Inspired by the recent Nothingness…
1. Something.
2. Something therefore Something.
3. Something assumes Everything & Nothing.
4. Something signifies Nothing.
5. Something therefore Nothing.
Ex Nihilo
6. Nothing assumes Something.
7. Nothing signifies Something by context!
8. Nothing therefore Something by context!
Something → Nothing → (relative) Something
so you’re saying that, insofar as there is meaning to either concept (something and nothing), they are relative to one another? that’s true.
or am i missing something? you should use more complete sentences for the benefit of slow folks like myself.
Nothing has never been proved to exist.
This could read two ways. Firstly it could be a statement that ‘nothing’ has not been proven to exist. Or, it could mean that there isn’t any one thing that has ever been proven to exist.
Assuming you meant the latter, I would say that firstly it is obvious that something exists.
All we have to do from there to prove something speicifc exists is be really loose with a definition. For example: I can state that ‘something that I call my own consciousness exists’.
This is pretty obvious, isn’t it? I feel that seeing as my consciouness is necessary for any other personal activity (thinking, making tea, writing on message boards etc, my doing anything at all proves that my conciousness exists).
If you meant it the other way though - I couldn’t care less whether you choose to call ‘nothing’ an existing thing or not. Not an argument for me!
That is an adept interpretation.
I do not believe so.
My plan was to provide a groundwork-foundation of logic to show how Something connects with Nothing.
I left the rest open to interpretation because something can literally-mean anything at all.
That is exactly-true.
Ierrellus statement holds two predominant forms of meaning, that nothing is provable, or nothing has not been proved.
This leads to a necessary paradox when the assumptions approach “proving nothing”.
Proven: Spinoza Monadology.
Proven: Descartes Meditations.
Existence of Something, or Nothing, is a different matter than comparing Something-to-Nothing, as I have done here.
Does Something exist? Does Nothing exist? What exists? How? Where? When? Why is existence important to talk about?
circular arguments are not proof…
-Imp
no, but they are evidence
If you can point out where my argument is circular then I will give you one of these: =D>
EDIT: I do not really-know if your comment was directed at the OP or not…
of consistency. They don’t provide any evidence, for example, for it being smart to connect the ideas to reality.
if you understood spinoza or descartes you’d know…
-Imp
If you believe Spinoza and/or Descartes produced circular arguments then you were clearly not paying attention in PHIL 252…
P.S. I understand Spinoza & Descartes just fine. Avoid the slander next time and/or stick to the subject at hand if you can.
…Often, however, circular reasoning is more subtle than this: it depends on an assumption not stated but assumed. Consider the famous argument of the French philosopher, René Descartes: “I think, therefore I am.” Descartes has begged the question here, because when he said “I think,” he’d already implied “I am” (or how else could he think?). Yet his fallacy continues to persuade people, over three hundred years later.
sjsu.edu/depts/itl/graphics/ … cular.html
and spinoza’s god exists because all is god is just as circular…
-Imp
just to add…
the grammar is presumptuous. There is thinking is a safer beginning. To start with a subject and a verb implicitly assumes that if there is thinking someone is doing it. Might be true, but it is hardly getting to the bottom and building up if one just assumes this and never even bothers to mention why. It’s obvious is hardly a good defense in a philosophy discussion.
To a Buddhist for example ‘thinking’ is a lot more accurate than ‘I think’.
By your own admission then, the cause of circular reasoning/arguments is necessarily the perceiver and not necessarily the speaker of the argument. Because an “assumption not stated but assumed” can only be assumed by an interlocutor since the speaker theoretically-understand his/her own meaning. But if the result of interlocution leads to expose the speaker intended a different point then originally-stated, under that case, the speaker must deal with errors, contradictions, paradoxes, counterpoints, disproofs, etc.
This is an incorrect application of a logical fallacy. He did not “beg the question” because he was one of the first Philosophers to actively-answer the question. He meditated on his answers and reason. He put a great deal of effort into deriving the answers that he did. Think about this for a minute. What is the cause & consequence for Descartes popularity (especially amongst academic philosophers) so many years later if he was fundamentally-wrong or incorrect to begin with??? The counter-reasoning you have demonstrated here puts pressure on you to explain this. Was he right? Was he wrong?
Your fallacious assumption goes even farther than implying “I am” is innate within “I think”. But Descartes understood that. He was fundamentally-correct. He could have stated: I am therefore I am, but that says nothing new. I think therefore I am. This is logically-correct and accurate. What Descartes signifies, without even fully-understanding the possible outcomes, is, mental thought is the basis for all realities & actualities. Thinking separates man-from-animal, man-from-boy, and even man-from-wooman. It is rationality based on a reasonable reality. Let me again explain though why your counterargument is insufficient here…
You stated: (as logically-fallacious)
I think therefore I am, implies, I am therefore I am.
