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How come Descartes didn't say "I am, therefore I think"?

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kitesandtrainsandcats
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16 Sep 2017, 11:36 am

Something I have wondered for decades, How come Descartes didn't say "I am, therefore I think"?


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DataB4
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16 Sep 2017, 11:44 am

I think because he's describing sentience. If you don't think, then you aren't aware.



kitesandtrainsandcats
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16 Sep 2017, 11:52 am

DataB4 wrote:
If you don't think, then you aren't aware.
But if you aren't first aware, can you then think?


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DataB4
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16 Sep 2017, 11:57 am

How can you be aware without thinking, unless you count an animal interacting with its environment without thoughts as such?



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16 Sep 2017, 11:58 am

Because if you can't think then you aren't. You could be a living nonthinking biological entity, but to be a person, you have to think. (Note: I mean "person" philosophically, I think there are a lot of animal species that do more thinking than we give them credit for.)



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16 Sep 2017, 12:19 pm

The objective was to answer the most basic question of philosophy.
That being proving one's own existence.

So as he lie in bed thinking about the question he realized that...he was thinking. And realized that if he were thinking that "therefore there must be a thinker".

Ergo "I think therefore I am" ( ie I think, therefore I exist).


And besides "I am therefore I think" doesn't make any philosophical sense. A box of hammers "exists" but it doesn't think.

Descartes might have realized one day that "that box of hammers cluttering up my garage friggin takes up a lotta space!" And then concluded "I also take up space" and then gone on to conclude "that like the box of hammers I take up space therefore, like the box of hammers I exist".

So the real question is why didn't he say "I take up space therefore I am", or "I fart therefore I am", and or focus on any number of low mindless attributes of the dumb things in the world that happen to really exist? Why did he focus on "thnking"?



shlaifu
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18 Sep 2017, 6:37 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
The objective was to answer the most basic question of philosophy.
That being proving one's own existence.

So as he lie in bed thinking about the question he realized that...he was thinking. And realized that if he were thinking that "therefore there must be a thinker".

Ergo "I think therefore I am" ( ie I think, therefore I exist).


And besides "I am therefore I think" doesn't make any philosophical sense. A box of hammers "exists" but it doesn't think.

Descartes might have realized one day that "that box of hammers cluttering up my garage friggin takes up a lotta space!" And then concluded "I also take up space" and then gone on to conclude "that like the box of hammers I take up space therefore, like the box of hammers I exist".

So the real question is why didn't he say "I take up space therefore I am", or "I fart therefore I am", and or focus on any number of low mindless attributes of the dumb things in the world that happen to really exist? Why did he focus on "thnking"?


easy: because there's no proof that the box of hammers, or space, exist. They may be illusions. But the fact that there's someone having these illusions is still undeniable. so: I'm hallucinating, therefore I am -

Descartes however was not imagining himself being someone else's illusion - I'm a simulation therefore someone else - or some machine-, who's running this simulation of me, is.
And while that's an option, it isn't the most reductive.


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18 Sep 2017, 6:54 pm

it would have been too obvious.


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naturalplastic
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18 Sep 2017, 7:02 pm

shlaifu wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
The objective was to answer the most basic question of philosophy.
That being proving one's own existence.

So as he lie in bed thinking about the question he realized that...he was thinking. And realized that if he were thinking that "therefore there must be a thinker".

Ergo "I think therefore I am" ( ie I think, therefore I exist).


And besides "I am therefore I think" doesn't make any philosophical sense. A box of hammers "exists" but it doesn't think.

Descartes might have realized one day that "that box of hammers cluttering up my garage friggin takes up a lotta space!" And then concluded "I also take up space" and then gone on to conclude "that like the box of hammers I take up space therefore, like the box of hammers I exist".

So the real question is why didn't he say "I take up space therefore I am", or "I fart therefore I am", and or focus on any number of low mindless attributes of the dumb things in the world that happen to really exist? Why did he focus on "thnking"?


easy: because there's no proof that the box of hammers, or space, exist. They may be illusions. But the fact that there's someone having these illusions is still undeniable. so: I'm hallucinating, therefore I am -

Descartes however was not imagining himself being someone else's illusion - I'm a simulation therefore someone else - or some machine-, who's running this simulation of me, is.
And while that's an option, it isn't the most reductive.


Hmmm....
I will hafta digest this. But it sounds right. :D



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18 Sep 2017, 10:37 pm

kitesandtrainsandcats wrote:
Something I have wondered for decades, How come Descartes didn't say "I am, therefore I think"?


He meant that the fact that he thinks is evidence or proof that he is.

I'm not a Cartesian. My metaphysics is an Idealism, a Non-Realist Idealism, Eliminative Ontic Structural Non-Reallism. I've named it "Skepticism".

I consider it to qualify as a version of India's Vedanta, because it has in common with them, some basic aspects, conclusions and consequences. It doesn't match the details of any of the three usual versions of Vedanta, but they differ greatly from eachother too.

My metaphysics is discussed at the most recent end of the Physics and Reality discussion-thread, at this Politics, Philosophy and Religion forum.

Michael829


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