In following the rules, I will explain in detail what exactly is up for debate here, so this thread will not be locked.
“I Think Therefore I Am”, a common phrase (maybe the most common phrase), was written by Rene Descartes in the 1600’s in his book Meditations II. In Meditations I, he “demolished” the certainty of anything existing. His reasoning was that there is no way to prove that his thoughts are deluded or being deceived, as humans have been wrong. Some of the examples he provided was you could not disprove that there is an evil supernatural being tricking the human mind or simple everyday optical illusions that trick the mind. The next day in Meditations II, he wrote that there is one thing that he could be completely certain of, that he existed. His logic was that doubts of certainty were because of deluded thoughts. If there are thoughts to delude, thoughts exist, and “I” (in this case, Descartes) is a thinking being that exists.
Question: Does this common phrase which is often seen as self-evident provide solid proof to remove the doubt of “I” (in your case, yourself) existing.
My personal opinion:
Essentially descartes’ proof is:
X is true. Y is true. Therefore, X is true.
His argument is circular. “I think therefore I am” could also be “I am therefore I think”.
It’s the same thing as to say unicorns are pink, therefore unicorns surely exist. How could something be pink if it doesn’t exist. It’s tautological. It’s the equivalent of saying apples are red and they are delicious, therefore apples are surely red.
You can replace the word think with ANYTHING. I eat therefore I exist. I dream therefore I exist. I walk therefore I exist. There’s no difference of what you say.
Philosophy is a part of linguistics. We use words, as our only means, to try to prove our ideas to other people. There is so many limitations to language. We may exist, but we are unable to use words to prove it.
Your thoughts?
I read through several posts seeking someone who at least gave the appearance of having read Rene Descartes before adding more irrelevant opinions to the OP. No luck. Did I miss anyone?
Cho the OP originator was so hot to display her own ill-conceived opinions on the matter that she couldn’t even take a minute to check out Wikipedia first, where the irrelevancy of her all-too-common interpretation was clearly explained.
Descartes’ classical statement,
cogito ergo sum, was not the only statement in his writings. It was the consequence of considerable thought and analysis, and soul searching. It is best understood in the context of those thoughts, which no poster here seems to know.
The English translation, “
I think, therefore I exist” is easily confused by various modern notions of what thought actually means. The occasional poster to this thread who seems to have a slight clue about the nature of thought still confuses it with various ideas that have come out of artificial intelligence research and animal studies.
The pseudo-scientists who purport to study these things, or at least collect grant money for pretending to do so, are so dreadfully confused that they use the term “consciousness” interchangeably with “perception” and “self-awareness.” You’ll learn nothing of value from such incompetents.
The best way to understand Descartes is to actually read him. I realize that this is way too much to ask from my fellow posters, because it would take time away from reading scripture, watching TV, and for the occasional multi-tasker, simultaneous nose-hair removal.
If you must write about Descartes from ignorance, it would be helpful to first appreciate that he did not regard the information processing of animals as thought. He would have noted that while a clever AI computer program is clearly the product of thought, the program itself, in the process of execution, is not thinking at all. A reincarnated Descartes reading this very thread might marvel that many of those posting to it can form sentences.
The statement,
cogito ergo sum, came within a discussion of consciousness-- the ability of an information processing entity to recognize, while processing information, that it is doing so— thus becoming momentarily self-aware.
Descartes realized that more than mechanistic/animalistic information processing was required to reach self-awareness.
He realized that the human brain, as a machine, could no more be responsible for self-awareness than the brain of a fruit fly. Thus he correctly attributed the property of self-awareness to the human soul.
This was the most important insight about the nature and purpose of the universe ever developed by a member of the Church, primary even to Galileo’s realization that the physical universe is a far more reliable source of knowledge about God than the scriptures and anything else written by men. Naturally, both Galileo and Descartes have been ignored by the Church, as they will be ignored by those posting here on CAF.
Well, thanks. I hope I didn’t come across poorly, myself. It’s just what happens when folks don’t know each other well.
there is afterlife and that it is not only right here but rather easily accessed and that there is a constant exchange of energy between that state of being and Time/Space.