it. So the question whether thoughts are really really radio waves is pointless. It may be a handy metaphor for something at best. That something seems to be a critique of sorts of a purely individual consciousness. That is fine but we can do that without odd metaphysics.
Well I take a rather dialectical view that being is indeed becoming, but not identical with it. For there to be any becoming there must be a being that becomes. I would disagree that it is a passive unchanging sort of thing. and besides, notice how your description 'unchanging' then also denotes an activity, that is if every 'ing' denotes that. I don't see much of a problem actually. Being is a concept, a notion we use to make sense of the world. Pure passivity is actually negated by it, because if 'something' is purely passive, how would we notice it as a certain something, it must have all kinds of categorical qualities for us to be able to make sense of it at all.
The issue here is "identity". If being is actually a becoming, but you then posit the necessity of "a being" (notice the noun now) which is becoming, then that being must have an identity. Therefore we need something to account for its temporal continuity, its temporal extension, its identity as the same being, throughout its changing existence. Without this principle of identity, it's just a different existence, or different "being" from one moment to the next, as it changes.
This problem is well described in Aristotle's "Physics", where he discusses the principles required to account for the nature of change. The underlying identity, by which we say that a thing persists as the same thing (retains its identity) despite having a changing form, is provided for by the concept of matter. This supposed, assumed, or posited "matter" accounts for the notion that "there must be a being that becomes".
Quoting Tobias
Well, to be fair, the 'un' prefix negates the 'ing' suffix, so that what is signified by 'unchanging' is a lack of activity.
Quoting Tobias
The point though, now, is that "being", as a concept, implies, in all of its senses of use, an identity. The difficulty in negating "pure passivity", is to do that without negating identity. I do not see how we could remove all passivity from the concept "being", or existence in general, without denying ourselves the capacity for identity.
Therein lies the rub. If thought waves are real, you can't be thinking
One way or the other, we are thinking while talking about this. I am having trouble understanding the exclusion you are proposing.
Are you qualifying the thinking as only recognizable after some things can be ruled out?
My impression from reading Descartes is that we are stuck with ourselves and have to make the best of our limitations as discovered. It is a lot less explanatory than other approaches.
And if light waves are real you cannot be seeing, so the things I see are not mine and somehow not seen by me. :chin: You are deeply confused.
You can see of course but you can't be the light waves. Thoughts, in the scenario I described, are thought waves and you can't be thought waves.
I know that a being continues to be the same being despite changing, but the point is that we need a principle of identity to validate logically, what we know intuitively. If I am different from what I was last year, then logically I am a distinct, or different, being from what I was last year. Intuitively, I know that I am the same being, with the same identity, but how do I support this logically?
The receiver idea is interesting. I don't get how it displaces other ideas. It is not like we are given packages of possible thought. We just try to imagine things as closely as possible to what we experience.
Yes but you imply that for Descartes we are somehow thoughts. I have no idea how that would work, radio wave theory or not, and I do not think Descartes would have any idea as well. His phrase is not "I am thoughts therefore I am", but "I think therefore I am" You first commit Desscartes to a position he needs not hold and subsequently refute his 'position'.
Yes and from here on the problem between the rationalists and the empiricists emerged, resulting in stalemate because neither by logic nor by the senses do we have access to this underlying 'identity'. Kant's brilliancy was to turn this on its head. Identity is not there waiting to be discovered by the perceiver, but a quality added in perception. Identity therefore is not passive, but active, identification.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes being implies an identity but it does not imply an identity that is present and unchanging. In fact I would say that being itself is not identifiable at all. It is a mere mental operation. I never saw being, I only ever encountered a being, qua an existing thing. For me actually that explains the difference between being and existing. Being is being and therefore no different from nothing. When we say of something that it is, we say nothing yet. If I tell you that the girlfriend of my dreams is beautiful, there is indeed an identity, namely between my dream girlfriend and the aspect of beauty, however, she does not exist, never is that identity to be encountered in an existing something. Being is therefore nothing...yet. An identity yes, but a totally abstract and general one, important in our conceptual apparatus, but nowhere else. (Aside, that is why in language, such as in Turkish, the verb being is not encountered).
best of luck in the new year :)
Tobias
If this were the case, a conversation between two folks would be equivalent to a radio tuned to (say) the weather report making noise next to a radio tuned to (say) Beethoven's fifth. nobody could have a conversation with nobody else, because radios can’t exchange ideas that are not theirs. But instead, we can have conversation because we decide what to say, and we direct our thoughts. Or at least it feels like it.
So Descartes was right. It’s annoying, right?