3 ms·

> There is no mind Interesting. What is your response to the cogito?

by ryandv 11mo ago

dfabulich 11mo ago
The canonical 20th-century response to "cogito ergo sum" is Wittgenstein's "private-language argument." https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/private-language/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/private-language/ When you thought to yourself, "I think therefore I am," in what language did you think it? In English? The English language is an artifact of a community of English speakers. You can't have a language with grammatical rules without a community of speakers to make that language. Almost nobody in the English-speaking community has direct access to the internals of your mind. The community learns things through consensus, e.g. via the scientific method. We know things in English via a community of English-speaking scientists, journalists, historians, etc. etc. Wittgenstein calls these the "structures of life," the ordinary day-to-day work we do to figure out what's true and false, likely and unlikely. As you're probably aware, the scientific method has long struggled to find a "mind" in the brain doing the thinking; all we can find are just atoms, molecules, neurons, doing things, having behaviors. We can't find "thoughts" in the atoms. As far as our ordinary day-to-day scientific method is concerned, we can't find a "mind." But "cogito ergo sum" isn't part of the scientific method. We don't believe "cogito ergo sum" because reproducible experiments have shown it to be true. "Cogito ergo sum" proposes a way of knowing disconnected from the messy structures of life we use in English. So, perhaps you'd say, "oh, good point, I suppose I didn't think 'cogito ergo sum' in English or Latin or whatever, I thought it in a private language known only to me. From this vantage point, I only have direct knowledge of my own existence and my own perceptions in the present moment (since the past is uncertain), but at least I can have 100% certainty of my own existence in that language." The problem is, you really can't have a private language, not a language with words (terms) and grammatical rules and logical inferences. Suppose you assigned a term S to a particular sensation you're having right now. What are the rules of S? What is S and what is not S? Are there any rules for how to use S? How would you know? How would you enforce those rules over time? In a private language, there's no difference between using the term S "correctly" or "incorrectly." There are no rules in a private language; there can't be. Even mathematical proofs are impossible when every term in the proof means anything you want. Descartes didn't originally write "cogito ergo sum" in Latin. He originally published it in French, "je pense, donc je suis." But in Europe, where Descartes was writing, Latin was the universal language, the one known to all sorts of people across the continent. For Descartes, Latin was the language of empire, the language every civilized person knew because their ancestors were forced to learn it at the point of a sword, the language of absolutes. Wittgenstein has a famous line, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." So must we be silent about "cogito ergo sum." "cogito ergo sum" isn't valid in Latin; "je pense, donc je suis" isn't valid in French. It could only be valid in an unspeakable private language, a language with no grammatical rules, no logic, where true and false are indistinguishable. "Cogito ergo sum" could only be valid in an unusable language where everything is meaningless. Thereof, we must remain silent.
- andrewflnr 11mo ago
  Language, and especially its mechanics like grammar, are entirely a distraction w.r.t. "cogito ergo sum". The underlying argument it points to is language-independent.
  - ryandv 11mo ago
    Correct. Here is the stub of a reply I can't be assed to finish right now: Words and language refer to sensations (P.I. §244: "How do words refer to sensations?"). Sensations can exist independently of language to refer to them (P.I. §256: "—But suppose I didn’t have any natural expression for the sensation, but only had the sensation?"). Thus it can be possible for one to experience the cogito, the mere act of awareness, independently of language. The point of the cogito is its self-evidence, prior to language even entering the picture as a sign standing for or referring to the self-evident sensation of conscious awareness.
    - dfabulich 11mo ago
      I note that you keep saying "cogito" without the "ergo." "I think therefore I am" is invalid, and what's wrong with it is the "therefore," the idea that you knew one thing, and you drew a "logical" conclusion from it, in a "prior to language" environment where words have no meaning, where "true" and "false" are indistinguishable, and logic is impossible. Logic requires words. "Logical" means "verbal," from the Greek logos (λόγος). You can't have a logical argument (you can't draw a conclusion) from the instantaneous standpoint of someone "experiencing" cogito, where words mean whatever you want, or nothing at all. The experience you're having is not a logical argument. As a sentence, "cogito ergo sum" is invalidated as soon as you write it down in a shared language. I'm sure it feels right to you! But you can't actually say anything true about it in English, or Latin, or any other shared language. Thereof, you simply must remain silent.
      - ryandv 11mo ago
        For, on the one hand, there is the real world, and on the other, a whole system of symbols about that world which we have in our minds. These are very very useful symbols; all civilization depends on them; but like all good things they have their disadvantages, and the principle disadvantage of symbols is that we confuse them with reality, just as we confuse money with actual wealth; and our names about ourselves, our ideas of ourselves, our images of ourselves, *with* ourselves. Now of course, reality, from a philosopher's point of view, is a dangerous word. A philosopher will ask me, what do I mean by reality? Am I talking about the physical world of nature, or am I talking about a spiritual world, or what? And to that I have a very simple answer. When we talk about the material world, that is actually a philosophical concept - so in the same way, if I say that reality is spiritual, that's also a philosophical concept - and reality itself is not a concept. Reality is - [...] ... and we won't give it a name. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJYp-mWqB1w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJYp-mWqB1w See also: "the TAO that can be named is not the true TAO;" or, Crowley in Konx om Pax on the "fools who mistake names for things."
Marshferm 11mo ago
[dead]
- CrackerNews 11mo ago
  The first link is about consciousness. The second link is that language is not thought. The third link is that intentions as "discrete mental states" may not be found in the brain. This does not necessarily disprove the existence of an world model, and these papers are not directly dealing with the concept. As shown with how LLMs work, the world model (and how the brain thinks) may be more implicit rather than explicit philosophical/psychological constructs within the neural net of the brain. As opposed to neural nets and LLMs, neuroscientists and the like have no way of taking out a human brain and hooking it up to a computer to run experiments on what our neurons are doing. These software are the next best thing at the moment of determining what neurons can do and how they work. Perhaps there is a dialectical synthesis that can be made of your position that I interpret to be something like "there does not exist discrete cartesian states within the brain" with how neural nets learn concepts implicitly through statistics.
  - Marshferm 11mo ago
    [dead]

