Descartes said: “I think therefore I am”…or something similar to that. And “people” still object that he was not sceptical enough and in no way justified in presuming that there is an “I”.
After reading their long drawn out descriptions of what really went on in Descartes head I still return to the question: "Is the little paragraph, with illusions of accuracy but a synonym of Descartes’ “I”?
Suppose we say that there is doubt, yes, and from these we might even arrive at the classification of them as “thoughts”, yet these observations do not reveal an “I”, or a thinker. There is only a series of thoughts, connected with each other by causal laws.
My brain, my reply comes, is not a giant electron, therefore, it is made by many parts, held together by causal laws. Everything else within my body can be so described. yet, my brain, my body and all else imagined as mine is part of what I consider “I”. I can say indeed that there are a series of thoughts connected with each other by what I call a brain (hardly debatable, at this stage, that thoughts exists in the absence of a brain), and that this brain, in turn, is held together by X.
What is important in the end? How much elegant it is to say: “I think, therefore I am”…
I don’t understand why people care so much about the cogito. It’s ridiculously wrong, but I won’t argue that because it’s not even worth anyone’s time. Besides you seem to have a handle on it, since you realize the “I” is not well-defined.
But right or wrong, the cogito tells us nothing and gets us nowhere philosophically. Descartes himself understood this, so after he explained the cogito, he advanced an obnoxiously stupid argument for the existence of a nice, caring, personal God who would take care of all of his doubts. The fact that he made this argument shows that he was still in the throes of religion, or at least was trying to appear so; for rather than taking responsibility for dissolving and seeing beyond his own doubts, he asked God to do it for him, an intellectually self-crippling act committed by thinkers from Moses to C. S. Lewis.
It doesn’t really matter if you are ever gripped by Cartesian doubt, or if the cogito ever occurs to you as a way out – but if this does happen, pause to take in the scenery, then leave the way you came in! You came in via doubt for doubt’s sake; now, forget doubt for doubt’s sake. Doubt is a very useful adaptation in the service of flexible thought, but doubt is not a value to be pursued for its own sake. Doubt stops us from running off a cliff; doubt for its own sake says that since any step might send us off a cliff, we’d best not run at all. But this too can be doubted – what if standing still is the dangerous thing? Life does not reward such neurotic ‘caution’. Doubt for doubt’s sake is a mental prison, and the cogito is only a key into a deeper dungeon.
The way out is to discover that doubt does not rule philosophy, only your thinking makes it so.
"There is only a series of thoughts, connected with each other by causal laws. "
To reject the ‘I’ why must one still posit causal connection? Remember, at the Cogito stage memory is fallible. Memory cannot be relied on even for a split second. So if the Cogito can prove anything it is only that there is a (present) thought. Past thoughts could be illusory.
That’s why, to be consistent, Descartes must posit the Cogito as a simple act of mental intuition. NOT as a logical inference as he seems to at various times. Logical inference relies on memory of a premise which is unacceptable on cartesian grounds.
To be consistent at the price of being delusional is at best a Faustian bargain.
We’ll have to see what faust has to say to that!!!
I like your style and I agree completely on Descartes realisation of his own weakness and the retreat to the “God” backs everything position- Spinosa too - we’ve had this out before and a lot of people refer to a “he was a product of his time” line. Personally I think he and Spinoza actively “need” the all powerful God to everything and so it wasn’t just to please the bishops (which Spinoza obviously didn’t give a monkey for!)
Any how I agree with you!
krossie
Ah, the endless fascination of Descartes. I can assure you, krossie, that if I had made any deals with the Devil, I would have come out of it better-looking than I am.
If Descartes had made the same mistakes about his own work that so many since have, he would be a second-rate thinker. Aporia is correct here. It was not a conclusion, and not strictly part of his argument. After centuries of dogmatic nondoubt, he legitimised doubt. He brought the (self-conscious) human brain back into philosophy. Good enough.
Decartes got it backwards. It is in reality, “I exist; therefore, I think.” Neitzsche noted that the mind thinks the “I”; the body lives it. See Nicholas Humprey on the origin of mind. He notes, from an evolutionary POV, that the “I” or self is a necessary part of any adaptations, since they all require a this responding to a that.
Hello Aporia:
— I don’t understand why people care so much about the cogito.
O- I was reading a book on philosophy and it came up in a hypothetical debate between behaviourist’s and Descartes’ perspectives.
— It’s ridiculously wrong, but I won’t argue that because it’s not even worth anyone’s time. Besides you seem to have a handle on it, since you realize the “I” is not well-defined.
