Misconceptions of Descartes' Cogito

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
AverageBozo
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Re: Misconceptions of Descartes' Cogito

Post by AverageBozo »

He could just as well have said, “I defecate, therefore I am,” but the same problems arise, especially since the presumed I would have to be self-aware of its de
AverageBozo
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Re: Misconceptions of Descartes' Cogito

Post by AverageBozo »

…oops

to continue:

…the presumed I would have to be self_aware of its defecation, and that requires consciousness and that requires an I, which was presumed without proof, etc.

However, this illustrates that he could just as well have said something else, no matter whether seemingly correct or not.

D would have been better off to say, “I sense that I exist, therefore I exist.”

This, of course, applies only to the I that is commonsense. I cannot know that Belinda exists or that Pattern-chaser exists because I cannot know whether anyone other than I, commonsense, senses anything.

I, commonsense, know that I sense that I exist by the fact that I sense it. This makes for a circular argument that can be reduced to, “I exist because I exist,” which is no use to anyone at all at all except I, commonsense.

It is of value to me because it just is. No proof is needed to convince me that what I experience is real, because whatever I experience is my reality.
AverageBozo
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Re: Misconceptions of Descartes' Cogito

Post by AverageBozo »

Excuse me, please, for the confusion I may have caused by using another forum’s name for me, AverageBozo/aka commonsense.
Belindi
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Re: Misconceptions of Descartes' Cogito

Post by Belindi »

AverageBozo wrote: March 5th, 2022, 11:18 am He could just as well have said, “I defecate, therefore I am,” but the same problems arise, especially since the presumed I would have to be self-aware of its de

But the problem Descartes addressed was existence itself.
Descartes did in fact address physical processes. He was aware he was sitting in his room beside his warm stove, and asked himself "Could I be mistaken about this perception?"

Well, D may have been mad or dreaming about himself in his room with the warm stove. and any bodily process may have been similarly doubted, including defaecating.

But what D can't doubt or be fooled about is that he is thinking .
AverageBozo
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Re: Misconceptions of Descartes' Cogito

Post by AverageBozo »

Belindi wrote: March 5th, 2022, 11:54 am
AverageBozo wrote: March 5th, 2022, 11:18 am He could just as well have said, “I defecate, therefore I am,” but the same problems arise, especially since the presumed I would have to be self-aware of its de

But the problem Descartes addressed was existence itself.
Descartes did in fact address physical processes. He was aware he was sitting in his room beside his warm stove, and asked himself "Could I be mistaken about this perception?"

Well, D may have been mad or dreaming about himself in his room with the warm stove. and any bodily process may have been similarly doubted, including defaecation.

But what D can't doubt or be fooled about is that he is thinking .
Yes. I am only suggesting that he could have said something else, even if it may not be true.

Also, I implied that it doesn’t matter if he should be imagining his room, because whatever he imagines is his experience and his reality.
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Elephant
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Re: Misconceptions of Descartes' Cogito

Post by Elephant »

ernestm wrote: February 26th, 2022, 12:24 am
Descartes' reconstruction of consciousness from the fact that the act of doubting cannot be doubted is entirely based on induction. As such it is unprovable, and as time has passed, dereliction from faith in the wisdom of others has by this necessary foundation of all rational knowledge led to the ascendance of nihilism and the continuing eradication of higher-order morality than can be established without accepting notions of goodness as intrinsically meaningful.
Sorry, I only understand half of this quote.

Descartes wasn't talking about proof -- it is afterall philosophy of the mind and metaphysics of what exists. Nor is he asking for a proof. What he's trying to show is one cannot escape one's existence because any attempt to falsify (for lack of a better word) one's thoughts (I'm here sitting in this room with the fireplace blazing... is existence itself.
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Elephant
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Re: Misconceptions of Descartes' Cogito

Post by Elephant »

That's why it's called Meditation.
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thrasymachus
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Re: Misconceptions of Descartes' Cogito

Post by thrasymachus »

ernestm wrote
Nowhere in philosophy is the 98% what can no longer read more than one sentence before needing to state an opinion on social media more evident than miscomprehensions of the cogito.

Descartes' deconstruction of accepted facts in prior philosophical wisdom directly led to the current scientific method, but as the philosophy of science is no longer taught as part of science degrees in the USA, no one knows that either.

