Cogito Ergo Sum

You're not an elon musk babby are you? the computer isn't thinking for you kiddo

How can I even know the source of my thoughts is the self? Just because there is a continuation of similar thoughts over a period of time doesn't necessarily presuppose that source is the self.

I don't know if this source of thought is from my self, but I can't know if it is either if that makes sense.

did you just assume my gender?

saying "presupposing" again doesn't make your argument any less faulty. He doesn't presuppose the I, the "I" is a conclusion as rightly pointed out. Descartes applied rigorous scrutiny to figure out what he could reasonably deny in order to ascertain what must be certain: eventually, he reaches the point where all can essentially be subject to reasonable doubt except for the "I" which does the doubting– to do so would completely undermine the value of critique.

Then where is it coming from you spud

Why are you obsessively using the word presuppose?

Forget for a moment that the source of the thought is the self.

There is thought, I guess you agree with this.
There is general feeling, which can also be called thought. There is the sensation of touching, of pain and pleasure. These, too, you feel. Now the self does not have to be the source of all these things, but it is the entirety of these things together. That is why the essence of the self is a thinking thing, not simply because thinking presupposes a source, which ought to be a self, since it is capable of thinking. This would imply there is a preconception of what the self is (i.e. a thinking thing, or a source of some sort).

Also, just to add, this is also why Sartre saying existence precedes essence is one of the most idiotic utterances and lowest moments of Western philosophy.

>Kant dun real goof'd thinking he refuted Descartes.

Uh, how does this follow from what you said earlier in your post?

> It's not a presupposition it's a conclusion, quite a reasonable one too.
>The I ought to exist if there has to be something such as thinking. For how could one think at all, or conceive of existing/not existing, if there wasn't an ego against the background of an existence.

Can you describe Kant's attempted refutation of Descartes, as you understand it, and explain why you think it misses the point?

>And so philosophy is important for a while, but it’s also — I get were Neil and Richard might be coming from, where you start arguing in a circle where I think therefore I am. What if you don’t think about it? Do you not exist anymore? You probably still exist even if you’re not thinking about existence.

Descartes totally BTFO by a children's show host

If you're reading this, you don't exist
later nerds

> Denying the antecedent.
> All this science and I can't even logic.

Shit Bill, get it together.

>>thinking is therefore an I
false, the I do not even choose what to think about and cannot stop thinking about something

No it isn't, thought merely requires being.

Who is to say this is thought? Who is to say this logic is correct?

Descartes is
Read his fucking shit before commenting you psued

too many spooks in one sentence.

“The Americans are the living refutation of the Cartesian axiom, "I think, therefore I am": Americans do not think, yet they are.” - Julius Evola.

XDDDDDDDD LE EPIK REDPILLED MAN XXDD DAE MURICANS XDDDD

The sign of a brainlet philosopher wannabe:

>tries to refute cogito ergo sum
>doesn't try to refute Descartes proof of God
>didn't even read the rest of Meditations to hear what Descartes has to say

Listen, we all know that you're anxious to make a philosophical contribution, but stop trying so damn hard. Kant, Kierkegaard, Russell... all try-hard brainlets who made stumbles in their otherwise great philosophies by tackling Descartes. Heidegger was probably the first Descartes critic to leave him alone on his epistemology and criticize him for his metaphysics by challenging the importance of cogito ergo sum for the exploration of Dasein.

Also, apparently both Heidegger and Russell got cucked in their lifetimes.

What reading should I do before Kant? I've read bunch of the greeks fwiw.

ALRIGHT HOLD UP

DESCARTES ACTUALLY SAYS THAT COGITO ERGO SUM SHOULDN'T BE TAKEN AS A DEDUCTIVE A ergo B SYLLOGISM.

Good scholarship has established that it's more like an act, existence is declared and proven by the subject in it's act.

If you really want to understand this, read J.G. Fichte, his notion of Tat Handlung especially.

Saw this great infographic if you want to flex your philosophy muscles and think for yourself. Also, I recommend reading Critique of Pure & Practical Reason around the same time, or sequentially.

Amazing, thank you!

I thought it was a proclamation of subjectivism. As in EGO cogito, ergo EGO sum. TU non es. You doesn't exist if I doesn't think about You.
I thought of it as a kind of an ego-centric, solipsistic markation of the new age. The self that is always looking inwards, but only brain deep. The Other isn't as important as perhaps in Christianity, and thinking beats feeling. I dislike all of this by the way. But he was right. He predicted the age that was to come.

t. butthurt yank

Christ, talk about idiots and naifs trying to think too much too fast without reading properly. Don't post anything else.

