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This profoundly misunderstands Descartes. Descartes is about proving existence through doubt. If you start doubting everything around you, what is left is you

This profoundly misunderstands Descartes. Descartes is about proving existence through doubt. If you start doubting everything around you, what is left is your own mind that must exist since it is thinking and doubting. It has nothing to do with being a 'person' as a social construct, or about who I am.

scooble 8y ago
This. There may be an interesting thread to pull about whether a western philosophical tendency to focus on an idealised rational individual confronting the world has led to a particular idea of the self. Though I'm not sure whether this has been the dominant view in analytic philosophy post linguistic turn, or whether it has ever been the mainstream in continental philosophy. This would need a lot more work to unpack. Trying to construct a conflict between Descartes sense of self in the cogito(which as far as I can see amounts to nothing more than 'I exist') and African philosophy seems deeply odd. If Descartes 'sense of self' is mere existence (and I think this is a very odd reading of the cogito), then are we supposed to say that African babies don't exist until they become part of society?
- ElBarto 8y ago
  My understanding is that the cogito isn't mere existence but that it is proof of mere existence. A baby, like everything else in the world, is something you perceive through your senses and that you can thus never be sure really exists. Let's say that Descartes laid the premise for the Matrix.
tomlock 8y ago
I disagree, Descartes believes that he had proven the existence of "a priori" thought, a place from which thinking could be conducted without doubt - that was the point of his project. That place is also the only reliable locus of personhood in his view. Future thinkers who talked about "embodied" thinking, were conceiving of a personhood that could exist before that a priori consciousness, rather than as a doubtful thing perceived by it.
- ElBarto 8y ago
  Well, again that is not the same thing. It's about 'personhood' only in the sense of existence. To quote Wikipedia: "While other knowledge could be a figment of imagination, deception, or mistake, Descartes asserted that the very act of doubting one's own existence served—at minimum—as proof of the reality of one's own mind; there must be a thinking entity—in this case the self—for there to be a thought."
  - tomlock 8y ago
    The thinking entity that is proven to exist is the person. To descartes that thinking entity is the very core and fundamental unit of the person. The body and the interactions with others is irrelevant to that core.
    - ElBarto 8y ago
      It's the 'person' in a totally different sense than what this article discusses.
      - tomlock 8y ago
        The differences are due to the logic and perspectives of the positions, not the concept of a 'person' itself. It's a similar difference to the concept of a person under existentialism as contrasted with cartesian dualism.
    - scooble 8y ago
      I'm not sure that is right. From the proposition 's runs' I can validly infer that s exists. This does not commit me to the view that running is fundamental to s's personhood. Similarly, the claim that if s thinks then s exists does not entail that a further claim that thinking is central to s's personhood.
      - tomlock 8y ago
        > This does not commit me to the view that running is fundamental to s's personhood. That is not Descartes conclusion or my conclusion. To Descartes, the person as experienced in a priori thought has a special primacy over all other existing things. While "s" may be doubted due to its a posteriori nature, the self is fundamentally undoubtable in its existence, hence "I think therefore I am". To Descartes, the existence of a priori thought is the building block of all logic and personhood.
sametmax 8y ago
Interstingly, this "I think therefor I am" has been taken as the most barebone possible way to demonstrate what exist and what does not. However, each word of the sentence makes an assumption that it never tries to demonstrate: - "I": assumes individuality and that the mind is a local phenomenon. - "think": assumes cognition and that it's a process of the mind. - "therefor": assumes causality. - "am": assumes there is such a thing as existence at our level. Those are postulates, not demonstrated facts. It's perfectly ok to have those, as long as you declare them as such. However, when you study Descartes, teachers never do so. It's disappointing when the whole point is to teach people to "doubt everything". There are other philosophies that doubt those postulates. Some assume we are not individuals, but focal points on a collective conscientiousness. Some believe thinking is actually not a creative process, but merely the act of receiving information from another source. Some think we live in a deterministic world, and causality is an illusion our mind uses to make sense of things. Some will say we are not, existence is the symptom of a greater activity like a shadow. In the end, even something as simple as "cogito ergo sum" can be dissembled to the extreme and debated. Which is why I enjoy philosophy less and less. It's a never ending source of questions, with very little useful answers for day to day life. It's not practical at all, and my most philosophical friends are also among the most unhappy. Even antiquity philosophers, despite dispensing practical advises on how to live your life, fall into the trap on not giving any applicable way of reaching their standards. It's like saying "quit" to a smoker or "eat less" to an obese. True. Practical. Not gonna help.
- pasabagi 8y ago
  >Descartes, teachers never do so. When I was taught Descartes, the flimsiness of the whole 'cogito' thing was really emphasised. I actually don't think I've ever heard of anybody in the philosophy world who took the binding between personal existence and thought as any kind of raw fact, at least not in the terms Descartes proposed. Most of the treatments I (vaguely) remember were about the interesting observation, implicit in the Meditations, that there's something unusual about existential predicates. I think if you stop thinking of philosophy as a body of answers, and more as a body of in-depth examinations of questions, then it gets good again. It's a bit like maths - nobody would ever suggest that the concept of a Heesh number is an answer to a particular kind of question. It's more an interesting way to talk about tiling.
naasking 8y ago
> If you start doubting everything around you, what is left is your own mind that must exist since it is thinking and doubting. Actually, what's left are merely thoughts. Cogito ergo sum actually begs the question: in attempting to establish the existence of "I" (a subject) it assumes the existence of "I". The fallacy-free version is: this is a thought, therefore thoughts exist. From the existence of thoughts, you cannot deduce that a subject is needed unless you additionally assume that thoughts necessarily need a subject. But do they really?

scooble 8y ago

This. There may be an interesting thread to pull about whether a western philosophical tendency to focus on an idealised rational individual confronting the world has led to a particular idea of the self. Though I'm not sure whether this has been the dominant view in analytic philosophy post linguistic turn, or whether it has ever been the mainstream in continental philosophy. This would need a lot more work to unpack. Trying to construct a conflict between Descartes sense of self in the cogito(which as far as I can see amounts to nothing more than 'I exist') and African philosophy seems deeply odd. If Descartes 'sense of self' is mere existence (and I think this is a very odd reading of the cogito), then are we supposed to say that African babies don't exist until they become part of society?

