just thinking out loud...

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

in 1637, Descartes published a book called,
“Discourse on the Method” …
in it, he tries to find what is incontrovertible
belief we can hold that is true, no matter what…

instead of focusing on his results, “Cogito, ergo sum”
I think therefor I am… lets us focus on the method used…

Intellectually, he doubted every belief he had… so, he could
“assess the world from a fresh perspective, clear of any
preconceived notions”

he took the ancient idea of Skepticism, and put it to use…
clearly out every single belief he held… what beliefs are left
after you doubt everything? The book was published in 1637
in the Netherlands…

this attempt was an intellectual attempt… it was not a real attempt
to doubt everything, but an mental exercise to see how far one could get…

now let us think about the last 122 years of history… we see that
attempt, of doubting everything put into real world experience…
we see how that by Nietzsche time, say 1880, he could write,
“God is dead, and we have killed him” and he had people who believed it…
in 1880’s…so we can see that the religious belief had already begun to
be doubted in Modern Europe…this notion of religious doubt
reached America by 1920… and religion has been fighting for
believers ever since…a battle religions are losing…

but in thinking about it, we can see doubt creeping into all kinds
of beliefs…Marxism was strongly held here and elsewhere in the 1930’s
but by the 1950’ Marxism had begun to lose it followers and despite a
return in the 1960’s, by 2000, the number of believers are quite small…
thus we can see Marxism also losing millions in believing in it…

and today, we see millions doubting capitalism… and millions of
Trumpers, doubting democracy…

in other words, the Descartes attempt to intellectually doubt everything,
has turned into a real world experience of millions doubting the various
intellectual tools like capitalism, democracy, freedom…

and once we end this process of doubting everything, as Descartes did,
the question becomes, what is left?

is there a “Cognito ergo sum” in our future?

what will be left after we have doubted everything?

we are human beings, and humans by nature, must hold beliefs…
that is the nature of being human… but if we have destroyed belief
in all our ism’ and ideologies, what is left?

Kropotkin

2

Peter ,can doubt it’self be a ground for doubting?

If so, then an infinite regress is in order, for then then

3

I doubt therefore I am?

I don’t think we can use that as some sort of marking of being in
the modern age…

we have turned an intellectual exercise of Descartes into a world
wide everyone engaging in it… and now what?

we doubt almost everything… and what isn’t in doubt, has little value…

so, what can we believe in?

or to put it into Kantian language, “What should I believe in?”
or perhaps this, “what should WE believe in?”

Kropotkin

4

Descartes was in no position to doubt his own sense of doubt, he merely supposed the only real absolute thing he knew then.

5

now conservatives are not immune from this effort to
delegitimize society and government…

every single post/thread by by UR and pedreo and Observe
are attempts to delegitimize our government and its institutions…

look at their track record… they attack the government on many diverse
and different grounds… they attack the media, they attack governmental
institutions like the CDC and the Military…they claim the government is
trying to “enslave” everyone… they have no proof, including the claim
that the Covid virus was on purposely released… again, no proof…

but these claims are attempts to delegitimized the government
efforts in anything…

another example is the claim about “Globalists” turning the world into
a “one world government” again, no proof, but hay, “I don’t need no
stinking proof” is their belief…and they complain about “transhumanist”
doing something or other…I can’t keep track of all their complaints
about the “evils” of the modern world…

according to them, there is some secret cabal, that is working towards
its own agenda…and how is this not an attempt to delegitimized
legal governments?

let us say, for the sake of argument, that they succeed, that
they manage to delegitimize legal government?

what kind of world will we live in?

Hobbes said it best, life outside of society would be

“solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”

that is what existence is outside of government looks like…
and this seems to be what conservatives want…remove all forms
of government to allow human beings the “maxim” amount of freedom
but as Hobbes himself points out, that path is the path to failure…
but conservatives don’t seem to care…they can only see their small, limited
viewpoint of existence… the large, the group or larger viewpoint, is not
within their grasp… they can only see what is right there or very limited
viewpoint of existence…

“I am the only one who counts”

so says the conservative…thus their attacks upon government and society
at large…

can we rise above such a “limited” viewpoint?

perhaps but we must then begin to hold some beliefs in something…
some ism or ideology must escape the nihilism that the conservative
drives it toward…who holds onto capitalism more? conservative or liberals?

and what is the greater driver of nihilism in the world today?
why capitalism… to hold onto capitalism is to hold onto
the nihilistic belief that only money has value, and people, human beings
have no value of any kind outside of being the creator of profits…
and this is capitalism in one quick sentence,

“only profits have value… human being only exists to create profits”

so how do we remove this nihilism and return to holding people to
having some value… more then just the creator of profits?

and in capitalism, we can see the attack upon human and their values being played out…
attempting to delegitimized people in favor of profits…
that is the modern conservative motto, “delegitimized people in favor of profits”

to make profits the only value worth having, not government, not people,
no other ism or ideology except profits…that is why conservatives
delegitimize ism and people, to seek their highest value which is money/profits…

Kropotkin

6

There’s nothing special / magical about doubt.
Anybody can do it to everything.

Destroying a meaning does not make you superior to that meaning.

7

Meaning Descartes transcended the future Kantian categories, although he did not know he was.

I doubt therefore I am has no reality or concept of the ‘evil genius’ and i am playing devil’s advocate here.

The political ramifications are byproducts of this ever increasing doubt, witness the closeness of Biden and Trump’s appeal.

Would you care to agrees those or regress to doubt.

What I mean is back in the day, the question " I doubt therefore I exist" could not be asked, because the primal doubt of 'existance without absolute affirmation of thought( as proof of identity, had to be established. For god created man in his image. If absolute doubtless existance were not to be supposed, then god himself would cease to exist.

And that would have been unthinkable, not because of fears of violating absolute religious authority, but would present a tautology, where thinking was strictly grounded in the either/or world.

Because:

I can not exist without thinking, because If I could not think, then I could not even think of existence it’s self
You can’t have one without the other, so therefore doubt of this basic premise is unavoidable.

Do I make sense Peter?

Basically what I am trying to say aand this is important to me andat be you as wellOS thag the doubt cannot fall bells the doubt in everything bug thought if’s self because to doubt doubt would invalidate even the process of thought.

Can you doubt even doubt it’s self, because if you do if would take you Doug of the sensible world into the absurd world of the insensible