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blase6
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Why do you hope not? Are you not certain that it really is me?
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ChainBreaker
Guest
The matrix movie?
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ChainBreaker
Guest
“What is “real”? How do you define “real”?”
If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.
If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.
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Charlemagne_III
Guest
Right. And for that reason we cannot deduce our existence from our thoughts.
But we can deduce our thoughts from our existence.
Existence is prior to essence. We have to exist before we can define who we are.
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ChainBreaker
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If our thoughts exist then we exist.
We define who we are by thinking and thinking leads to knowledge, so it is only natural that Descartes would say i think therefore i am.
I don’t see any fault other than the fact that you are confusing metaphysical categories with epistemology. Descartes is essentially answering an epistemological question which just so happens to have metaphysical consequences. I think Descartes would agree that being comes before thinking, but you have to think to get to that conclusion.
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Charlemagne_III
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I say this hesitatingly.
Solipsism would hardly have been possible before the time of Descartes. It was he who opened the floodgates to modern subjectivism. The consequence of this was manifold, but the most important one was the open acceptance of egocentric morality, and finally hedonism which is as egocentric as you can get. Solipsism (egocentrism) knocks down the old barriers to the idea of community and moral responsibility, and allows moral freedom to run rampant inside the isolated ego. Perhaps it is for this reason that there has been a pronounced rise in sociopathic behavior in the modern world. The “loners” often seem to be often the most dangerous people among us just because they don’t “fit” in the world that surrounds them and so must resist it as much as possible, and make war with it when necessary. I am thinking here of the many teen age mass murderers we have seen in recent years.
Solipsism is not to be confused with individualism. An individualist can function very well in society, realizing that he has a special contribution to be made that helps to satisfy the needs of society. Individualism however can veer into solipsism if the gifts the individual has to offer are rejected by society, or if these gifts were never properly nurtured to be appreciated by society. This might be why so many really bright people become alienated from the world and virtual loner solipsists, people like Howard Hughes, for example.
Solipsism would hardly have been possible before the time of Descartes. It was he who opened the floodgates to modern subjectivism. The consequence of this was manifold, but the most important one was the open acceptance of egocentric morality, and finally hedonism which is as egocentric as you can get. Solipsism (egocentrism) knocks down the old barriers to the idea of community and moral responsibility, and allows moral freedom to run rampant inside the isolated ego. Perhaps it is for this reason that there has been a pronounced rise in sociopathic behavior in the modern world. The “loners” often seem to be often the most dangerous people among us just because they don’t “fit” in the world that surrounds them and so must resist it as much as possible, and make war with it when necessary. I am thinking here of the many teen age mass murderers we have seen in recent years.
Solipsism is not to be confused with individualism. An individualist can function very well in society, realizing that he has a special contribution to be made that helps to satisfy the needs of society. Individualism however can veer into solipsism if the gifts the individual has to offer are rejected by society, or if these gifts were never properly nurtured to be appreciated by society. This might be why so many really bright people become alienated from the world and virtual loner solipsists, people like Howard Hughes, for example.
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Charlemagne_III
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I understand the distinction you are making between metaphysics and epistemology.
But Descartes is making a logical proposition: “I think, therefore I am.”
You have to be self conscious of being before you begin to think. So when Descartes had this thought he didn’t prove a thing but that his being could think, not that his being could be proven to exist. What I’m getting at is that consciousness of being is intuitive, not logical. There is no need to prove we exist, because it is self evident. Our being is assumed before the proof of our being even begins.
I think this is one of the reasons Descartes bought into St. Anselm’s ontological proof. Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” is about as circular as Anselm’s proof that God exists because I think him into existence with the notion that he is the Being of which no being greater can be thought. Aquinas dispatched that error in a hurry.
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ChainBreaker
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Metaphysically speaking you are correct.I understand the distinction you are making between metaphysics and epistemology.
But Descartes is making a logical proposition: “I think, therefore I am.”
You have to be self conscious of being before you begin to think. So when Descartes had this thought he didn’t prove a thing but that his being could think, not that his being could be proven to exist. What I’m getting at is that consciousness of being is intuitive, not logical. There is no need to prove we exist, because it is self evident. Our being is assumed before the proof of our being even begins.
But Descartes was not making a metaphysical proposition. He was making an epistemological argument against those who argue that we cannot know that anything exists and certainly not God, and that therefore we cannot make rational arguments.
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Charlemagne_III
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Well, if he was seeking to make a rational argument, he had to be logical, not just epistemological.
GO PATRIOTS! :clapping::dancing::extrahappy:
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ChainBreaker
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Well we apply logic to different subjects. Logically speaking it works. If something is thinking, then that something is existing; because a thing cannot be thinking and not existing at the same time.Well, if he was seeking to make a rational argument, he had to be logical, not just epistemological.
GO PATRIOTS! :clapping::dancing::extrahappy:
The fact that a thing has to be before it can possibly think is irrelevant.
Sorry to burst your bubble but the patriots are going to lose.
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Peter_Plato
Guest
If I were to venture a guess it would be because over the past 10-15 years the public forum has intellectually devolved into a confused squabbling over putative rights without any consideration at all for the metaphysical basis for those rights. Gradually, sincere and honest people are trying to grapple with what the existential or metaphysical grounds are for having rights or knowing anything at all with certainty. In other words, who or what are we, why do we exist and how do we know anything at all with certainty. Very basic questions of metaphysics and epistemology because those basic questions have been largely ignored in the public sphere by those in control of the microphones, scripts and cameras.
