[katelynsills]

I'm always confused by psychological references to Descartes "I think, therefore I am" statement. Isn't this instead a statement about knowledge? That is, starting from no assumptions, what can be known about the world? It's my understanding that Descartes' answer was that the fact that the questioner is currently thinking means that they must exist, and this can be used as a foundation for more knowledge about the world.

[tormeh]

Exactly. Unfortunately, it also stops there. Descartes tried to justify trusting your senses by assuming there's a just God that would never let humans' senses lie, but that's kinda naive.

[logicallee]

Suppose we freeze time for a second, you're transported to and stuck in a multigalactically large room for countably infinite minutes (or until you're done, also you're temporarily immortal) with all the paper and binding materials you need, and some reference books that together constitute a full description of someone's atomic state and immediate environment, as that person is about to start thinking about the Cogito for a few minutes.

There are a few trillion atoms described, so it takes you a long time, but you spend your infinite minutes (or as long as you need) working through the various states, starting with time t=0 based on the reference books, and then for infinite minutes you just simply dilligently work through the state of the person and immediate environment, i.e. continue to model the atoms using the laws of physics, working it out manually, as a human calculator, and writing down all of your work. It is incredibly boring. About ten hours into it you ask for a pill to let you forget that you've already been doing this for ten hours, because it was only interesting for maybe half that time and there is no way you can do this for almost infinite time. Okay, you get a supply of those pills as well, and take one every ten hours. This leaves you all set to spend practically infinite time writing out all this meticulous description.

Now, once you're FINALLY done, and have done up through t=10minutes, which really practically takes you infinite time, you bind up all of your work and put the volumes in a row in multigalactically large bookshelf. Trillions of volumes. Then you're transported back to Earth and time resumes. Okay, for having trillions of volumes, ten hours (that you remember) wasn't too bad.

And now we know there are a series of volumes of books (that you've prepared by hand). At first (in the first few volumes) they describe an initial state of mind, and, due to the moment that was chosen (someone entertaining a train of thought regarding the Cogito) as you go through the volumes you are reading through someone's thoughts, i.e. the thoughts that this person exists.

But do they exist? Of course not: they are just a character in a book. That they think, "I think" does not cause them to exist, and a few volumes later they are done having that thought.

The volumes are all there from volume 1 up till x trillion trillion. You could, if you wanted to, read through them all. Do the characters inside exist? No.

So, the Cogito does not prove physical or metaphysical existence.

[Ruphin]

The existence of the character described in the books is a tricky question that cannot be directly answered. Depending on your definition of existance, it either exists, or it doesn't. However, this does not necessarilt disprove Descartes' statement.

Let's say the character does not exist, this means there is no character going through the Cogito. Descartes' statement holds no meaning in this situation.

let's say the character does exist, it is going through the Cogito, which according to Descartes means there is some object that has to exist for these thoughts to arise. And there is! The books that you have painstakingly written exist somewhere to describe the thoughts of the character exist somewhere in the physical world (or whatever hypothetical world or universe you have theorised).

Is this not exactly Descartes' point? If we interpet it broadly: Whenever thought arises, this thought must materialise from some existing state or presence, thus proving the existance of 'something'. To give this object the identity of oneself is perhaps a bit of a stretch, but one could argue that if this state or presence creates these thoughts it can usually be associated with 'self' in whatever way you want to define it.

[trivial]

I was always taught that Descartes "I think therefor I am" quote is often misunderstood or at least misrepresented. What I was taught might be a better way to understand it is very close to what you stated. If a person can doubt the existence of everything then certainly they could doubt even the existence of themselves. Once one starts down a path of doubting then certainly everything is subject to scrutiny. What one cannot doubt is the fact they are doubting. So perhaps the quote should be better paraphrased as "I doubt therefor I am". Ive always found that helpful and while it seems you understand that point very well I just thought Id mention it because prior to such an explanation the process by which one affirms there existence because they think never made much sense to me.

[mbrock]

Note also that Descartes expresses a fear, which he doesn't explore very much, that if he were to momentarily stop thinking, he might "cease to exist." He has a formulation along the lines of: "I exist, that's certain—but how often?" The answer: as long as he is thinking, he exists. So the Cartesian affirmation of individual existence has an interesting porosity.

[potatoyogurt]

I think the problem goes even further. The cogito assumes an "I" that it never really establishes. "I think, therefore some thoughts exist" seems to hard to challenge, but who is to say that these thoughts are continuous or coherent, that they really define a single entity "I?"

[dantheman]

I believe the argument is that he is a thinking thing. And the "I" is merely for convenience he assumes no body, etc. I think, I can't remember, he even considers if the grand deceiver could change his thoughts and memories. I haven't discussed this in a decade :/

[diggum]

ding! For a statement that is supposed to be free of assumptions, assuming there's a thinker instead of just thoughts, is a pretty big leap.