Is there anything like that about other philosophers?

Leibniz. He wrote short but very dense books. Very relevant to our society of information.

Wow this really is god-tier idiocy.

Wtf guys ? "I think therefore I am" does not contain any premise nor any conclusion. The word "therefore" is misleading, but Descartes also phrased it in a more accurate way in the Meditations. "I am, I exist". That's enough. No reasoning implied. All reasoning is impossible right now anyways, since the ideas implied in logic and mathematics have been swept away by the doubt.
"I think therefore I am" = "I am, I exist" = the very fact of being conscious that you (as something able to be conscious) are.

Please OP study something before pretending to refutate it. And "study" does not only mean "actually read".

But how do you know you are the one doubting? How do you know that something/one else isn't doing the doubting for you and somehow implanting those doubts into your brain?

>It's not a presupposition it's a conclusion
>The I ought to exist if there has to be something such as thinking. For how could one think at all, or conceive of existing/not existing, if there wasn't an ego against the background of an existence.
Did you know that the bible is the word of God? The bible says so.

>"I am, I exist".
Not an argument.

>"I think therefore I am" = "I am, I exist" = the very fact of being conscious that you (as something able to be conscious) are.
Not an argument

>sincerely being a descartesfag
K A N T

That's it. It's not an argument. It's pure certainty to the one that actually thinks "I am".

>That's it. It's not an argument. It's pure certainty to the one that actually thinks "I am".
How many layers of irony are you on right now

No irony at all. This user got it perfectly right, I just said basically the same thing.

One reason Descartes may appear difficult is that he never follows the pure "order of reasons". He's always rather saying, "look, here's what I did, here's what I thought and what I realized". It's never the usual "I'm gonna argue about..." or "I'm gonna provide proof that...".

The consequence is that, if you say "Descartes thinks therefore he is", you just miss the point. It's all about the experience of thinking.

Please tell me this isn't real and it's all just a big John Green quote

because the person doing that could only be god or a malicious demon, neither of which I'm particularly inclined to believe in. I could be a brain in a vat, but again, why overcomplicate things? even if someone planted doubt in my brain it'd still be "me" doing the doubting, no matter how much I have been influenced by external forces.

You can only be certain of "doubting" going on, not who or what is doing the doubting. It's not overcomplicating it. Trying to propose that you know who is doing that doubting is overcomplicating things.

I'm not the one you're replying to, but I wonder if your objection can be influenced by grammar. "Sum" does not clearly imply "I am an independent being whose present action is to think". It only expresses the very fact of thought or consciousness as it is experienced. I don't think it would not matter much if you replace it with "something is thinking", or even, in a more contemporary way, "there some thinking" or "there is consciousness".

Then we are dealing with a non-philosopher here, either an illuminati or simply a slave to his senses.

My favourite version is probably Samuel Beckett's phrase "quaqua!". Its just absurd enough that it contains within it an assurance of the voice which utters, but at the same time, it denies the "I" its official coronation as subject of the voice. It's somewhere in-between speech and birdsong

Yes he describes this as the method of doubt
But why doesn't he go the whole fucking way and doubt that the source of his "thinking" doesn't necessarily have to exist.

Oh, I didn't realise that was case. Not real flash on my latin, I guess I was too heavily influenced on the cogito by Sartre and how he used it to imply a self doing the thinking. Thanks for the clarification user : )

Descartes was trumped by Kunt. I have nothing personal against Descartes. His ouvre was a singularity of a mind experiment and a huge driving force in intellectual history. I just think it's embarassing that you would defend him at this point.

Can someone explain where this Kant refuting Descartes is coming from? Where did he do this? From what I understand, what Kant defines as the "I" is the apperception of the unification of our intuitions. It's an analytic pre-condition for the understanding of any possible object of experience.
For Kant, it seems to me, the fact that you are existing does prove an I, because the I is a necessary condition for thought, as the principle of synthetic unification in consciousness, which is the base power of the understanding, alone makes thought possible.

Obviously Descartes could not have proven it in that way, but Kant did and it is the same conclusion as Descartes, no?

>Kant did and it is the same conclusion as Descartes, no?

The difference is probably that Kant's argument as you rebuild it only works with a transcendantal I, a transcendantal ego - not a psychological (phenomenal) one. The "principle of synthetic unification in consciousness" cannot be a phenomenon itself. Also, therefore, the conclusion of this argument is not exactly that "you are existing" (this can only be said about phenomena), but rather that there is some kind of underlying transcendantal I beneath your apperceptions.