> There is no mind Interesting. What is your response to the cogito?

by ryandv 11mo ago

> There is no mind Interesting. What is your response to the cogito?

The canonical 20th-century response to "cogito ergo sum" is Wittgenstein's "private-language argument." https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/private-language/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/private-language/ When you thought to yourself, "I think therefore I am," in what language did you think it? In English? The English language is an artifact of a community of English speakers. You can't have a language with grammatical rules without a community of speakers to make that language. Almost nobody in the English-speaking community has direct access to the internals of your mind. The community learns things through consensus, e.g. via the scientific method. We know things in English via a community of English-speaking scientists, journalists, historians, etc. etc. Wittgenstein calls these the "structures of life," the ordinary day-to-day work we do to figure out what's true and false, likely and unlikely. As you're probably aware, the scientific method has long struggled to find a "mind" in the brain doing the thinking; all we can find are just atoms, molecules, neurons, doing things, having behaviors. We can't find "thoughts" in the atoms. As far as our ordinary day-to-day scientific method is concerned, we can't find a "mind." But "cogito ergo sum" isn't part of the scientific method. We don't believe "cogito ergo sum" because reproducible experiments have shown it to be true. "Cogito ergo sum" proposes a way of knowing disconnected from the messy structures of life we use in English. So, perhaps you'd say, "oh, good point, I suppose I didn't think 'cogito ergo sum' in English or Latin or whatever, I thought it in a private language known only to me. From this vantage point, I only have direct knowledge of my own existence and my own perceptions in the present moment (since the past is uncertain), but at least I can have 100% certainty of my own existence in that language." The problem is, you really can't have a private language, not a language with words (terms) and grammatical rules and logical inferences. Suppose you assigned a term S to a particular sensation you're having right now. What are the rules of S? What is S and what is not S? Are there any rules for how to use S? How would you know? How would you enforce those rules over time? In a private language, there's no difference between using the term S "correctly" or "incorrectly." There are no rules in a private language; there can't be. Even mathematical proofs are impossible when every term in the proof means anything you want. Descartes didn't originally write "cogito ergo sum" in Latin. He originally published it in French, "je pense, donc je suis." But in Europe, where Descartes was writing, Latin was the universal language, the one known to all sorts of people across the continent. For Descartes, Latin was the language of empire, the language every civilized person knew because their ancestors were forced to learn it at the point of a sword, the language of absolutes. Wittgenstein has a famous line, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." So must we be silent about "cogito ergo sum." "cogito ergo sum" isn't valid in Latin; "je pense, donc je suis" isn't valid in French. It could only be valid in an unspeakable private language, a language with no grammatical rules, no logic, where true and false are indistinguishable. "Cogito ergo sum" could only be valid in an unusable language where everything is meaningless. Thereof, we must remain silent.

