Cotigo Ergo Sum?

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Agree, disagree?

Any Thomistic insight? Any people who are all for it?
 
I haven’t read any Descartes so I might be taking it out of context… but it seems to mean that because you think, that is evidence that you exist. However, I think it’s backwards. Your thinking is not the cause of your being; rather, you are only able to think because you already exist. It would make more sense to say “I am, therefore I think” although that too isn’t even necessary. The most accurate would be, “I am a rational animal, therefore I have the ability to think.”
 
Can any philosophical objectivity come out of this statement? Or does it just mess up everything?
 
laircy said:
I haven’t read any Descartes so I might be taking it out of context… but it seems to mean that because you think, that is evidence that you exist. However, I think it’s backwards. Your thinking is not the cause of your being; rather, you are only able to think because you already exist. It would make more sense to say “I am, therefore I think” although that too isn’t even necessary. The most accurate would be, “I am a rational animal, therefore I have the ability to think.”
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True, but Descartes was looking for irrefutable evidence as a firm foundation for his philosophical system and so stated it that way. Some philosophers have criticised this foundation, arguing the most that could be claimed without scepticism is “there are thoughts”, and the extension of thoughts to a thinking subject is problematic (this is what Hume believed).
 
jonathan_hili said:
True, but Descartes was looking for irrefutable evidence as a firm foundation for his philosophical system and so stated it that way. Some philosophers have criticised this foundation, arguing the most that could be claimed without scepticism is “there are thoughts”, and the extension of thoughts to a thinking subject is problematic (this is what Hume believed).
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I would understand that. It actually makes more sense than Descartes to me. I’m a classical medieval, though. What is the Thomistic understanding of this most famous statement of philosophy?
 
laircy said:
I haven’t read any Descartes so I might be taking it out of context… but it seems to mean that because you think, that is evidence that you exist. However, I think it’s backwards. Your thinking is not the cause of your being; rather, you are only able to think because you already exist. It would make more sense to say “I am, therefore I think” although that too isn’t even necessary. The most accurate would be, “I am a rational animal, therefore I have the ability to think.”
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No doubt you think because you exist but you know you exist because you think.
 
Binto said:
Valid question: how do I know I exist because I think?
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Descartes was attempting to lay down an epistemology (and ultimately, I think, the foundation of his philosophy) coming from a position of doubt. He recognized that pretty much everything his senses tell him are susceptible to being flawed, and if one cannot trust their senses they ought not to trust the knowledge gained by them. So, as a plank he started under the assumption of total doubt - he doubted EVERYTHING. But he noticed something in doing so.

In doubting everything, he couldn’t doubt that he was engaged in doubting. It seems irrefutable, and indeed trivial to say that one who doubts is one who doubts. He took doubting as a form of thinking - it is a mental activity after all. And in doing so he concluded - taking only doubt as a first premise - that he was a thinking thing, and that thinking things need to exist. That is where cogito ergo sum comes from - it is the conclusion that if one doubts EVERYTHING, they are then committed to their own existence.

From there, Descartes then went on to lay down the rest of his epistemology - and I believe his metaphysics (along with everything else) falls out of his epistemology. I don’t think the proposition “if I can doubt, then I necessarily exists” is contrary to Thomism. It is merely Descartes’ proof that he himself exists - that even if you can’t depend on anything else just by doubting you demonstrate the necessity of your existence.
 
But even if Decartes is right, how do we know truth? If we doubt everything but our thinking, where do we anchor everything else but our thoughts?
 
I thought it was cogito ergo sum, as in (re)cognition, cogitate, etc.
 
Binto said:
Agree, disagree?

Any Thomistic insight? Any people who are all for it?
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The cogito ergo sum idea is, in my opinion, the least problematic aspect of Descartes’ epistemology. He is arguing from the effect (thinking) to the cause (being), and that is fine; that is an example of the Thomistic maxim agrere sequitur esse.

The problem, in my opinion, is that Descartes accepted, almost as a fait accompli without proof, three rather problematic ideas:

(1) Some of our knowledge is innate; that is, some of it does not derive in any way from our senses.

(2) That the fundamental criterion for truth is clarity (the ease with which we know something) and distinctness (an idea’s ability to be distinguished from a different idea).

(3) That the object of our knowledge is our ideas, rather than the things represented by those ideas.

In Descartes’ world, we can imagine our intellects as a kind of screen: images appear and disappear from it. For Descartes, we have no way of telling whether those images are projections of real objects, or whether they are cleverly painted on by an “evil genius.”

This gives rise to an epistemological problem called the “problem of the bridge”: how can we tell that our ideas about things in the world are accurate? How can we be sure that ideas correspond to the things they represent?

Descartes is forced to concoct a complicated theory, in which thanks to the idea of God, we know the existence of God, and because God cannot tell a lie, we can rely on the ideas that we have about the world.

A much better theory (in my opinion) is that of Aristotle and St. Thomas. Rather than as a screen, we should imaging our intellects as a window. Through the window, we can see the things in the world: not always with all the clarity and distinctness that we would like, but we see them, and we see them reliably. The window may sometimes be partly clouded or colored, but it does not take away from the fact that what we see through it is real and reveals true information about itself.

There is no problem of the bridge, because we have direct (albeit limited and imperfect) knowledge of reality through our senses.
 
Descartes was in a bar at closing time.

The barkeep asked if he’d like one for the road.

Descartes said, “I think not”

…and at once went POOF!!!
 
:):):)🙂

Seriously, RD was responding to a wave in the philosophy of his time that strove to doubt everything, including our own minds or being.

He responded that because we know we can think, we can assume we have being; you can be without thinking (ie, in unconsciousness), but not the reverse.

It in no way argues that thought is the cause of our being.

ICXC NIKA
 
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