[sl8r]

"When I analyze the process that is expressed in the sentence, 'I think', I find a whole series of daring assertions that would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to prove; for example that it is _I_ who thinks, that there must necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking is an activity or operation on the part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an 'ego', and finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by thinking - that I _know_ what thinking is. For if I had not already decided within myself what it is, by what standard could I determine whether that which is just happening is perhaps not 'willing' or 'feeling'? ... Whoever ventures to answer these metaphysical questions at once by an appeal to a sort of _intuitive_ perception, like the person who says, 'I think, and know that this, at least, is true, actual and certain' - will encounter nowadays a smile and two question marks from a philosopher nowadays. 'Sir', the philosopher will perhaps give him to understand, 'it is improbable that you are not mistaken, but why insist on the truth?'"

[partomniscient]

I {something} therefore {higher order processing is occurring}.

[visakanv]

> "What one cannot doubt is the fact they are doubting"

Are you sure about that?

trollface.jpg

[visakanv]

Okay but seriously then, why can we not doubt the fact that we are doubting?

[RockyMcNuts]

Yeah, exactly, before I can know anything else 1) I know that I exist, and 2) something has to be performing my little circlejerk of self-awareness.

Seems weird to me that some scientists say the self and self-awareness are an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

I have trouble bringing myself to agree, my existence seems pretty real to me. I don't feel like an emergent property of a complex system.

In a way, we experience directly the metaphysical nature of our existence, and all the science we do is based on things much more indirectly observed and measured, and that metaphysical essence of our existence is sort of inaccessible to science.

[nitrogen]

Thankfully neuroscience allows us to turn philosophy's inside-out approach on its head and look from the outside in. The very existence (and broad conscious awareness) of things like brain damage, neurosurgery, and mind-altering substances demonstrates conclusively that the mind resides in the brain.

Any philosophical questioning of the existence of existence is rendered moot by its inherent begging of the question and lack of consequence to physical reality.

[RockyMcNuts]

moot? suppose we are all in a simulation by a higher power who is about to pull the plug...on the one hand the pulling of the plug is outside our reality and not something we can reason about and in that sense moot, and yet would not be moot with respect to our experience when the plug was pulled.

Sir Arthur Eddington:

Let us suppose that an ichthyologist is exploring the life of the ocean. He casts a net into the water and brings up a fishy assortment. Surveying his catch, he proceeds in the usual manner of a scientist to systematise what it reveals. He arrives at two generalisations: No sea-creature is less than two inches long. All sea-creatures have gills. These are both true of his catch, and he assumes tentatively that they will remain true however often he repeats it. In applying this analogy, the catch stands for the body of knowledge which constitutes physical science, and the net for the sensory and intellectual equipment which we use in obtaining it. The casting of the net corresponds to observation; for knowledge which has not been or could not be obtained by observation is not admitted into physical science. An onlooker may object that the first generalisation is wrong. "There are plenty of sea-creatures under two inches long, only your net is not adapted to catch them." The icthyologist dismisses this objection contemptuously. "Anything uncatchable by my net is ipso facto outside the scope of icthyological knowledge. In short, "what my net can't catch isn't fish." Or--to translate the analogy-- "If you are not simply guessing, you are claiming a knowledge of the physical universe discovered in some other way than by the methods of physical science, and admittedly unverifiable by such methods. You are a metaphysician. Bah!

[nitrogen]

...simulation...

Prove it.

Sir Arthur Eddington...

I've seen that analogy before and it's silly, because 1. people have prior experience with sea creatures smaller than two inches, and 2. scientists are keenly aware of the limitations of their "nets," and those limitations leave very little room for metaphysics.

[RockyMcNuts]

By definition science can't answer the question, "is there a reality that is outside science and what is its nature?" That's what I think Eddington is saying.

I think your 2. seems a little silly, metaphysics by definition is what is beyond science, which is the point Eddington is trying to make.

Thinking about metaphysics is a little like thinking about what happens inside a black hole, what happens to the physics and interactions and information. You can come up with a lot of theories but you'll never be able to test them. It's beyond our experience, but we can't say there is no reality going on beyond where we can measure and experience and reason about it.

[nitrogen]

The very phrase "beyond science" is a bit nonsensical though, and using it to define a category of knowledge that is "beyond science" is a bit like defining a new land called "metanorth" containing whatever is geographically further north than the geographic North Pole.

I don't think it's fair, either, to compare metaphysics to black hole physics. Everything in my layman's understanding of physics, astronomy, and cosmology suggests that the prevailing theories of what happens inside a black hole are supported by evidence gathered from what happens outside a black hole, rather than being invented from scratch with no evidential basis.