I dunno exactly where Kant addresses this issue, but it's probably linked to one of the antinomies and the impossibility of a synthesis of the heterogenous.

Okay sure, the transcendental I makes the psychological I possible because it's this power of unfiication of intuitions (including from inner senses) that would make the experience of a psychological I possible, and indeed makes any identity whatsoever possible.

But none of this goes against Descartes. Descartes is still correct by Kant's accounts- having thoughts means that you have at least a transcendental I.
Any empirical judgements about this I, aspects of what you consider its identity, personality, whatever, could all be warped by the demon. But that's not what is being discussed; it is the pure I, the pure idea of the I, which I think can be the same thing as the transcendental I which makes the psychological one (and any thought or concept in general) possible.

What are the essential works of Descartes to get through before moving on Spinoza and Leibniz?

I've read through Rules on the Direction for the Mind, Treatise on Man, and Meditations...

>How did this fraud hack even get any attention from following philosophers?
Because modern philosophers didn't start with the Greeks.

Read his Discourse and then you're finished enough. Get a decent guide for Spinoza, I recommend Behind the Geometrical Method: A Reading of Spinoza's Ethics by Curley, even though I don't agree with all of his interpretations.

I think there is a subtle difference. You can apply the distinction Kant draws to Descartes if you like, but what Descartes had in mind was clearly a phenomenal self identifying 'I'.

I have.

>he sed so so is true

Absolutely Reddit.

Just admit his philosophy is weak, and is based upon a cultural meme where reason was thought to be infallible.

If reason is fallible, then everything else in his system falls apart.

City of God Book XI Ch. 26
Augustine made the argument centuries earlier, and explained the reasoning behind it.

>tfw reading this thread and realizing Veeky Forums is philosophically braindead

feels bad man. at least now i feel like my philosophical study was worth it.

To elaborate:
>His claim that God would not give one faulty reason is itself presumes his reason is not faulty, and that the God he has conceived of shares his reason
>'cogito ergo sum' itself presumes an infallible line of reason
Stop sucking off a dead Frenchman, brainlet.

I post therefore I'm right.

I hate therefore I exist.

I love therefore I live.

You really don't understand?

Okay genius, try doubting your own existence. Done? How'd that work out? Not well, right? Because by attempting to doubt it you just affirmed it.

This is why Veeky Forums has to make fake infographics about being 't3h smartst bord', because in reality it's populated by morons like this.

>a cultural meme where reason was thought to be infallible
That's what you can say regarding Leibniz, not regarding Descartes. Descartes' God could very well have made it so that logical principles are different. "Reason" comes after God. So, if there's a cultural meme Descartes based his philosophy on, it's rather that of a perfect God.

>His claim that God would not give one faulty reason is itself presumes his reason is not faulty
If I understand correctly, I'd say it's true. Innate ideas are grounded on God whose existence is known thanks to innate ideas. That's indeed a flaw (a commonly acknowledged one, I think) that you can use to 'refutate' Descartes.

>cogito ergo sum itself presumes an infaillible line of reason
No, reason does not intervene in "cogito ergo sum". What a few anons said earlier is right, the word "therefore" has no logical signification.

me

What did you mean by me?

I receive (You)'s, therefore I am

OP has just demonstrated the extent of rationalism

This is why existentialism will always be superior. Yes no one can prove there is a self but if you werent a fucking pseud you would examine your existence AUTHENTICALLY IN GOOD FAITH and realize ok yeah obviously i exist

>le thinking man

he's a good entry-level philosopher to scrutinize. if you can spot his mistakes you did good.

>The I ought to exist if there has to be something such as thinking.
not really, no.

>existence precedes essence

All he's saying with this is that humans find purpose and meaning on their own, after coming to terms with merely existing, don't see how that's really related to the cogito ergo sum argument

thanks -- i appreciate the advice.

Sartre's statement means that what matters most in a man's life is what he did with his existence. Actions make the man because, considered essentially, he is just like another man.

It is a presupposition, but that doesn't make it wrong. He is thinking. You're thinking. The statement proves itself.

> Can someone explain where this Kant refuting Descartes is coming from? Where did he do this?

Most explicitly (from what I've read) in the Critique of Pure Reason's section on Paralogisms, and in the Prolegomena, sections 46-49.

> From what I understand, what Kant defines as the "I" is the apperception of the unification of our intuitions. It's an analytic pre-condition for the understanding of any possible object of experience.
> the I is a necessary condition for thought, as the principle of synthetic unification in consciousness, which is the base power of the understanding, alone makes thought possible.