andrewflnr 11mo ago
Language, and especially its mechanics like grammar, are entirely a distraction w.r.t. "cogito ergo sum". The underlying argument it points to is language-independent.
- ryandv 11mo ago
  Correct. Here is the stub of a reply I can't be assed to finish right now: Words and language refer to sensations (P.I. §244: "How do words refer to sensations?"). Sensations can exist independently of language to refer to them (P.I. §256: "—But suppose I didn’t have any natural expression for the sensation, but only had the sensation?"). Thus it can be possible for one to experience the cogito, the mere act of awareness, independently of language. The point of the cogito is its self-evidence, prior to language even entering the picture as a sign standing for or referring to the self-evident sensation of conscious awareness.
  - dfabulich 11mo ago
    I note that you keep saying "cogito" without the "ergo." "I think therefore I am" is invalid, and what's wrong with it is the "therefore," the idea that you knew one thing, and you drew a "logical" conclusion from it, in a "prior to language" environment where words have no meaning, where "true" and "false" are indistinguishable, and logic is impossible. Logic requires words. "Logical" means "verbal," from the Greek logos (λόγος). You can't have a logical argument (you can't draw a conclusion) from the instantaneous standpoint of someone "experiencing" cogito, where words mean whatever you want, or nothing at all. The experience you're having is not a logical argument. As a sentence, "cogito ergo sum" is invalidated as soon as you write it down in a shared language. I'm sure it feels right to you! But you can't actually say anything true about it in English, or Latin, or any other shared language. Thereof, you simply must remain silent.
    - ryandv 11mo ago
      For, on the one hand, there is the real world, and on the other, a whole system of symbols about that world which we have in our minds. These are very very useful symbols; all civilization depends on them; but like all good things they have their disadvantages, and the principle disadvantage of symbols is that we confuse them with reality, just as we confuse money with actual wealth; and our names about ourselves, our ideas of ourselves, our images of ourselves, *with* ourselves. Now of course, reality, from a philosopher's point of view, is a dangerous word. A philosopher will ask me, what do I mean by reality? Am I talking about the physical world of nature, or am I talking about a spiritual world, or what? And to that I have a very simple answer. When we talk about the material world, that is actually a philosophical concept - so in the same way, if I say that reality is spiritual, that's also a philosophical concept - and reality itself is not a concept. Reality is - [...] ... and we won't give it a name. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJYp-mWqB1w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJYp-mWqB1w See also: "the TAO that can be named is not the true TAO;" or, Crowley in Konx om Pax on the "fools who mistake names for things."

Marshferm 11mo ago

[dead]

CrackerNews 11mo ago
The first link is about consciousness. The second link is that language is not thought. The third link is that intentions as "discrete mental states" may not be found in the brain. This does not necessarily disprove the existence of an world model, and these papers are not directly dealing with the concept. As shown with how LLMs work, the world model (and how the brain thinks) may be more implicit rather than explicit philosophical/psychological constructs within the neural net of the brain. As opposed to neural nets and LLMs, neuroscientists and the like have no way of taking out a human brain and hooking it up to a computer to run experiments on what our neurons are doing. These software are the next best thing at the moment of determining what neurons can do and how they work. Perhaps there is a dialectical synthesis that can be made of your position that I interpret to be something like "there does not exist discrete cartesian states within the brain" with how neural nets learn concepts implicitly through statistics.
- Marshferm 11mo ago
  [dead]