Timeline for Is 'cogito ergo sum' false?
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31 events
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| Apr 23 at 18:12 | comment | added | Gabriel | I don't think this is the refutation of 'I think, therefore I am'. If I'm not mistaken Descartes presented the refutation of 'I think, therefore I am' himself: if an evil, omnipotent God "created" Descartes in such a way that he does not in fact exist, and fools "Descartes" into thinking he does, then 'I think therefore I am' would be false. Descartes resolved this conundrum by stating he believed God would not fool him in such a manner, so he held cogito ergo sum to be then true - because only if the regular rules of reality don't apply, can it be false. | |
| Sep 4, 2023 at 14:56 | comment | added | NotThatGuy | There is an experience of thinking that's being had. How can an experience be had, without a vessel for or "experiencer" of said experience? | |
| Sep 14, 2018 at 6:29 | comment | added | rus9384 | Nietzsche criticised (in a few words) Descartes for this. | |
| Apr 13, 2018 at 22:21 | comment | added | Jim Balter | " if you deny your own existence, how to take into consideration the existence of others? " -- this line of argument is absurd. The human brain is an evolved machine. It takes others into consideration because it's built to do so, just as it's built to model a self. In a social species, not considering others gets you killed, or locked up, or at least shunned. | |
| Apr 13, 2018 at 22:04 | comment | added | Jim Balter | "the chinese room is not a refutation of intelligence, but an argument against a Turing machine having qualia" -- completely wrong. The Chinese Room has nothing to do with qualia. It is a multiply fallacious and oft refuted thought experiment purporting to show that computers cannot "understand" -- specifically that they cannot "understand" Chinese, regardless of how proficient they are at it. | |
| Aug 22, 2017 at 19:28 | comment | added | user28117 | i mean for me this objection (it shows "there are thoughts" / doubts) is a misunderstanding and suggests that the thinker isn't actually engaging in any doubt. whatever "i" am, seems like it's self evident when i think | |
| Nov 6, 2015 at 19:58 | comment | added | Wooble | It doesn't matter what kind of world or moral system you're talking about. Your slippery slope argument against the epistemological question of whether Descartes is justified in asserting the Cogito argument is a fallacy. The consequences of Descartes being right or wrong are a non sequitur in considering the fact or whether he's right or wrong. Dragging moral arguments into epistomology is rhetoric, not philosophy. | |
| Nov 6, 2015 at 19:55 | comment | added | Rodrigo | You can be amoral even accepting your existence. But if you deny your own existence, how to take into consideration the existence of others? I think the solipsist in question would act less morally, usually. "Think of the moral consequences!" is a bad critique in a world where morality is a fake (like the monotheistic world). But in a society where people know and care for each other, it's completely different. | |
| Nov 6, 2015 at 19:50 | comment | added | Wooble | @Rodrigo: I don't get your point. You can be an amoral solipsist even if you accept your own existence (arguably the definition requires that you accept it). In any event, "think of the moral consequences!" isn't exactly a valid critique of a position. | |
| Nov 6, 2015 at 18:46 | comment | added | Rodrigo | If you can't trust there is a "I", than why would you care is there a "he" and a "she"? You could kill anyone without problem. But the truth is a social perception too, and you wouldn't go much far thinking like that. | |
| Aug 7, 2014 at 11:49 | comment | added | Ben Hocking | @nir, Searle's definition of consciousness is unsatisfactory (from a rigorous, scientific POV) as we now have to define sentience and/or awareness. That's not meant to be a criticism of Searle, however, as I am unaware of any such definition, and skeptical that such a definition is possible. (Skinner would refer to it as a "mentalism".) | |
| Aug 7, 2014 at 11:47 | comment | added | Ben Hocking | @nir, yes, that's what I mean: any argument that AI cannot have consciousness if applied rigorously to humans would also conclude that we cannot have consciousness, unless one assumes some sort of "magic" on the part of humans | |
| Aug 6, 2014 at 15:47 | comment | added | nir | @BenHocking, btw, Searle defines consciousness (as qualia) in the beginning of the same book "by consciousness I simply mean those subjective states of sentience or awareness" | |
| Aug 6, 2014 at 11:46 | comment | added | nir | @BenHocking, do you mean that any argument that ai cannot have consciousness, falls apart when applied to humans? | |
