Descartes suggests that a god could be deceiving him into believing that he and the world around him exist, and if Descartes begins to doubt the existence of the world around him then he finds at least one undoubtable truth. That is of course, that everything except the existence of some being can be doubted. He demonstrates that even if he as Descartes does not exist then there must exist at least one being who is being deceived into thinking that he exists as Descartes.
Even if Descartes (the decieved) can never conceive of this being who is decieved then surely he has at least shown that he exists…Right?
Oh sure i agree that he has not proven that a god exists but he has proved that he exists, whether as Descartes or as a deceived being being deceived into thinking that he is descartes.
We know that our mind exists. The world exists in our mind. We know nothing more than that for sure. Our mind is our proof, but we cannot prove our mind. To prove your mind requires a mind outside of your mind, and then you are in a circle. Who wants to think of infinate division anyway. God only exists to rid us of infinate division.
To truly rid yourself of infinate division you need to realise that you are built up from nothing. Then you need to explain what nothing is. We always think that nothing is a none existent particle, well nothing could just be an invisible particle. If nothing is an invisible particle, then that solves infinate division once and for all. You need to realise that it is possible for an invisible particle to always exist. It is hard to get your head around, but you can grow to believe it. An invisible particle that we call nothing, and is made from nothing smaller than itself. It always existed, and it always had some form of action. Just enough action to make a wave. That’s all you need. Then you can get rid of Gods, and infinate division, and do I exist.
If this brain in a vat is being deceived into thinking that it is I then I the subject of the vat can be sure that a brain exists somewhere, even if it is just a vat being prodded.
Descartes is not arguing for the existence of a supernatural consciousness (with this statement anyway, although this was his ultimate goal), but for the existence of his own consciousness. It is not circular reasoning to say that in order for there to be an action there must a subject performing the action. The effect cannot preceed the cause. Perhaps Impenitent “does not think, and therefore is not”.
Before one can have a premise one must formulate that premise , which requires the ability to think of said premise. Before fred can have a thought he must exist . Your ability to think of a reply will prove to me that you exist.
What a delightfully graphic example of circular reasoning. I’ll have to remember this one…
Imp is right, Descartes assumes his conclusion in his opening premise and therefore runs in a circle. He also produces a series of rather bizarre (and I really mean that word) arguments along the way that commit other crucial errors, like contradicting one of the premises in the conclusion…
One could also raise the question that if (for example) Descartes is really a semi-conscious dust cloud being convinced that it’s a self-conscious human subject thinking about itself while sitting by the fire that Descartes hasn’t proved the existence of himself, he’s simply proved the existence of something. I seem to remember Kant raising a similar issue.
Descartes wasn’t proposing that he existed as Descartes. Even if the memories that he thought were real experiences could have just been an illusion and not a real experience. His memories of himself could all just be an illusion but he knows at least that there exists a thing.
I wouldn’t agree with Descartes when he says that he knows for sure that he is a thinking thing since it could well be true that he s being deceived into thinking that he is thinking when infact he is merely being deceived into thinking that he is thinking.
That’s precisely what he was proposing, that he is a thinking thing which really sits by the fire when it sleeps and dreams of being on the beach…
Yes, a thing that he’s happy to refer to as ‘I’ and which he sees as the origin of thought.
No. If he’s deceived into thinking (something) then he is thinking. One can simply sidestep this issue by saying something like ‘Descartes is really a dustcloud which perceives itself as a thinking human’ or ‘he could be deceived into believing that he is thinking when in fact he is not’.
There are 3 axioms implicit in Descarte’s statement “I think, there fore I am”. Existence ( I am), consciousness(I think), Identity (I).
Imp and his illogical cohorts seem to believe that you cannot prove that you exist or that you’re consciuos by blanking out the fact that proof presupposes existence, consciousness and a complex chain of knowledge: the existence of something to know, of a conscious able to know it, and of a knowledge that learned to distinguish between such concepts as the proved and the disproved.
Of course you can refuse these 3 axioms, the only problem is you must accept them in any attempt to deny them.
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i see where you all are going with this, and it comes down to a matter of not a subjectivity of truth, but to the subjectivity of the terms we use to express it. For indeed a powerful response to the Cartesian argument is blown (pardon the pun, “windy”) by Impenitent. The issue for you seems to be one concerning identity, that is, in terms of whether or not the undeniable evidence is of “our” mind observed by Pincho, or know-it-all’s “subject”, someone’'s “I”, or the original “thing” presented by Sysyphus0. Clearly, where the fundamental reality is regarded we are in basic agreement without our terms, that existence is manifesting in some apparent way. Not much of a theoretical discovery, Rene, beyond explicating the obvious into a necessarily limited structure which nonetheless does not resist refutation in words, though definitely true, and therefore, perhaps the best philosophy ever written, beloved geniuses.
