A Deceiving God

[someoneisatthedoor]

Dear mr. knowitall,

@mr.knowitall

fred exists therefore fred exists is not an argument and it not proof.

-Imp

There are 3 axioms implicit in Descarte’s statement “I think, there fore I am”. Existence ( I am), consciousness(I think), Identity (I).

None of these are axioms, they are all implicit premises…

Imp and his illogical cohorts…

I wouldn’t go down the route of calling Imp illogical. He can be robotically logical when he’s in the mood and everything he’s said here is lucid and sound.

… 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.

‘I exist as a thinking thing therefore I am a thinking thing’ is not a sound argument…

Of course you can refuse these 3 axioms, the only problem is you must accept them in any attempt to deny them.

No you don’t. Let me show you: (from a conversation I had with my philosophy of mind tutor who was a total gimp)

I: ‘it is just as valid to think ‘I do not exist’ as ‘I exist’’
He: But who is doing the thinking?
I: I am, but of course that’s a matter of grammatical habit rather than logical necessity

Also, consider the passage from Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil where he says

16

There are still harmless self-observers who believe that there are “immediate certainties”; for example, “I think,” or as the superstition of Schopenhauer put it, “I will”; as though knowledge here got hold of its object purely and nakedly as “the thing in it self” without any falsification on the part of either the subject or the object. But that “immediate certainty,” as well as “absolute knowledge” and the “thing in itself,” involve a contradictio adjecto. I shall repeat a hundred times; we really ought to free our selves from the seduction of words!
Let the people suppose that knowledge means knowing things entirely; the philosopher must say to himself: 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 think, that there must necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and 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 not perhaps “willing” or “feeling”?

link

I’ve posted this time and time again but I never tire of it. I don’t know why…

[mr.knowitall]

“None of these are axioms, they are all implicit premises…”

‘I exist as a thinking thing therefore I am a thinking thing’ is not a sound argument…"

Apparently you are not quite clear on what these axioms are. These axioms are self-evident. They cannot be argued, for all arguements presuppose these 3 axioms. How can you argue if: 1)there is nothing to argue about, i.e existence 2) you are unable to argue ,i.e conscious 3) That which we are arguing about has no attributes, i.e identity?
The fact is- you can’t.

Out of curiosity, I would ask you what you would consider axioms
[/quote]

[Jon_F]

mr. knowitall and the rest of those posting in this discussion,

I’m afraid someoneisatthedoor is right. If you want a true defintion of axioms, they are not “self-evident,” but rather statements that people “generally accept to be self-evidently true.” The word generally begets some degree of uncertainty, as well as the likelyhood that some others do not see the statements as self-evidently true. Here, Existence ( I am), consciousness(I think), Identity (I), are all statments for which you cannot say with certainty whether or not they are true, or at least that is how I see it anyway. So I would not be so confident in saying things like “The fact is- you can’t.”

Anyway, back to the original Decartes proposition, I have to agree almost entirely with Imp; in part because the argument is circular, but for further reasons aswell; the statement is in two parts, “I think” and “I am,” which means that both statments need to be true in order for the whole to justify itself. Since you cannot say with any degree of certainty that “you think”, say we assume “you are,” how can we use either statement to justify the other unless both can be proved beyond any doubt at all that they are true?

I realise this may be unclear, but I’ll endeavour to unwrap it if the need arises.

Jon F

[Gobbo]

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?

It’s circular

Think of the matrix… neo might not exist in their ‘real world’ it may be in another matrix, and so on, and so on.

Descartes was aiming for the stars, though he claim close, his argument is full of holes.

[someoneisatthedoor]

Dear knowitall,

@mr.knowitall

“None of these are axioms, they are all implicit premises…”

‘I exist as a thinking thing therefore I am a thinking thing’ is not a sound argument…"

Apparently you are not quite clear on what these axioms are. These axioms are self-evident.

Axioms are self-evident, if these were axioms they would be self-evident therefore there’d be no need for you to tell me that they were self-evident. NOTHING is self evident in language.

They cannot be argued, for all arguements presuppose these 3 axioms.

No they don’t.

How can you argue if: 1)there is nothing to argue about, i.e existence

Indeed, for us to argue about something something must exist. That’s it. Nothing more. I cannot tell you the nature of this existence or anything else about it, nor you I…

2. you are unable to argue ,i.e conscious

Demonstrate a necessary connection between consciousness and the capacity to argue…

3. That which we are arguing about has no attributes, i.e identity?

You keep leaping from ‘something’ to ‘this specific thing that I say’ without explaining how and why…

Again, if there were axioms they would require no justification from you. By trying to justify them you’ve demonstrated that deep down you know that they aren’t axioms at all…

The fact is- you can’t.

If that were axiomatically true then you wouldn’t need to point it out…

Out of curiosity, I would ask you what you would consider axioms

Anything that is self-evident. Certainly not the presumed implicit premises of a thoroughly discredited philosopher. Of course Descartes was much more than a philosopher, but he was a dreadful philosopher…