Descartes' cogito and Augustine's fallor

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

Do 1,200 years make a difference? I say yes.

Descartes’ “Cogito ergo sum” bears striking resemblance to Augustine’s “Si fallor, sum” - “If I am mistaken, I exist”, in fact the argument for the surety of knowing that one exists appears the same. But what for Augustine was the unmediated knowing of the Self and the knowing of that knowing, and its love for existence, for Descartes was composed more as if a scientific experiment, wherein all interfering phenomena are carefully excluded until the tested thing appears and shows its weight, systematically determined to be true. It seems to me that there is a wholeness of Being that Augustine is appealing to, the “realness” of pure perception, something akin to what Phenomenology would return to perhaps, a radicalness to consciousness itself, something that Descartes makes into islands of ratiocination, disembodied minds cut off from Being, such that the “thought” as an act becomes the grounding of what one is. What for Augustine is an inward-directed anchoring of awareness, in Descartes becomes a critical distance taken from the object of contemplation itself, a distance to be bridged by the scaffolding of rational thought.

“So far as these truths are concerned, I do not at all fear the arguments of the Academics when they say, What if you are mistaken? For if I am mistaken, I exist (Si fallor, sum). He who does not exist clearly cannot be mistaken; as so, if I am mistaken, then by the same token, I exist. And since, if I am mistaken, it is certain that I exist, how can I be mistaken in supposing that I exist? Since, therefore, I would have to exist even if I were mistaken, it is beyond doubt that I am not mistaken in knowing that I exist. And, consequently, neither am I mistaken in knowing that I know. For, just as I know that I exist, so also do I know that I know. And when I love these two things, I add to my love to them as a third thing, no smaller in esteem than the things that I know. Nor am I mistaken in saying that I love, for I am not mistaken in knowing that I love that things that I love. Even if those things were false, it would still be true that I loved false things;”

City of God, book XI, chapt. 26

“I WILL now close my eyes, I will stop my ears, I will turn away my senses from their objects, I will even efface from my consciousness all the images of corporeal things; or at least, because this can hardly be accomplished, I will consider them as empty and false; and thus, holding converse only with myself, and closely examining my nature, I will endeavor to obtain by degrees a more intimate and familiar knowledge of myself. I am a thinking ( conscious ) thing, that is, a being who doubts, affirms, denies, knows a few objects, and is ignorant of many,-- [who loves, hates], wills, refuses, who imagines likewise, and perceives; for, as I before remarked, although the things which I perceive or imagine are perhaps nothing at all apart from me [and in themselves], I am nevertheless assured that those modes of consciousness which I call perceptions and imaginations, in as far only as they are modes of consciousness, exist in me.”

Meditations III, paragraph 1

I’d be interested in any thoughts about the resemblance between these two “proofs” and the conclusions they lead to. Did Descartes improve on Augustine, or worsen him?

Dunamis

2

no, it wasn’t an improvement at all, merely an amplification of the same belief in grammar and ontological error…

noun, action… if noun does action, noun exists to do the action…

I think… I think - I exist…

god creates… god creates- god exists…

godzilla trashes tokyo… godzilla trashes- godzilla exists…

-Imp

3

Imp.,

“no, it wasn’t an improvement at all, merely an amplification of the same belief in grammar and ontological error…”

I’d tend to agree with your criticism of Descartes, but I am not sure that it is so easily applied to Augustine. Augustine seems more to appeal to a state of subjectivity and does not seem to be making a categorical claim via grammar. Strictly the equivalence would be if Augustine said, If I think erroneous thoughts I am. Augustine seems more to say, if I am in a mislead state, it still is a state. This is seen with his progression to the state of love for existence. This love is not so much a verb, as an affect, a feeling. Instead of parsing grammar, the noun from the verb, he seems to be parsing the state of consciousness from its possible objects. Having knowledge, that is direct awareness of Being (I know you have your special definitions of knowledge), one then responds to that knowledge with thought and with feeling. It is a subtle distinction, but the form of the claim does factor in here. Descartes makes a claim ex nihilo, “I think”. Augustine draws conclusions from something that is implied to have occurred. “If I am wrong”. The quiet difference lies in the two verbs “to think” and “to be wrong”. In Descartes the act seems to create being, in Augustine, being seems to become posited upon reflection. “Wrong” implies a privation of knowing, and therefore a knowledge against which it is contrasted. One becomes a first cause, the other implies the discovery of a (pre-)conscious state of Being. I am sure that all statements of course can be blamed on the inadequacies of language/grammar, but the different uses of language also hint at different modes of perception.

Dunamis

4

The resemblance was pointed out to Descartes in one of the “Objections” to his “Meditations” (I forget which one). Descartes replied that he was aware of the similarity, but that he had greatly explanded what Augustine had said.