ElBarto 8y ago
My understanding is that the cogito isn't mere existence but that it is proof of mere existence. A baby, like everything else in the world, is something you perceive through your senses and that you can thus never be sure really exists. Let's say that Descartes laid the premise for the Matrix.

tomlock 8y ago

I disagree, Descartes believes that he had proven the existence of "a priori" thought, a place from which thinking could be conducted without doubt - that was the point of his project. That place is also the only reliable locus of personhood in his view. Future thinkers who talked about "embodied" thinking, were conceiving of a personhood that could exist before that a priori consciousness, rather than as a doubtful thing perceived by it.

ElBarto 8y ago
Well, again that is not the same thing. It's about 'personhood' only in the sense of existence. To quote Wikipedia: "While other knowledge could be a figment of imagination, deception, or mistake, Descartes asserted that the very act of doubting one's own existence served—at minimum—as proof of the reality of one's own mind; there must be a thinking entity—in this case the self—for there to be a thought."
- tomlock 8y ago
  The thinking entity that is proven to exist is the person. To descartes that thinking entity is the very core and fundamental unit of the person. The body and the interactions with others is irrelevant to that core.
  - ElBarto 8y ago
    It's the 'person' in a totally different sense than what this article discusses.
    - tomlock 8y ago
      The differences are due to the logic and perspectives of the positions, not the concept of a 'person' itself. It's a similar difference to the concept of a person under existentialism as contrasted with cartesian dualism.
  - scooble 8y ago
    I'm not sure that is right. From the proposition 's runs' I can validly infer that s exists. This does not commit me to the view that running is fundamental to s's personhood. Similarly, the claim that if s thinks then s exists does not entail that a further claim that thinking is central to s's personhood.
    - tomlock 8y ago
      > This does not commit me to the view that running is fundamental to s's personhood. That is not Descartes conclusion or my conclusion. To Descartes, the person as experienced in a priori thought has a special primacy over all other existing things. While "s" may be doubted due to its a posteriori nature, the self is fundamentally undoubtable in its existence, hence "I think therefore I am". To Descartes, the existence of a priori thought is the building block of all logic and personhood.

sametmax 8y ago

Interstingly, this "I think therefor I am" has been taken as the most barebone possible way to demonstrate what exist and what does not. However, each word of the sentence makes an assumption that it never tries to demonstrate: - "I": assumes individuality and that the mind is a local phenomenon. - "think": assumes cognition and that it's a process of the mind. - "therefor": assumes causality. - "am": assumes there is such a thing as existence at our level. Those are postulates, not demonstrated facts. It's perfectly ok to have those, as long as you declare them as such. However, when you study Descartes, teachers never do so. It's disappointing when the whole point is to teach people to "doubt everything". There are other philosophies that doubt those postulates. Some assume we are not individuals, but focal points on a collective conscientiousness. Some believe thinking is actually not a creative process, but merely the act of receiving information from another source. Some think we live in a deterministic world, and causality is an illusion our mind uses to make sense of things. Some will say we are not, existence is the symptom of a greater activity like a shadow. In the end, even something as simple as "cogito ergo sum" can be dissembled to the extreme and debated. Which is why I enjoy philosophy less and less. It's a never ending source of questions, with very little useful answers for day to day life. It's not practical at all, and my most philosophical friends are also among the most unhappy. Even antiquity philosophers, despite dispensing practical advises on how to live your life, fall into the trap on not giving any applicable way of reaching their standards. It's like saying "quit" to a smoker or "eat less" to an obese. True. Practical. Not gonna help.

pasabagi 8y ago
>Descartes, teachers never do so. When I was taught Descartes, the flimsiness of the whole 'cogito' thing was really emphasised. I actually don't think I've ever heard of anybody in the philosophy world who took the binding between personal existence and thought as any kind of raw fact, at least not in the terms Descartes proposed. Most of the treatments I (vaguely) remember were about the interesting observation, implicit in the Meditations, that there's something unusual about existential predicates. I think if you stop thinking of philosophy as a body of answers, and more as a body of in-depth examinations of questions, then it gets good again. It's a bit like maths - nobody would ever suggest that the concept of a Heesh number is an answer to a particular kind of question. It's more an interesting way to talk about tiling.

naasking 8y ago

> If you start doubting everything around you, what is left is your own mind that must exist since it is thinking and doubting. Actually, what's left are merely thoughts. Cogito ergo sum actually begs the question: in attempting to establish the existence of "I" (a subject) it assumes the existence of "I". The fallacy-free version is: this is a thought, therefore thoughts exist. From the existence of thoughts, you cannot deduce that a subject is needed unless you additionally assume that thoughts necessarily need a subject. But do they really?