But this is not necessarily the logical case when applied backward. Descartes placed the existence of the human ego (or existence in general…) on thought & conceptualization. He did not commit a logical fallacy. He did not “beg the question” because he answered the question. If he had placed the human ego, I, somewhere else other than thought, then the results would have been different. Could they have been better? Perhaps, but this is not a discussion of what-ifs as far as I know. We are just left with what he did and did not say: cogito ergo sum.
Thus ‘thought’ is the defining marker of what it means to be either I, or Man, or even God.
Then I ask you again…
If Descartes is “fooling people” hundreds of years later then whose fault is it ~ Descartes or people? I went through a semblance of Academic Philosophy; yet I did not meet one professor who “disproved” Descartes outright. Can you do what others have not: present a compelling argument and/or full disproof against cogito ergo sum??? Or is Descartes wrong simply-because you declare he is begging the question, which is odd, because I do not think he is…
What “question” is Descartes even “begging for” here?
I did not refer to either Descartes or Spinoza god-arguments. Honestly-speaking, I do not care for them. They were cultural necessities. To me, Descartes proved all existence is a derivative of conscious thought and Spinoza proved that infinite regress can be contained by an absolute set.
That is a good way to describe the situation here. Thinking, as a passive-activity, precludes the term “I think” but I doubt Descartes was provided enough language to consider and/or accurately-describe that possibility at the time.
I did not take Impenitent to mean that we should blame Descartes for something, but rather was criticizing accepting the Cogito as some sort of compelling argument.
I’ll keep this brief.
rene begins with the claim “I think”.
he doesn’t say something thinks, he claims I think…
look at his premise I exist as a thing that thinks, you have the conclusion “I exist” as part of the premise…
that is quintessentially circular reasoning…
conclusion therefore conclusion, how brilliant is that?!?
-Imp
Where philosophy becomes irrelevant to the human condition is where it insists on descriptions of reality as summed up in words such as infinity, absolute, universal, unknowable, nothingness, subjective vs objective, etc., etc. etc.
A mathematical proof of infinity or zero only shows they have practical application in mathematics. It does not show how infinity might just be a concept implying human knowing as reaching into the unknown, a process, not a finality. In this sense nothingness, zero, has no meaning unless one adheres to the Eastern concepts of nothing as something., e.g. the emptiness of my bowl allows the space for soup. In short, human understanding appears to move from the known into the unknown, never into the unknowable.
IMHO, Imp’s posts are noteworthy. Descates no more proves certainty than you or I can.
Impenitent & Ierrelleus,
I am just as certain of Descartes existential proof of I as I am certain of Einstein physical proof of relativity. These are empirical facts that I enjoy to lean on for my own premises. They provide a foundation for post-post-modern thinking. Now, if either of you want to provide me a full-logical disproof of either cogito or celeritas (the quickness of light) then I will be happy to read & review your assessments. And I will either accept them as reasonable disproofs or not. Until such disproofs are shown, and are convincing, which I know none that have manifest before me in this day & age, I will continue to rely on old theories until they become updated. Almost never is it that a scientific paradigm is completely-wrong in its original foresight. Usually-speaking, as I see it, the errors rest on egocentric observation of the mechanical universe. Even in these examples, Descartes and Einstein presume a subject, and object-relative-subject, to base their claims. That is acceptable.
Descartes did not focus on: sum ergo sum.
There is no reason you or I should presume/assume such reasoning unless obviously-stated in a context.
Descartes claim is: cogito ergo sum.
As far as I am aware, existential claims leading up to Descartes were already-accepted as true. European Christians did not doubt God in necessarily the same way as today. In-fact, I am led to believe that most Existentialists did not even doubt concepts of existence-itself. I imagine they thought something like this: “God exists … so I’m okay. I don’t have to worry or think about anything more. I don’t have to worry about existential angst. God is the cause of all that is good & bad.” The God-concept did all of the work for them in philosophy, science, and religion. Descartes was a traumatized skeptic. He clearly-indicated that something was causing existence-itself. There is no indication to believe that I precluded existence as a philosophical ideal, through thought and/or cognization. God precluded existence, at the time, because the Modernists knew God, not necessarily-I.
I am not well-versed on the philosophical history of the I-ego-identity, but I am pretty-damn-sure Descartes is responsible for separating out I from existential questions back in the day. In-fact, it seems that I is presumed by cogito but not explicitly-stated due to the linguistic differences. The I-concept predominantly-is an American-English creation, or, at least, it has become predominated by Western Thinkers some-of-which situate themselves in America.
look at the history… rene’s mathematics proved the church was wrong on a few things…
rene saw what the church did to gallileo and did not want a similar fate, so he made a nice circular argument (like anslem) to appease the church…
circular certainty is worthless and rene understood that but he wanted his geometry books published so he appeased the church…
do a bit more research on the topic, this is hardly a new idea…
-Imp