4 ms·
That seems to be a rather strong interpretation of "cogito", i.e. that thinking needs to work according to rules and regularities such as logic. I'm certainly
by svara 6y ago
That seems to be a rather strong interpretation of "cogito", i.e. that thinking needs to work according to rules and regularities such as logic.
I'm certainly no expert on what Descartes meant precisely when he wrote that, but the broader point, that there is something that one can be sure of, certainly stands.
What exactly that something is might be hard to define. More recently it's been called "qualia", the thing that it's like to experience something.
- usgroup 6y ago"I think" therefore "I'm not" is false because it is contradictory: thinking implies being. Unless it is just our logic coerced by the evil demon which makes it so.
- fpoling 6y ago“Cogito ergo sum” can be also translated as I am thinking therefore I am. In which case “I am thinking therefore I am not” is not contradictory at all.
- thom 6y agoBertrand Russel critiqued Descartes along these lines: "But some care is needed in using Descartes' argument. 'I think, therefore I am' says rather more than is strictly certain. It might seem as though we were quite sure of being the same person to-day as we were yesterday, and this is no doubt true in some sense. But the real Self is as hard to arrive at as the real table and does not seem to have that absolute, convincing certainty that belongs to particular experiences. When I look at my table and see a certain brown colour, what is quite certain at once is not 'I am seeing a brown colour', but rather, 'a brown colour is being seen'. This of course involves something (or somebody) which (or who) sees the brown colour; but it does not of itself involve that more or less permanent person whom we call 'I'. So far as immediate certainty goes, it might be that the something which sees the brown colour is quite momentary, and not the same as the something which has some different experience the next moment."