O- I don’t agree with his sequence of cogito before sum. I agree with the view that sum ergo cogito. But if we say that Descartes had doubted even the “I”, his statement would be meaningless. I believe that, in his method, he never arrives at a good reason why he should do away with the “I”, because the method requires an “I” to exist. You eliminate the “I” and you eliminate the entire method. You’re dead at that point.
But more than that, my point is that both cogito ergo sum and sum ergo cogito represent, in a broad perspective, the essential valid point of subjectivity as a departing point for all further philosophy. However much other philosophers may disagree with his conclusion, the fact remain that their arguments rely on the same “I” which cannot be doubted.
Now, you may say that this “I” is not well defined, but nothing really is in reality. Time/Space is not well defined, my senses are not very accurate, my words are liable to mean more or less than intended to other people etc, etc. When I see a table, it’s form and clarity are contingent on the prowess of my senses. Now, you might be here and also see the table, but not quite the same as I because you’re not me. But despite the differences we could discover in our separate perception of it, the general idea persist, which is what is important.
It is not so different with the “I”. How defined must a thing be before it is well defined, first of all? Seems like a matter of opinion to me. But still we might say that the “I” is not a final unit, but a series of events related by whatever the hell, to a particular center. Or we might say that the “I” is an illusion- That like a motion picture it gives the impression of a continuous existence, but that in fact it is a series of snap-shots falling one after the other, on top of one another, to give the impression of a solid which does this or that.
That is all fine. The point is that these series are related, correlated etc, and that is what the “I”, the essential feature of the “I” really is. We could destroy the idea of the “I” as a definite unit only by reintroducing yet another unity, causal or else. What defines the “I” is not it’s (conceivable) serial nature, at least in my opinion, but it’s the sensation of a unity-- That is not to suggest that I am a singularity physically speaking, or that I remember perfectly etc, etc, but that there is something which I find important which endures my age; that endures from one minute to the next, at least. It is not that my “I” is dependent on my memory, as some have thought, but that memory presupposes the “I”; that thoughts imply an “I”…unless again, we consider the wind itself as carrying “thoughts”.
Hello Pearls
— To reject the ‘I’ why must one still posit causal connection?
O- I may ask: “What do you think?” To which, I might expect, a response like: "I think blah, blah, blah…(no insult here). But then I may ask: "What wrote “I”, or which “event” caused event “I think…”
— Remember, at the Cogito stage memory is fallible. Memory cannot be relied on even for a split second.
O- Va bene; but what can we ask here? Is infallibility a necessary condition to the emergence of what we call “I”? Descartes argument does not make memory any more proficient or any worse than before. Yet before and after his argument, “I” is continuously used, even in the grips of the doubt. “Cogito”, I would say, must be implied, like the self, to continue unabated through the “ergo sum”. Or, as Imp would say, Descartes would have to end at “I”(in the english version of “I think therefore…”). What is memory if not also a thought? (I think I remember…)
— So if the Cogito can prove anything it is only that there is a (present) thought. Past thoughts could be illusory.
O- Subjectively, what does the word “present” means? Have you ever stop time so that you can distinguish the present thought from a past thought and any future thoughts? No, probably. because the cogito is an allusion to an action, it presents problems with the effort to reduce it to a single instance. There is a present thought, you might say. Well, how long is that thought in fractions of a clock. I second? But if what you mean is that there is a line of thought, a moment of thought, an instance etc, etc, then for that fraction, that moment or instance you imply an “I”, not internally, or to yourself, mind you, but if you wish to speak or write-- objectify what occurs in your subjective when a thought is present, you present the moment or instant as “I was thinking”, or “I think and therefore…” or “I thought…” In all these instances, when describing thought, which is a private condition, you tie it with the “I”.
If past thoughts could be illusory, moreover, how would this one be recognized as any different?
“Is infallibility a necessary condition to the emergence of what we call “I”? Descartes argument does not make memory any more proficient or any worse than beforeâ€
No, but it is a necessary condition of the Cogito. That’s why he thought he couldn’t doubt it. You recognise this. That’s why his methodological doubt is incoherent. He paints to broad a scepticism.
“There is a present thought, you might say. Well, how long is that thought in fractions of a clock.â€
I agree wholeheartedly, to try and posit the cogito in an instant, with no time lapsing is ludicrous. But that is what Descartes MUST do for the cogito to be coherent. Hence, reductio, the cogito in essentially any formulation is nonsensical.