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K.,

I did not mean to imply that he was not aware of it. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if he was influenced by it. (And perhaps cribbed some of his answer to skepticism from the Augustine-inspired Campanella as well). The questions for me are, ‘How did he alter it?’ and if he altered it, ‘Did he improve it?’"

Dunamis

6

you are clouding what was said…

If I am x - then I am x…

If I am - then I am…

it is circular reasoning if ever there was…

-Imp

7

Imp.,

I am clouding what you are attempting to say was said. There is a difference. Neither of these are logical proofs. But there is a difference between ‘Godzilla destroys Tokyo’, and ‘Godzilla is wrong’.

Dunamis

8

no, that was not the cloud… it was in Augustine “if I am in a mislead state, it still is a state.”

what he meant was “if I am in a mislead state, it still is a state. {in which I am}”

if I am, I am…

-Imp

edit and I never said godzilla was right or wrong… godzilla rules the universe but that is beside the point… just ask boc…

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Imp.,

"If I am, I am… "

But at first the “I am” is not posited by him, but by the question posed by the “Academics”, to which he is only answering. What Augustine does is take that rather obvious answer and turn it into into an examination of what it means to percieve the Self. He is not attempting to establish a rational proof for his own existence, or he would not have claimed “Credo ut intelligiam” - “I believe so as to understand”. Logic is not his grounding. As Evil is the absence of good -and hence less real-, the state of being wrong is the absence of knowledge. What persists in each is the unmediated experience of the Self as the Self. Just as he “believes” so as to understand, he percieves the Self, “knows” it, so as to know and love it. Something more is being said here than, I have proven that I exist. Unlike Descartes who tried to lay the foundation of his philosophy upon this stone, Augustine’s perceptions are but footnotes to an overall philosophy of Being. The “I am” that you insists that he is founding, I suspect is not the “I am” of the cogito, but the “I am” of Being. The argument is similar to Parmenides’ argument that there is no nothing. Augustine is saying there is no nothing of me. It is circular because Being is defined as Being. It is a descriptive limit. This apprehension of the Self is not a proof, but a phenomenological apprehension of the “Image of God”, apart from all senses, a pre-condition, a kind of hermetic loop of all consciousness. As he sums, “It is, however, without any delusive representation of images or phantasms that I am wholly certain that I exist, and that I know this fact and love it.”

Dunamis

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no, his (Augustine’s) “proof” or statement of existence is exactly that of rene…

"A caveat is in order. …Third, and related to this last quotation, is that Descartes’ reference to an “I” (ego), in the “I think” (cogito), is not intended to presuppose the existence of a substantial self. Indeed, in the very next sentence following the initial statement of the cogito, the meditator says: “But I do not yet have a sufficient understanding of what this ‘I’ is, that now necessarily exists” (Med. 2, AT 7:25). What function, then, does the “I” serve in the evidential claim “I think”? "

plato.stanford.edu/entries/desca … stemology/

they both established the “I am” as merely being…

-Imp

11

Imp.,

"no, his (Augustine’s) “proof” or statement of existence is exactly that of rene… "

Why? Because you say so.

I do not think you are comprehending what Augustine is claiming, actually something far beyond what Descartes claimed. It is an entire ontology. There is a triplicity there. He is not grounding the “I”, but saying that in that we are cut off from absolute knowledge, the closest we can get to such is the apprehension of the “image of God”, and the surety of that image is more real than anything this we can know by our senses. It is the primacy of knowing that we are, that we know this and that we love it. None of these triune states can be separated from the others. It is the mirror of the most real of what we can know. In a sense this seems like a very valid point. Its not so much that the “I” must exist, or even that “I think” proves the “I”, but a dynamic, I know, I know that I know, and I love it, something perhaps close to “the Will to Power”.

(sorry, I don’t read argument-by-link)

Dunamis

12

they are both basically the same…

both posit their own existence
both posit the existence of their god
both “justify” their existence with attributes of their posited god

augustine falls under the same cartesian circle that rene does

the link was where I got the quote, nothing more…

-Imp

13

Imp.,

"they are both basically the same… "

At the surface they do appear so. Augustine though makes his perception of the self a triune act, -pre-reflexive, reflexive and embracing- and the contemplation of the “image of God”, which by a definitional gradation of Being, is the most real thing available to our consciousness. It is literally staring into the face of God through the act of Being. It is a hermetic descriptive limit rather than a logical positing. The ontology of gradated Being is what takes his position outside of the cartesian circle. Descartes’ cogito lends itself to a dualistic binary of Mind and Body, with Being coming to lie on the side of Body. Augustine makes all of perception a necessary shadow of the most real “image of God” perceptive state itself. They appear to be very similar arguments, but the worlds they summon are universes apart.