| Aug 6, 2014 at 11:22 | comment | added | Ben Hocking | @nir, where "consciousness" is yet another ill-defined term (to be clear, I don't think I'm arguing with you, because I don't sense that you're significantly disagreeing with me), and so any argument we might make that artificial entities cannot have it fall apart when we try to apply those same arguments to ourselves. (To be fair, my thoughts are also influenced by B. F. Skinner.) | |
| Aug 5, 2014 at 22:59 | comment | added | nir | @BenHocking, Searle calls it consciousness in this discussion of the Chinese room experiment in Consciousness and Language. | |
| Aug 5, 2014 at 22:36 | comment | added | Ben Hocking | @nir, whether we want to call it "intelligence" or "qualia", the same problem applies to natural entities (such as ourselves) as to artificial entities. (That said, I don't believe the Chinese Room has anything to do with qualia, although I know some people have argued otherwise.) | |
| Aug 5, 2014 at 19:35 | comment | added | nir | @BenHocking, the chinese room is not a refutation of intelligence, but an argument against a Turing machine having qualia. | |
| Feb 23, 2014 at 21:06 | comment | added | Asphir Dom | I is not objection to Descartes, if you or Kierkegaard did not HAVE I its not the fault of Descartes I. His I existed, unlike many other I's who object him in his OBVIOUS statement. His I just stated that it had existence and thoughts, other I's which had no (did not reach) existence and no thoughts should not object him. | |
| Jun 2, 2013 at 21:36 | comment | added | Student | I was thinking about, and if we assume "there are thoughts" as true, then looking for "what am I?", it comes to my mind next "I am these thoughts", what do you think? | |
| Jan 22, 2012 at 20:35 | comment | added | propaganda |
Dont underestimate Cartesian Circles: mathematicians use it all the time to prove equivalence of statements, if N statements are to be proven equivalent Si <=> Sj then using Cartesian Circles you reduce N*N-1 proofs to N proofs because <=> is transitive. In the context of Descartes, if the deductions are correct and in one direction =>, then even if a conclusion is proven false, it still gives the usefull information that all the statements are false since A=>B not only says that if A is true so is B, but that if B is false so is A, so they all stand or fall together.
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| Aug 11, 2011 at 12:12 | comment | added | Michael Dorfman | One small quibble: Williams and Kierkegaard are only "early" in a Western context. Buddhist philosophy has been investigating the implications of the unfounded presumption of an "I" for about two and a half millenia. | |
| Jul 7, 2011 at 21:01 | comment | added | MSalters | And yet, on the other hand, "there are experiences" implies some reality outside "me" in which those experiences exist. It can be argued that Descartes statement is a mere definition of "I", not a proposition or a fact. | |
| Jun 29, 2011 at 7:33 | comment | added | Lennart Regebro | I would say "there are experiences". The thoughts are very hard to objectively distinguish from hearing. It might not be thoughts, but just a recording. ;) | |
| Jun 28, 2011 at 2:37 | comment | added | smartcaveman | @Wooble, don't forget about Jean-Paul Sartre's Transcendence of the Ego! It's probably the single best example of an argument against presupposing "I". | |
| Jun 8, 2011 at 18:43 | comment | added | Wooble | @Jon: indeed, "I think -> I am" is True if "I think" is False, although I took the OP's question to be more whether Descartes' argument is a sound one than if the particular compound logical statement is True. | |
| Jun 8, 2011 at 18:38 | comment | added | Jon Ericson | +1 It's worth noting that this answer argues not that cogito ergo sum is false, but that it is a circular argument. Philosophical skeptics may, of course, reject the proposition. (But that at their own peril!) | |
| Jun 8, 2011 at 12:26 | comment | added | Ben Hocking |
As someone who researches artificial intelligence via genetic algorithms of neural networks, I also have to question what it means to "think" or what "thoughts" are. The Chinese room is often taken as a refutation of the intelligence of artificial intelligences, but the same arguments used to deconstruct artificial intelligences can also be applied to natural ones.
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| Jun 8, 2011 at 2:20 | comment | added | Cerberus | +1 In addition, it presupposes that a proposition or fact and its negation cannot be both true. And that existence is a meaningful term. Etc. | |
| Jun 7, 2011 at 22:26 | vote | accept | Jez | ||
| Jun 7, 2011 at 22:24 | history | answered | Wooble | CC BY-SA 3.0 |