Yep yep yep! And as the other user and you proceed to point out, this transcendental self grounds the empirical self, with only the latter being knowable (while the former is merely thinkable).

> For Kant, it seems to me, the fact that you are existing does prove an I

But it doesn't prove the kind of "I" that Descartes wanted to prove: a thinking *substance* that can be introspectively *known* as it is in-itself.

Part of Kant's goal was to show that even this inner intuition of my own mental processes doesn't reveal to me what I am as a thing-in-itself, but rather only reveals to me how I appear to myself; "knowledge" and "substance" can only apply to appearances.

I think
Therefore there are some thoughts.

Thats the only rational necessity that follows.

wow wow that's a quite a leap! you show some heavy belief into superstition that is causality.

The "therefore" only appears in the Latin version. The French text reads : "I think, I am", meaning both expressions are equivalent in the order of the certainties.

I am surprised nobody has brought up Antoine Léonard Thomas' interpretation that most philosophers, that I know of anyways, tend to agree best captures Descares' intent:

"Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum"

Remember, the phrase was used as a starting point against radical doubt.

In the face of radical doubt, doubting everything including one's own existence, one need only utter the above phrase (or the equivalent in whatever language is preferred) to realize there is a problem with the statement: "I doubt I exist."

It becomes much harder to justify the mental contortion of entertaining the plausibility that thoughts can exist independently of a subject when the thoughts have an inherent purpose. Doubts are not just thoughts anymore, they imply instrumentality. And if you want to dispute that, all you would achieve by doing so is corrupting the semantics behind the possible interpretation of the word "doubt."

In this case, the doubt in question is instrumental in expressing mistrust as to the existence of the vehicle of said doubt, and that is just plain logically pernicious.

Doubt is just observing a lack of necessary implication.

>doubts are not just thoughts anymore, they imply instrumentality

Normally doubts are about your own personal state of mind, because humans are always in a state of conversation with each other and it's useful to speak in terms of individuals and selves.

That doesn't mean we can't think of doubts differently in a thought experiment about radical skepticism. If selves and individuals aren't taken for granted, thoughts and doubts don't have any inherent implication of the self, they are merely associated with the self. Correlation =\= causation, if you will.

Now the point of this argument is not to claim that there is any practical merit in living and thinking as if your existence is questionable. The point is that Descartes is not recognizing that his skepticism toward everything EXCEPT the cogito, can also be applied to the cogito. Descartes saw himself as making a stand against the skepticism of ancient pyrrhonism and other stuff like agrippa's trilemma and zeno's paradoxes from antiquity. He felt that he had found the one postulate/axiom that is beyond doubt, inherently justified or self-justifying. And from that undeniable axiom, he could derive the rest of his worldview rationally. Hence he is considered the primary thinker of the rationalist movement.

So the point of poking holes in his argument is not to defend the practice of solipsism but almost the opposite, it is to defend the use of unjustified axioms in all areas of philosophical inquiry. It is to defend the skeptical worldview which is that knowledge is relative to assumptions.

His God requires reason. He argues circularly.
>What a few anons said earlier is right, the word "therefore" has no logical signification.
What are you on? Are you redefining 'logic' to serve your purposes?

All logic is circular so what

Philosophy teacher here. You know what ? When I first learned philosophy, 20 years ago, my teacher who was the smartest guy ever used this quote, "dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum". Yet I didn't find it in Descartes, even when I studied it thoroughly afterwards. It's actually enlightening but I never knew where it came from until now. Thank you.

Yes,

You're right in that he argues circularly.

However you should read Descartes' own replies to objections. "Therefore" has no logical meaning in his mind, when he writes it. Descartes doesn't intend to say "as a consequence..." That's just fact, he says it clearly. Now you can say he shouldn't have used the word "therefore" / ergo, which is true. That's why the other sentence he uses "I am, I exist" is far better, more accurate. I dunno why "I think therefore I am" is more famous, maybe only because the Discourse is much easier to read than the Meditations. Keep in mind that the Discourse was addressed to a plebeian audience.

OP might as well be asking why 1+1 = 2.

>fact
Facts are based upon logical presuppositions.

Why can't you just admit he made mistakes?

>Facts are based upon logical presuppositions.
This makes no sense.
>Why can't you just admit he made mistakes?
I just did.

Please kys.

>This makes no sense.
Yes it does. Why are you stuck in the 17th century?