Descartes' reconstruction of consciousness from the fact that the act of doubting cannot be doubted is entirely based on induction. As such it is unprovable, and as time has passed, dereliction from faith in the wisdom of others has by this necessary foundation of all rational knowledge led to the ascendance of nihilism and the continuing eradication of higher-order morality than can be established without accepting notions of goodness as intrinsically meaningful.
A couple of things:

The scientific method can be construed in different ways. What do you have in mind? For me, it is the hypothetical deductive method which is not what Descartes had in mind. Here, going into an analytical context assumes a foundation of knowing; thus, what is understood about what lies before you is "deduced" from what Kuhn laid out as paradigmatically established normal science. And anomalies are never qualitatively "other".

then, this doubting that can be doubted, this is, as I know, a post modern insight, notwithstanding the historical skeptical schools (Sextus Empiricus, et al) that has its roots in Nietzsche's perspectivialism. Derrida put the period on skepticism. See his Structure, Sign and Play, for example. This is the devastating attack on any kind of centered thinking. But it is NOT the definitive undoing of metaethics at all. In fact, aside from t he revival of apophatic theology (see Caputo's Weakness of God, e.g.) it forces to light the essence of ethics which is the Good: all talk is without a center, hence the futility of philosophy. But philosophy never had a chance, especially the analytic world that depends on the hypothetical deductive method that only sees what paradigms allow (see the above). Analytic philosophy is transfixed by science and fails to see anything it cannot see (mostly, anyway).
But then, we read Kierkegaard and find a whole new world (if you can stand the Christianity that overwhelms him the way antiChristianality overwhelms Nietzsche).
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thrasymachus
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Re: Misconceptions of Descartes' Cogito

Post by thrasymachus »

AverageBozo wrote
the presumed I would have to be self_aware of its defecation, and that requires consciousness and that requires an I, which was presumed without proof, etc.

However, this illustrates that he could just as well have said something else, no matter whether seemingly correct or not.

D would have been better off to say, “I sense that I exist, therefore I exist.”

This, of course, applies only to the I that is commonsense. I cannot know that Belinda exists or that Pattern-chaser exists because I cannot know whether anyone other than I, commonsense, senses anything.

I, commonsense, know that I sense that I exist by the fact that I sense it. This makes for a circular argument that can be reduced to, “I exist because I exist,” which is no use to anyone at all at all except I, commonsense.

It is of value to me because it just is. No proof is needed to convince me that what I experience is real, because whatever I experience is my reality.

There is a good point in this: why privilege thinking? In fact, aesthetic experiences have much more indubitability. But the circularity of the attempt to arrive at something foundational doesn't hold, I would say. Descartes' evil one can deceive me, true, but, and here is the essence of the problem, deception can only come in the interpretation of the event, that is, when we actually think and affirm what it is. What is NOT assailable is the intuitive presence of the world. I can be wrong about this being coffee I am drinking; the demon could have me radically hypnotized and I could really be drinking cow piss; but the sensation, the "good" that I associate with coffee, the texture ofo it as it goes down the throat, and so on, these are not to be placed in doubt. It is only when I open my mouth and interpret that it can all go wrong.
At at this place of direct apprehension, here is the foundation. The question remains, however, can this direct apprehesion, this intuitive actuality, be conceived apart from the interpretative understanding? Big question.
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thrasymachus
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Re: Misconceptions of Descartes' Cogito

Post by thrasymachus »

AverageBozo wrote
It is of value to me because it just is. No proof is needed to convince me that what I experience is real, because whatever I experience is my reality.
This really does sum it up, except for language that is used to "say" this is not private. That is where things get dicey.
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Re: Misconceptions of Descartes' Cogito

Post by Belindi »

AverageBozo wrote: March 5th, 2022, 11:59 am
Belindi wrote: March 5th, 2022, 11:54 am
AverageBozo wrote: March 5th, 2022, 11:18 am He could just as well have said, “I defecate, therefore I am,” but the same problems arise, especially since the presumed I would have to be self-aware of its de

But the problem Descartes addressed was existence itself.
Descartes did in fact address physical processes. He was aware he was sitting in his room beside his warm stove, and asked himself "Could I be mistaken about this perception?"

Well, D may have been mad or dreaming about himself in his room with the warm stove. and any bodily process may have been similarly doubted, including defaecation.

