Nah. "Cogito, ergo sum" is obviously wrong if we think about it for even a moment. It's a thought terminating tautology at best.
A) Just because there is thinking it does not follow that there is an "I" doing it.
B) Perceiving something does not in and of itself prove that either the thing or the perciever are "real". Some things are real without being perceived, and some things are perceived that aren't real.
C) Even if we grant the reality of the "I", What is the thing that is perceiving the "I" which is doing the thinking? We cant trust something that may be a faulty instrument to report on its own actions.So we can't actually be sure that we are thinking and not just falsly remembering that we once thought. See rootkits for an example. If we're starting from first principles (as Descartes intended) we immediately fail because we require an outside observer.
D)Etc.
Basically every major philosopher since Desacrtes has already had a go at this one. I'm sure there are better arguments against it out there already. These are just the few that spring to mind.
Really, its just the place where Descartes gave up, not a universal truth of some sort.
To use your language, perceiving something does in fact necessarily imply there is perception happening.
You’re jumping to Descartes (who was wrong), I am pointing to Nagel (who is correct but not in a way that’s very helpful answering the corollary questions of consciousness)
You presumably know consciousness exists at least in the case of you. I know it exists in the case of me. It’s probably reasonable for each of us to assume it exists in the case of each other.
> You presumably know consciousness exists at least in the case of you.
Just because I "know" something, that doesn't make it true. Or to use the "experience therefore consciousness" version:
Experiencing something doesn't imply that either the subject or object are objectively real. Humans regularly experience unreality (books, games, movies, hallucinations), and the assumption that you exist because you feel that you do is no more valid than the assumption that Mickey Mouse is real because you feel that you have seen him.
To restate more directly, there can be no "objective" reality without others to validate it. Otherwise its only "subjective" reality.
It's been a long time, but I think Hegel really misses the mark. (You mean Hegel rather than Nagel, right?) I think he argued against doubting your own perception, but anyone who has ever taken LSD, or met a mentally ill person, can tell you that there are miles between perception and reality. The way we percieve the self is unlikely to be any more reliable than the way we percieve Mickey Mouse.
Again, I didn't say anything about "objectively real" anything.
Your knowledge of consciousness existing within you is inherently subjective. And yet it's the truest thing any one of us can possibly know (per your point, a simple molecule ingested by mouth can distort nearly everything except the fact of consciousness). No matter how distorted the external/internal data that populates consciousness, the backdrop of consciousness is certainly there.
A) Just because there is thinking it does not follow that there is an "I" doing it.
B) Perceiving something does not in and of itself prove that either the thing or the perciever are "real". Some things are real without being perceived, and some things are perceived that aren't real.
C) Even if we grant the reality of the "I", What is the thing that is perceiving the "I" which is doing the thinking? We cant trust something that may be a faulty instrument to report on its own actions.So we can't actually be sure that we are thinking and not just falsly remembering that we once thought. See rootkits for an example. If we're starting from first principles (as Descartes intended) we immediately fail because we require an outside observer.
D)Etc.
Basically every major philosopher since Desacrtes has already had a go at this one. I'm sure there are better arguments against it out there already. These are just the few that spring to mind.
Really, its just the place where Descartes gave up, not a universal truth of some sort.