I suspect people are just frustrated with the conflicting views and are naturally led, like Descartes, to finding or at least asking about the basic grounds we have for believing anything, in part to deal with the vague lostness people feel trying to sort through all the intellectual babble and lack of clarity that seems to have taken over society.
:twocents:
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Charlemagne_III
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In an age such as ours, when belief runs rampant that there is no God, it’s inevitable that the self becomes supreme judge and arbiter of reality. We are perhaps at the apex of that point of isolated self worship, which is perhaps why solipsism has gained so much ground so fast in the last few years. As Peter points out, the center is not holding and things are falling apart at an accelerating pace.
Some might call it just another critical moment in the advance of the Antichrist.
Some might call it just another critical moment in the advance of the Antichrist.
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Peter_Plato
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Let me give an example that might help.
We experience or perceive sound, but that alone does not tell us very much about sound except how it affects us. We may have certainty that we hear or experience particular sounds at certain times, but perception itself does not tell us much about what sound is.
If you begin to explore through reasoning from what we do experience and from the reasonable certainty we have about what is likely with regard to the material world, it is possible to construct a very compelling explanation which – once completely constructed – rivals and exceeds the certainty to be had from direct subjective experience because it explains those experiences and allows us to predict what will occur.
When something vibrates it moves back and forth in such a way as to create waves of movement through molecular gases, liquids or solids. Our ears are structured to receive those waves of varying frequency and amplitude through air. Ear canals funnel these waves through the ear canal to the tympanic membrane which sets the ossicles in motion causing pounding on the cochlea at particular frequencies and intensities that are in turn translated into electrical impulses by the organ of corti.
The explanation of sound thus expounded can be corroborated by looking at the various structures of the ears, by independent experimentation on how various materials transfer sound waves and by verification from related phenomena such as the doppler effect – how motion (direction and speed of travel) changes the way that sound is experienced. All of this corroboration and explanatory power makes what we know about sound as a phenomenon in the external world virtually certain. This is how it works – we know that with great certainty. We can go further and use what we know about sound to explain, say, the behaviour of animals – dog whistles, echolocation, etc.
We can be very certain about a great deal and that certainty is directly related to and derived from “knowing” or conceptualizing, more so than from direct experience. It also serves to corroborate and explain experiences so we can open a window into that which is behind the curtain – the very reality you claim we can only have uncertainty about.
Science had done a great deal to provide us with certainty about the physical world. Reality beyond the natural can also be understood with similar certainty, but knowledge in that realm requires more care, more subtlety and a different methodology. Philosophy, specifically metaphysics, is one such method.
I would also suggest that directly experiencing or attuning oneself to existence is another.
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blase6
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Yes, I am well aware that many reasonable conclusions can be derived from the world I experience, and those conclusions very often explain if not perfectly, almost perfectly what I experience. But sheer absolute certainty is still not possible outside of oneself, no matter how much evidence or reason supports an idea of the external world.
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, does it make a sound? Is it reasonable to believe so? Yes. Is it certain that it is so? No, no matter how much science and reason support it, it lies outside one’s perception, so it is by my definition, unknowable.
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roselily
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I do not know Solipsism, but I have thought that God give human eyes, ears, nose, mouth…you can use them prove the things because it has evidence that with human brains might can think out the things that are fault and not real, it is God besides give us eyes, ears, nose… did not give us others we can use to prove. things.
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Peter_Plato
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There is no logical step to be made from “highly probable” to “unknowable.”
Nor from “lacking absolute certainty” to “therefore, unknowable.”
“Probably true” means just that, it definitely is not epistemically identical to “unknowable” no matter how you slice it.
In fact, you have far less reason or grounds for claiming “unknowable” than you do for claiming “reasonably certain that…”
Your step to “unknowable” simply is not warranted given what can be known.
Your error is in claiming that because something “lies outside one’s perception” therefore “it is by definition, unknowable.”
Knowing is not equal to perceiving precisely because we can perceive something and still know absolutely nothing about it. Alternatively, we can know a great deal about things beyond our capacity to immediately perceive them.
Therefore, “outside one’s perception” does NOT, by definition, make something unknowable. A clear error by equivocation.
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blase6
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No matter how much evidence you have for something, you cannot know it certainly if it is outside your perception. Evidence is just not on the level where a fact can be known certainly.
As far as I know, the only way that something can be known certainly is if the opposite is impossible. I know certainly that I experience a world, because the statement that I do not experience a world is rendered impossible by my perception. But no matter how reasonable it is that God exists, that the external world exists, etc. You cannot say that the statement that the external world does not exist is rendered impossible. It is not knowable because the idea of an external world cannot be experienced, because an experience is solely internal.
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Peter_Plato
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Read my edit on my last post. You replied too quickly.
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Charlemagne_III
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Peter_Plato
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You would KNOW that experiences are “solely internal,” how?
You could only KNOW that by having the ability to delineate the internal from the external with perfect certainty. That would require knowing something about the external world with certainty – the very thing you claim not to know.
Your logic is internally flawed and inconsistent. Try again.
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