But what D can't doubt or be fooled about is that he is thinking .
Yes. I am only suggesting that he could have said something else, even if it may not be true.



Also, I implied that it doesn’t matter if he should be imagining his room, because whatever he imagines is his experience and his reality.
You had written:
No proof is needed to convince me that what I experience is real, because whatever I experience is my reality.
I agree. Descartes was writing as if he did not interact with an environment, as if thinking is a rarified activity.
(I previously replied to you before I had read your extended edition)
ernestm
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Re: Misconceptions of Descartes' Cogito

Post by ernestm »

thrasymachus wrote: March 5th, 2022, 8:44 pm
ernestm wrote
Nowhere in philosophy is the 98% what can no longer read more than one sentence before needing to state an opinion on social media more evident than miscomprehensions of the cogito.

Descartes' deconstruction of accepted facts in prior philosophical wisdom directly led to the current scientific method, but as the philosophy of science is no longer taught as part of science degrees in the USA, no one knows that either.

Descartes' reconstruction of consciousness from the fact that the act of doubting cannot be doubted is entirely based on induction. As such it is unprovable, and as time has passed, dereliction from faith in the wisdom of others has by this necessary foundation of all rational knowledge led to the ascendance of nihilism and the continuing eradication of higher-order morality than can be established without accepting notions of goodness as intrinsically meaningful.
A couple of things:

The scientific method can be construed in different ways. What do you have in mind? For me, it is the hypothetical deductive method which is not what Descartes had in mind. Here, going into an analytical context assumes a foundation of knowing; thus, what is understood about what lies before you is "deduced" from what Kuhn laid out as paradigmatically established normal science. And anomalies are never qualitatively "other".

then, this doubting that can be doubted, this is, as I know, a post modern insight, notwithstanding the historical skeptical schools (Sextus Empiricus, et al) that has its roots in Nietzsche's perspectivialism. Derrida put the period on skepticism. See his Structure, Sign and Play, for example. This is the devastating attack on any kind of centered thinking. But it is NOT the definitive undoing of metaethics at all. In fact, aside from t he revival of apophatic theology (see Caputo's Weakness of God, e.g.) it forces to light the essence of ethics which is the Good: all talk is without a center, hence the futility of philosophy. But philosophy never had a chance, especially the analytic world that depends on the hypothetical deductive method that only sees what paradigms allow (see the above). Analytic philosophy is transfixed by science and fails to see anything it cannot see (mostly, anyway).
But then, we read Kierkegaard and find a whole new world (if you can stand the Christianity that overwhelms him the way antiChristianality overwhelms Nietzsche).
Well Im perhaps too old to appreciate post modernism as younger people do, but it seems to me, postmodernism is on the whole rejected as 'nonsense' by modern science, particularly in fact because of widespread admiration of Kuhn. Being Popperian I can't really comment on that.
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thrasymachus
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Re: Misconceptions of Descartes' Cogito

Post by thrasymachus »

ernestm wrote

Well Im perhaps too old to appreciate post modernism as younger people do, but it seems to me, postmodernism is on the whole rejected as 'nonsense' by modern science, particularly in fact because of widespread admiration of Kuhn. Being Popperian I can't really comment on that.
I didn't start reading Rorty until I was 50 or so. Then Heidegger, Husserl, then back to Kierkegaard, Hegel, and then the door was open, on to Derrida, Levinas, looking back at Wittgenstein, then the French theological turn with Michel Henry, Marion, and on and on. I did this because it was fascinating. Rorty's Irony, Contingency and Solidarity almost completes the Kantian revolution.

sorry, but Kuhn? Kuhn the Kantian? No, modern science does not take that kindly to Kuhn at all. As to post modern thinking and scientific perspective, like something Neil DeGrasse Tyson might stand for, the reason they do not hold high regard for post modern thinking is singular: they don't read it. It takes work to understand something like this, and they are too busy, just as they are too busy for learning ceramic engineering or knitting. Why would I even take seriously at all what someone says about something they haven't read a thing about.
Indeed, the beginning of understanding phenomenology and its post modern progeny is the grandfather of phenomenology, Kant. Analytic philosophy took Kant's empirical delimitation of human understanding as its bottom line; phenomenologists took his idealism as theirs.

Popper. He defended the hypothetical deductive method, didn't he? This is right, I think. But then, there is so much more.
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