Dunamis

14

the worlds they summon are universes apart…

this may be the case… summoned worlds are not "T"ruth or "K"nowledge…

they both follow the same pattern…

my god is thus and so, so everything is justified by my thus and so god…

-Imp

15

Imp: Actually from a logical point of view it is true that Nound does action noun exists if it is true.

This is simply Brentanos intentional inexistance of the object but since the mental verb has no object:

i.e.:
I think of chocolate
chocolate would be the intentionally inexistant object → It’s existance is not assured by the statement if it is true.

BUT

I think of chocolate
does ensure the subjects existance (the “I”) because if one does not exist one cannot think, so as long as thinking really is truly taking place then the ‘I’ existance is assured.

This of course still forms the basis of an aristotolean syllolgism and could simply be written in the form of the traditional interpertation:

  1. Everything that thinks exists (Major Premace replace this with the theory if intentionality)
  2. I am thinking (minor premace)
    Conclusion) I exist

Additionally:

If Godzilla really does trash tokoyo (I.e. if it is TRUE) then not only does Godzilla necessarily exist but so does/did tokyo :slight_smile:

16

Imp.,

"summoned worlds are not "T"ruth or "K"nowledge… "

Unfortunately I do not operate under your highly restrained, idiosyncratic definition of knowledge. In my set of language tools, one is capable of knowing more than another person, or more than one knew before. To know is to be. Knowledge is power. By defining knowledge as something that is categorically impossible to achieve may give you satisfaction, but all that you have done is taken the “word” out of the vocabulary useful for describing experience. Rather, the knowledge that Augustine refers to is the intuitional basis by which all else is compared. That this does not qualify as “knowledge” in your personal dictionary, actually is superfluous. The “Knowledge” that you posit as unattained, is remarkably similiar to the “God” that Augustine and Neo-Platonists posit beyond human understanding. I see less distance between your positions than you seem to.

Dunamis

17

Descartes wanted to establish a theory of certainty, absolute proof, against which all human knowledge could be jusified and not doubted or proven false. By his, “Cogito, ergo sum” he established that he thinks and so he exists. But I think he wanted to establish that he KNOWS that he exists because, a computer can also think in a way and it exists, yet it doesn’t know that it exists. For that it would need a heart. Therefore, to establish that we exist and know that we exist, we would have to have a heart. I wrote something so nice before and the light went out, now it’s all lost. Anyway…

Augustine, I don’t know him, but if he says the above regarding a mistake and existence, isn’t he assuming already that we exist? Otherwise, who is making the mistake? And in Descartes’ case, who is thinking? So aren’t they both already assuming that we exist? Therefore, even though their reasoning does not seem circular, it is I feel because they have already assumed their conclusion by assuming the I and that it exists or who thinks and who makes a mistake?

So, they are both wrong and none can hinder or improve the other. Just what I feel.

I just read (May24th/05) that Descartes says that body and mind are two separate things. You know what? If Descartes said that, I didn’t know that before, my reading of him was limited, and if he said that, he was this close to establishing the theory of certainty that he wanted to establish because, it’s my heart and brain that perceives the mind that is separate from me and makes me see myself, otherwise I’d be one with the heart and brain or the mind in some different lane. Anyway. I wanted to say that, Descartes must have been THE GENIUS of his times, I only believed in Aristotle, it’s just that Descartes didn’t realize that we can only see ourselves in two ways, in a mirror or in comparison to another. Boy! What a brilliant mind though he must have been, to say, that the mind is separate from the body. What I established now doesn’t even seem like anything, I mean he laid the foundation for it obviously. I’m really sorry if I said anything to the contrary regarding Descartes anywhere. Next time I’ll read the philosophers in full and then begin to comment on them. Jeez! My nose down in the dumps for not even any reason!

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as did the doubt or thought that I as thinker created… (but only as my thought)

-Imp

19

no, I completely understand the distinction and the similarities…

I don’t agree that knowledge is power… belief(in knowledge) is power (for that is all that is there)…

but so many guillotined rabbits…

-Imp

20

Imp.,

“belief(in knowledge) is power (for that is all that is there)…”

But the belief is hypostated by your skepticism. You could probably insert the word “God” into every one of your many posts where you use the word “knowledge” and the meaning would remain the same. The skeptical position suffers the cut of Ockam’s Razor, (the real one), that without logical foundations for knowledge, one turns to faith. Whether this faith is a conscious act of belief in a supreme being, or an unconscious act of Hume’s “custom” and “habit”, it is still an act of faith. I suggest that because you have only a propositional sense of what knowledge is and not the dynamic understanding of how knowledge is power, is love (concerting), you miss the greater consequences of what knowing means. To know is to believe. The two cannot be parsed.

Dunamis